Dunning1874
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Posts posted by Dunning1874
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Sadly when we have concerns about injuries we don't have anyone who can run to the police with a funny handshake to beg them to tell the SPFL to call games off on risible safety grounds, like a certain CEO we could mention.
Sir Douglas Imrie's 100th game in charge of Morton today.
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Got a really bad feeling about this, injuries are inevitably going to come round but Wilson, Oakley and Mullen are possibly the worst three players in the squad to lose.
We simply don't have anyone who can get close to offering what Oakley does, as Raith showed opposition defences will physically dominate us without him and if any team turns up with the same mindset of Airdrie to kick us off the park and see how much they get away with, it'll be much harder to stand up to that.
The whole midfield have been excellent since December, but I don't think it's a coincidence that our turnaround came with a fully fit Wilson in midfield rather than not being fit enough to last 90 minutes or filling in at full back and both Power & Gillespie have looked much better for having Wilson beside them. Blues has been in excellent form too so have to hope moving him inside comes close to replicating Wilson's contribution, but it's gutting to hear his season might be done.
Even aside from MacDonald not being fully fit himself and just not being quite as good as Mullen, you only really notice how important Mullen's distribution is when he's not there. He's got a fantastic range of passing for a goalkeeper and his ability to pinpoint passes from our own box is so important to get us up the park quickly, which is doubly important when we don’t have Oakley so we're only going to get into the final third by finding attackers' feet.
We'll be doing very well to get results without any of them, and with Dundee United, Hearts then Partick away in our next three it's not a massive stretch to see our long unbeaten run suddenly being followed up by or overlapping a small winless run. A win today would be massive to avoid that.
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On 27/02/2024 at 21:17, RedLichtie86 said:
Ali Adams was never good enough.
Otherwise he wouldnt have been playing in the 5th/6th Tier most of his career.
This is probably right, it would be more surprising if he was good enough for the Championship rather than out of his depth after that career, but that doesn't mean he wouldn’t have been a better option than Boruc while Gaston is out.
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While such a result should be seismic, especially with another Independent coming second, the circumstances mean all the major parties are simply going to shrug. No one is actually going to learn anything from this, except perhaps welshbairn.
Galloway, while no one can deny he's been consistent on the UK's foreign policy and especially on the Middle East throughout his career, is a horrible grifting c**t who'll pick whatever position on domestic politics he thinks will appeal most to whichever local electorate he's performing for at the time. We're probably only days away from him saying something grossly offensive that alienates half of the 12000 who voted for him and ensures he loses the seat come a general election.
That 12K number is also pertinent. This is the lowest turnout a Rochdale election has ever had and while the vote has obviously been fragmented between several candidates, no one has won Rochdale with fewer than 19K votes since 1924, when women still had to be over 30 and either own property or be married to a man who did to vote, and the last time Galloway's 12K would have won it was 1910, when the entire size of the electorate was less than 13K. There are a lot of stay at home voters here to be won come a GE.
So Labour should be getting a wake up call about the scale of anger over their explicit support for Israel’s war crimes, but they'll cling to the above as a reason to ignore that warning. Even if by the time a general election happens there's been a further change in policy, they've finally shifted to calling for a ceasefire properly rather than the watered down shite they connived on last week and are no longer refusing to acknowledge the war crime of collective punishment, the simple argument that 'a vote for Labour is a vote for genocide' is not going to go away.
This is not the kind of stain that is going to wash off Starmer with the changing of a news cycle and that could hurt them. What's more likely though is that they double down on their position, considering the reason for Ali's suspension, and cling to the belief that selecting a candidate they don't need to withdraw support for will get them over the line. There's the entirely feasible scenario that this leads to an even more authoritarian approach from their NEC and they start imposing candidates on constituencies entirely rather than just banning anyone to the left of Gordon Brown from shortlists on flimsy pretexts. While Ali was firmly aligned with the right wing Starmer and the NEC belong to, he wasn't their first choice as they were backing Paul Waugh. Expect him to be back writing for the Independent in the meantime before being the candidate in the GE.
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20 minutes ago, The Master said:
Which is why the new "whole body needs to be offside" proposal won't solve anything.
Ultimately, being in an offside position is a question of fact - a player either is or isn't. Changing the parameters doesn't alter that, and as you say just shifts the problem.
This is really a separate issue about the offside rule itself regardless of VAR, because as you say offside or not is an objective fact and as long as you have VAR judging it you're going to have decisions where a player is just on or off by a millimetre of their toe or shoulder however you define it. You just move the problem of VAR drawing lines for a miniscule difference from the front of the attacker's body to the back of it. That fundamental issue can't be resolved as long as you're using VAR to check for offside.
I still think it would be a good change to move it to whole body beyond the last defender though, not because of VAR but because it weights the rule back in the favour of the attacking player and that's a good thing that better reflects the spirit of the offside rule. It's too easy for players to be caught offside and that change would give attacking players more leeway, but that really has nothing to with VAR and the same logic applies even in leagues where VAR isn't in use.
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I see there are articles going round the media - the Telegraph in this case - about international rugby's eligibility rules being ridiculous and needing overhauled.
Funny how this always comes up when Scotland beat England and not when Ireland do, considering Scotland had two residency qualified players in their 23 at the weekend to Ireland's three.
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I enjoy it when lnverness fans fail to see the possibility that if their board met with Dougie Imrie, the fact he didn't become their manager after that doesn't mean they didn't offer him the job.
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10 hours ago, CountryBumpkin said:
Sorry, remind me the last time you were top 12 to even have that as a baseline expectation. You need to take incremental steps to progress. Otherwise you've already failed the target for this season.
Correct, as pointed out in the Morton thread where he started off this attention seeking before creating this thread for more performative nonsense.
19 hours ago, Dunning1874 said:We last finished in the top 16 of Scottish football seven years ago, which is one of only two times we've done so in the last 25 seasons, or five times in 36 seasons. We last finished in the top 12 in 1988/89 and that was one of the worst relegations the top flight has ever seen, though not quite as bad as our previous relegation in 1984/85 which was the last time we finished in the top 10.
In light of these facts, have you considered that accusing the club of lacking ambition in announcing a plan to consolidate in the top 16 of Scottish football is absolutely fucking mental?
If a club who haven't been in top flight for 35 years, who incidentally are fan owned and have the lowest budget in the Championship which probably puts them about 25th in Scotland overall in terms of budget, came out and said they had a plan to consolidate as a top 10 club in Scotland, never drop below that level and ultimately stay in the top division as long as Motherwell have they would quite rightly be considered an absolute laughing stock whose plans are delusional. It would be as bad as League One Falkirk firing out statements talking about their rightful place in the top division, simply irredeemably mad shit.
None of this means that in the event we get ahead and win promotion in the next couple of seasons everyone at the club would be happy to do a Brechin, sitting back and accepting automatic relegation because fourth in the Championship is the peak of our ambition and just being in the top flight is an achievement. We would build a squad to push on and might manage it if we had a good manager, as clubs with smaller fanbases than us have.
Setting up realistic steps to get there by improving the club's infrastucture and growing the fanbase makes that success in future more likely, it doesn't show a lack of ambition that we're happy to rest on our laurels as a playoff challenging club in perpetuity. It shows that they have a realistic approach of how much can be achieved in a small timescale, rather than doing some ridiculous foreign owner shite and making wild promises about how we're going to be the third force in Scottish football.
I think what's been shared with fans of the plan is a bit light on detail with too much management speak, but it's understandable as I wouldn't expect us to see all the detail of what they're going to do behind the scenes. That they've made a plan at all is a change from the previous 25 years of amateurish shite from the boardroom, and openly attaching a realistic target to a timescale means they're ready to be held to account on it when we see over the coming years whether they meet the targets they've set themselves.
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1 hour ago, grumswall said:
Not sure why ton fans take such offence to things after 16 games unbeaten either tbh. Certainly seem a precious bunch with that sort of thing.
It's not so much taking offence as bafflement that people are seeing things based on a preconceived notion of what they expect from a team rather than looking at what's actually happened in front of them.
If there was a big weakness in the Morton team tonight it was a lack of height in Oakley's absence and having no credible option to go direct as a result, leading to us spending a lot of time knocking it about tidily in our own half but not having anyone to aim at if we wanted to mix it up and go long when Raith successfully shut off passes on the deck. If Power couldn't buy himself room to spread it around we eventually had no option but full backs dinking it down the line in the hope it would hit wingers feet or we could play off throw-ins when those balls were intercepted. Whenever we went route one it was effortlessly dealt with by the Raith defence all night, because we have precisely one attacking player in the whole squad who ticks the boxes of "big and physical" like Raith have with Hamilton and Rudden, and with Oakley out there was simply no target man to aim at.
Robbie Muirhead is tall but about as far removed from being a physical target man as any attacker you'll find and will rarely win a header with his back to goal. Whip crosses into the box for him to attack and he can be dangerous with his head, but outside the box you need to get the ball to his feet or you can forget it. Quitongo is well built and will happily get into a physical tussle with defenders, but he's also small and is probably in single figures for headers won in his whole career. Crawford and Blues have no aerial presence whatsoever.
The aerial presence we had tonight began and ended with the centre backs, which fair enough made us a big threat at set-pieces and both Baird and O'Connor were more than happy to mix it up in the air defensively, with O'Connor also getting himself a stupid booking having a needless dig, but Raith had more height in their team than Morton did tonight.
While no Morton fan disputes our physicality it's as if fans of other clubs don't know what that means, they hear "physical" and "horrible to play against" so assume "team of 6'5 mountains whose whole gameplan is Brian Graham levels of flailing elbows". Strapp is more than happy to fly into tackles and get in physical contests with players far bigger than he is, Power is a total shithouse who has spent his whole career being willing to leave one on on opponents (although from the away end it looked like that Vaughan incident tonight had no contact whatsoever), didn't play tonight obviously but Broadfoot is an even bigger shithouse, the high energy pressing game with players never stopping the running with Crawford, Blues and others tearing after the opposition defence snapping around their ankles to nick the ball both unsettles teams and leads to lots of niggly fouls, causing stop start games. They'll play for set-pieces, slow the game down and get in your face.
Those things make us horrible to play against and make physical an entirely fair description, but I've seen a Morton team crammed with giants whose gameplan was entirely to get the ball in the air and prevail at head tennis because their height meant it would work more often than not - this team is a million miles away from that, because there simply aren't enough tall players in the squad to do it. Physical and big are not the same thing.
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Don't think either side can complain with a point there, Raith had a few spells where momentum swung their way and found a lot of space during them but ultimately didn't create a clear cut chance with that, while we did create some but they were mostly of the scrappy variety rather than incisive attacking play and we ultimately weren't clinical with them anyway - Quitongo clean through twice and made an arse of it to the point of not getting a shot away twice, Baird just missing the target from a long throw, O'Connor unlucky not to deflect Strapp's shot in.
Has to go down as a good point, especially with no Oakley, no Mullen, losing Wilson and Muirhead clearly unfit.
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Muirhead clearly isn't fully fit so I can see the logic in having Quitongo up front instead of him, but don't think it's working.
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Raith have taken control of this. When they're passing it so nicely around our box you could really have done without O'Connor getting a daft booking.
Wilson off as well now, Power and Gillespie together is going to be a hell of challenge.
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Neat start in possession.
Ref already made his mind up that any O'Connor or Baird challenges are fouls. A booking for that is laughable.
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Mullen and Oakley both out. Nightmare with how good Mullen's been, but at least Muirhead's back, we'd be bare bones if him and Wilson were still missing.
Assume that's Quitongo on the left and Blues on the right.
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We last finished in the top 16 of Scottish football seven years ago, which is one of only two times we've done so in the last 25 seasons, or five times in 36 seasons. We last finished in the top 12 in 1988/89 and that was one of the worst relegations the top flight has ever seen, though not quite as bad as our previous relegation in 1984/85 which was the last time we finished in the top 10.
In light of these facts, have you considered that accusing the club of lacking ambition in announcing a plan to consolidate in the top 16 of Scottish football is absolutely fucking mental?
If a club who haven't been in top flight for 35 years, who incidentally are fan owned and have the lowest budget in the Championship which probably puts them about 25th in Scotland overall in terms of budget, came out and said they had a plan to consolidate as a top 10 club in Scotland, never drop below that level and ultimately stay in the top division as long as Motherwell have they would quite rightly be considered an absolute laughing stock whose plans are delusional. It would be as bad as League One Falkirk firing out statements talking about their rightful place in the top division, simply irredeemably mad shit.
None of this means that in the event we get ahead and win promotion in the next couple of seasons everyone at the club would be happy to do a Brechin, sitting back and accepting automatic relegation because fourth in the Championship is the peak of our ambition and just being in the top flight is an achievement. We would build a squad to push on and might manage it if we had a good manager, as clubs with smaller fanbases than us have.
Setting up realistic steps to get there by improving the club's infrastucture and growing the fanbase makes that success in future more likely, it doesn't show a lack of ambition that we're happy to rest on our laurels as a playoff challenging club in perpetuity. It shows that they have a realistic approach of how much can be achieved in a small timescale, rather than doing some ridiculous foreign owner shite and making wild promises about how we're going to be the third force in Scottish football.
I think what's been shared with fans of the plan is a bit light on detail with too much management speak, but it's understandable as I wouldn't expect us to see all the detail of what they're going to do behind the scenes. That they've made a plan at all is a change from the previous 25 years of amateurish shite from the boardroom, and openly attaching a realistic target to a timescale means they're ready to be held to account on it when we see over the coming years whether they meet the targets they've set themselves.
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I wasn't interpreting Imrie's comments as being bothered by something Raith have put on social media or anything like that, more assuming something has been said behind closed doors between the teams at one or both games, whether between Murray and Imrie directly or the backroom staff and players getting at each other generally.
There's already the well-known mutual dislike between Murray & Quitongo over the Airdrie v Rico Quitongo racism case, with Murray going after him in a post-match interview once last season as well, so that's some bad blood before anything even happens on the park. Then after how bad tempered the first game between the teams was this season it's not hard to imagine that could have spilled over with comments between the dugouts during the game or down the tunnel afterwards that fans had no idea about. For tonight you could possibly now throw Andy Millen being pissed off about whatever the cause of Murray & Ross Millen's fallout into the mix as well, though that last one is total guesswork on my part and it's possible he doesn't even know what's gone on.
It's maybe made a bit of a rod for Imrie's back in that he's opened himself up to some extreme mockery in return if we end up losing tonight, but he's generally extremely complimentary of our opposition even when he has plenty of reasons not to be - see still praising Rhys McCabe's style of play after the game on Saturday when Airdrie had just spent 90 minutes brutalising us - so I'd assume he's doing it on purpose as a deliberate attempt to either fire the players up or get under Murray's skin rather than simply doing it due to being seething, which isn't to say it won't backfire.
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Inrie had said this in an interview about 3 weeks ago and it was unclear who he was talking about at the time.
Quote"Some people out there, within our game and even in our division, have said some stuff that motivates me.
“I enjoy that. That gives me my edge and that’s the way I was brought up, to always have something like that to motivate you...
“There have been some comments made throughout the season from one or two individuals in our division, who we’re due to play soon, that have been very disrespectful towards Morton.
On the basis of that preview we can reasonably conclude it's Raith he's talking about, clearly there've been words behind closed doors after the last couple of games.
A further bit of needle could be added with the Ross Millen situation, considering his dad is our assistant manager.
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Meanwhile, toothpaste going back in the tube update:
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Guess it'll be cards close to the chest and we won't get an update on players' fitness until the team is announced, but we could in bother here between Muirhead having missed out on Saturday and Oakley limping off, while Crawford was in some state by full-time as well.
Blues was immense in the middle of the park in Wilson's absence, but it'd be a huge ask of him and Power to put that kind of shift in again too. They both played well enough to want to keep them together in there, but with 4 games in 10 days we're inevitably going to have Gillespie starting instead of Power for one of them and no complaints if Imrie opts for this one. If Wilson's back then fair enough if Blues goes back out wide.
If we don’t have Muirhead or Oakley then the least bad option at centre forward is Quitongo, but he's clearly not ready to play 90 minutes either.
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14 hours ago, RandomGuy. said:
OYF
Not a defence of Levein, but have to acknowledge that three of MacLean's defeats in there were away to Stenhousemuir and at home to Ayr & Stirling while his only win this season was against Alloa.
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On 24/02/2024 at 12:57, GHF-23 said:
I've mentioned Wes a couple of times on here and his patented "berate members of the public who question our motives in or ability to actually improve the NHS" style of social media engagement. He obviously decided to deploy this in the first (now deleted) response to a poster criticising him in his constituency, before he remembered that he was actually meant to be shaking, pissing and shitting with fear due to the vile anti war mob and posted the second.
I think this last week is a real turning point in our politics as a whole, the demonisation of elements of the public engaging in politics has been something politicians and the press have been interested in for a good while now, but I think for the next while any political activity carried out by groups outside the main political parties will be considered unacceptable. And Labour will cheer that on.
The sadly departed Dawn Foster had him spot on.
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That's outrageous defending from Buchanan vanishing from the wall, pathetic stuff.
Genuine SPFL goal of the season contender from Rennie.
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Games regularly descend into scraps with frequent niggly fouls or mistimed challenges - the bookings for Todorov & Strapp yesterday respectively fall into those categories - while seeing players lead with their elbows when going for headers and accidentally catching opposing players isn't uncommon, but there was nothing accidental or just scrappy about Taylor-Sinclair yesterday. That elbow to Crawford's head was deliberate, he brought the elbow up after the ball was gone aiming for his head on purpose. It was a horrible challenge and it was not just the wrong decision but negligent of the referee to allow him to stay on the pitch to do more damage, as shown by him later deliberately elbowing Oakley into an injury too.
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A miracle for both teams to finish with 11 men there, in Morton's case because of how many players were limping and in Airdrie’s because of the challenges that caused those injuries. An absolute gang who set out their stall to kick anything that moved in the first 10 minutes and knew they would get away with it from the moment Taylor-Sinclair escaped with a booking after that assault.
You want the sting taken out the game a bit once you race into a 2-0 lead, but we probably got a bit too standoffish and sat too deep from going two up for the rest of the first half, allowing Airdrie a bit too much room in midfield, but still we didn't really look in much danger of conceding.
Second half we should have had a third to bury things early on between Quitongo's chance and a couple off the line from set-pieces, but we got noticeably weaker after the subs to allow Airdrie to look threatening then fell out of it entirely after Oakley was forced off by further Taylor-Sinclair thuggery. Poor goal to lose to make it a scary last few minutes, not sure who it was who lost their man, but job done ultimately.
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Morten v Invermess
in Scottish Championship General Chatter
Posted
I didn't see the first goal but Inverness played it superbly from being 1-0 up there. They know we don't have the height or physicality to compete with them in the air without Oakley, shut off any space in midfield for passes on the deck and mopped up every second ball after forcing us to go long.
They were in total control and it looked every bit like we were heading for a 1-0 where they let us have all the ball knowing we'd create nothing with it, then enter Jamie MacDonald.
It doesn't matter how unfit he is, that's just absolutely abysmal goalkeeping. It's piss poor from O'Connor to give the freekick away in the first place, but that's an absolutely basic save. If we had an outfielder in goal I'd forgive them parrying that rather than holding it but even then it'd be unacceptable to let it in.