Alibi

I'd love to see Partick get relegated but probably unlikely given that they seem to have the money to buy their way out of trouble. You'd have to say probably Alloa and Arbroath to fill the bottom 2 places, but Queens must also be a wee bit worried after losing Robbie McRorie and El Baktoui. With 4 teams on 25 points at the moment, almost anyone could make the playoffs at either end of the table - games in hand could be very important. Basically it's a really shite league with only Dundee United showing anything above mediocre.

His loan was cancelled so he could go to Livi instead. He'll be hard to replace that's for sure. We replaced McCrorie with Ramsbottom. As he's not playing for us at the moment (phew!) It's only right that we let him go out on loan to you now. It's a sort of circle of life thing.

Baird doesn't seem to be that good. Lewis Strapp is young and lacks experience but he's a terrific prospect. I would hope he ends up somewhere a lot better than Paisley. Anyway he's under contract to us and long may that continue.

Don't disagree with that. However having McAllister in particular in our midfield is the main problem. He takes up a place that could be better filled by someone else, Millar or Jacobs or whoever. Colville looked to be decent when he first joined us but he has had limited game time due to Hopkin insisting on having both Millar & McAllister in midfield whenever possible. A consequence of his scattergun approach to building a balanced squad (and failing to do so).

I think the problem with Jacobs is that he's in a midfield with McAllister & Millar. If Jacobs could just play the role he played at Queens that would be fine, but like most of our team, the midfield is a bit unbalanced. Probably solved by moving McAllister to, well, Dumbartion maybe.

Would you be interested in Sam Ramsbottom on loan? Asking for a couple of thousand friends.

The only defensive player we have who's done well this season Is Strapp. Both our keepers are poor (that assessment doesn't really do justice to Sheepsarse who is unbelievably bad at goalkeeping). Our centre backs are bombscares, and we don't have an actual right back. Stephen Welsh should be playing at CB, where he looks decent, but he seems to have been shifted to fill the vacant RB position. We are painfully short of decent players. Only Strapp, Lyon, Cadden & sometimes Nesbitt when he is allowed on the pitch, are good enough.

I think most of us are resigned to a dreadful season, with the only real aim being to finish higher than ninth. I reckon we will lose about 4-0 tomorrow. We don't usually do narrow defeats this season. TBH, can't really be bothered driving up for this game.

The standard is pretty poor. At our level, the money just isn't there to attract decent players. We currently have a few excellent players (Lewis Strapp & Reece Lyon two who have come through the youth system) but we certainly don't have a terribly good squad overall, and our goalkeepers are outstanding in their general shiteness (Rogers may be competent but he's no Derek Gaston; Ramsbottom is comedy gold). I imagine the situation is the same at the majority of tier 2 clubs. It's just not good to watch. No wonder fans are staying away.

Park in the road down to the Marina (on the right at the lights just before Cappielow). Free on street parking as long as you get there early enough. Mind you there probably won't be much of a crowd so should be fine. Quick getaway unlike the official car park in Sinclair Street.

I could probably get to this game but I'm not sure I can face another 90 minutes of Morton away from home this season.

In the road down to the Marina, (turn right at the traffic lights just before Cappielow). Not as much room there as there used to be because there's a housing development under construction, but a decent amount of waste ground at the far end. You can have my space as I don't think I'll be able to make it tomorrow. Avoid the official car park if you can as getting out of that is a nightmare these days.

I wonder how the "ex-player scores against Morton" thing will work out with Gaston in goal...

Could be, but Strapp seems to have learned from the first Inverness game. He read the Dundee tactics well in the second half.

Before the game, I wasn't expecting Morton to win that, but once the game started it became clear that Dundee are nothing special. Their tactics seem to involve long balls which our centre backs dealt with easily all game. I thought Lewis Strapp was excellent for Morton although initially the Morton back 4 seemed to be set up fairly narrow which allowed Dundee to get the ball out wide on their right, but in the second half young Lewis on at least 3 occasions anticipated a long ball out towards the right and intercepted it, allowing him to set up attacks down our left hand side. IMHO he should be signed up on a longer contract as he looks very promising, albeit lacking in experience. In the second half, we seemed to be sit back and soak up Dundee's feeble attacks, breaking upfield on occasion but without actually causing the Dundee keeper any real problems. Cameron Salkeld had a couple of runs through the defence but when he got his shot away it was off target. I thought Dundee's CB, Foster, looked solid, but overall they huffed and puffed and didn't really create anything worthwhile. Could have snatched an equalised in the last fes seconds but Morton's defence seems to be learning, and the centre backs are a massive improvement on a few weeks ago (Mclean actually put in an excellent tackle late on but i wouldn't have him in the team when we have Welsh, Grant & Baird available). After last week's disappointing defeat, this was a wee bonus. I think we have enough for an upper mid table finish; not sure if our improvement will extend beyond that. if we were to win at Tannadice next week, I might review that assessment.

We had quite a few efforts where Queens defenders managed to block the shots before they got anywhere near the keeper. Good defending by Queens. Apart from the Cadden free kick, McCrorie had at least two decent (competent) saves down at the post, one to his left and one to his right that I can recall. He's not the finished article, but McCrorie was a terrific signing by Queens and I'd have been delighted if we had kept him on (I have no idea if we tried to but I suspect not). I reckon if we had kept Strapp on (tried very hard to work that one into this post, ooer missus), and stuck to the strategy that was working fairly well at that point, we might have got an equaliser. After McLean came on, we seemed to (immediately) lose the initiative.

^^^^ Wrong. i thought morton's central defenders looked far better than the shite that we have had before yesterday. Welsh and Baird must be the default CB choice from now on. We missed Nesbitt but we should be able to deal with an injured player or two. I thought we had more chances that Queens, but they defended well and seemed to block most efforts on target. McCrorie basically won the game for Queens with a number of excellent saves, and I still wonder why we didn't try to keep him at Cappielow - would rather have Gaston than Rogers, and Ramsbottom, happily not playing yesterday, just isn't a keeper. We have a fair number of young players and we are a work in progress - Cadden always looks dangerous, and Colville looks like a real prospect (still getting up to speed I think). Strapp and Lyon are improving with games, but Chris Millar, to me, looks done - too many misplaced passes and errors. We aren't far away from being a decent team (not title challengers sadly) but we are a bit short of cover for injuries. Jury still out on Rogers, but FFS what was he doing for that goal? Seemed to trickle in so slowly that he could have run along the line and picked it up. Still need a RB. Jacobs is wasted there, and having Lyon wide right doesn't work as well as having him in the middle - drop Millar, and maybe McAlister too for that matter. I reckon both teams will finish mid-table.

Be interesting to see how Colville does. Looked a decent player in his time on the pitch. Colville/Jacobs/Lyon midfield maybe, but at least we have options there.

My main memory of him is slotting away the penalty that ensured we were mathematically safe from relegation. Against your lot, at EEP.

I'd probably be reasonably happy with a draw from this one, but the way our season is panning out who knows? Probably not going to be 0-0. More like 2-2 or 3-3 maybe.

On this one, I'm with you all the way. Raises questions about who made the decision to sign him, and why. Also how much pledge cash has been wasted as a result? Cameron Blues next, please.

I was hoping for an upgrade on Dylan Dykes levels of nothingness. I hope Hoppy saw something in them that Brechin/Livi fans have missed.

Fair point, VT, although given that it was McRorie who kept Gaston out the team, if Gaston knew McRorie wasn't returning he might have stayed on. We don't know all the ins and outs but Gaston has demonstrated over 7 seasons that he is a perfectly adequate keeper at our level despite his known deficiencies. The point is that Gaston, and especially McRorie, were both better options than Ramsbottom, who so far appears to be a complete imposter. If this Pearson guy, about whom I know nothing, is our first choice keeper and is any good, then we can probably live with that. I assume Ramsbottom will be in the goal tomorrow night, and maybe he might show something to justify his signing, but if not then I would say we have wasted a wage and we will be living in fear of Pearson getting injured.

That was the worst goalkeeping performance I have ever seen from a Morton keeper, and I've been watching Morton for 56 years. While he wasn't really to blame for the first three goals, the fourth was entirely his fault. More importantly though was that although he made some decent saves, I don't think he actually held the ball all night - everything was parried or spilled, and our defence was constantly having to clear up the mess. I know he's a young keeper and maybe with coaching he will develop, but he's no Derek Gaston or Robbie McRorie, both good keepers at our level for us. I wonder what transfer fee we would need to fork out to get Gaston back from Arbroath - and why was he not offered enough money to stay anyway? There are some signs of positivity in other areas of the team, not for Motherwell's level but ok for the championship, but we need more defensive options. Lewis Strapp is hard as nails and generally his tackling is fair, and he looks like a decent prospect. We'll know more after we have played Annan and Queens, but clearly we are not the finished article.

You've missed out Muirhead. Fairly sure he'll be a default choice as one of the strikers.