Stranraer v Morton

[vikingTON]

"I'm no fan of Duffy" - produces a dissertation-length word salad on behalf of Jim Duffy.

About as legit as your entire alias account then.

[Hampden Diehard]

F*ck me it was a mistimed tackle. If he'd got the ball we'd all be saying how wonderful a tackle it was and he showed great commitment to get it. He was late, it wasn't a red.

So, what you're saying is that if he hadn't fouled the guy, it wouldn't be a foul. That's probably right. However, he didn't get the ball; he got the man.

Clear red card. Daft to fly in where he did anyway...on the half way life, out at the side...daft. Red card for being stupid.

[Scosha]

The speed that he went in at made it look worse than it was, along with the embarrassing effort of the Stranraer dugout. Replays showed it merited a yellow, the studs aren't up and it's not two footed.

[Sinclair Street]

So, what you're saying is that if he hadn't fouled the guy, it wouldn't be a foul. That's probably right. However, he didn't get the ball; he got the man.

Clear red card. Daft to fly in where he did anyway...on the half way life, out at the side...daft. Red card for being stupid.

I don't know if I said it on here or on our own forum, but even if it wasn't a red card for the tackle it definitely was for the intent. So yes, red card for being stupid sounds about right.

[kvz2000]

Think every other team in the league would like to be sitting where Morton are with a home game v a team with nothing to play for, its all yours for the taking , hope you dont but cant see anything other than a comfortable Morton win.

oh and i would rather play Forfar in the play offs.

Well done , if your sitting top going into the final game of the season you deserve it...

[GiGi]

If we end up in the playoffs I just don't want bogey Brechin. I'd fancy us beating anyone else.

[USTon]

Your whole approach is like saying that just because you couldn't write a novel you aren't fit to judge one. There are plenty of football fans who are more than capable of making decent judgements on a football team. 'The pros with the facts'? There is no simple set of facts that determine how a team should be picked. And even with the extra information Duffy has, there nothing to say that another manager wouldn't see it very differently.

Criticise the judgement of fans all you want, but trying to rubbish the right of fans to make such judgements is absurd.

I tend to agree that long term football fans are entitled to their views on tactics, team selection etc., and plenty of them are capable of making good judgements. Your comparison with a novel though is hardly appropriate. Some Morton fans are well capable of adequately appraising War and Peace but many are not. All can say whether they a) read it and b) did or did not like it but in terms of appraising it as a piece of literary work....I say no more.

The point RH has been making is that ordinary fans don't know whether players are carrying an injury, performing poorly in training, their relations with others in the dressing room and effect on team togetherness, etc, etc. Jim Duffy does or at least should!. He will also have done his homework on the opposition and picks the team accordingly.

He has confounded those of the critics of his appointment who said we would finish mid table and maybe even worse. Instead we are one game away from being champions. JD was asked to build a team to get us out of this league and if all goes well on Saturday, he will have done that. How easy do people think it is to get good full time players to play in League one, especially when there are the opportunities in the championship with the likes of Dumbarton who can pay more for some of their part timers? Jim Duffy started with four signed players and has made not a bad fist of bringing in players good enough to get us out of this league. His percentages in terms of decent signings are as good as any manager we have had in recent times.

He has brought in players and got them playing better than the expectation when we signed them. Ross Forbes was totally unrated by Dunfermline fans and look how he is playing for us. Lamie has improved a lot (Saturday's rush of blood excepted!). He also signed McManus who Alloa fans told us was useless.

He is not without his faults and sometimes his tactics and subs are baffling. He does not, however, deserve the level of criticism he gets from many fans many of whom have simply gone on what fans of other clubs said and have been unprepared to cut him any slack at all!

PS: I fully accept that players good enough to get us out of this league and what will be needed for next season to keep us up are two different things. I am sure Jim knows that too!

[SpoonTon]

I tend to agree that long term football fans are entitled to their views on tactics, team selection etc., and plenty of them are capable of making good judgements. Your comparison with a novel though is hardly appropriate. Some Morton fans are well capable of adequately appraising War and Peace but many are not. All can say whether they a) read it and b) did or did not like it but in terms of appraising it as a piece of literary work....I say no more.

The point RH has been making is that ordinary fans don't know whether players are carrying an injury, performing poorly in training, their relations with others in the dressing room and effect on team togetherness, etc, etc. Jim Duffy does or at least should!. He will also have done his homework on the opposition and picks the team accordingly.

He has confounded those of the critics of his appointment who said we would finish mid table and maybe even worse. Instead we are one game away from being champions. JD was asked to build a team to get us out of this league and if all goes well on Saturday, he will have done that. How easy do people think it is to get good full time players to play in League one, especially when there are the opportunities in the championship with the likes of Dumbarton who can pay more for some of their part timers? Jim Duffy started with four signed players and has made not a bad fist of bringing in players good enough to get us out of this league. His percentages in terms of decent signings are as good as any manager we have had in recent times.

He has brought in players and got them playing better than the expectation when we signed them. Ross Forbes was totally unrated by Dunfermline fans and look how he is playing for us. Lamie has improved a lot (Saturday's rush of blood excepted!). He also signed McManus who Alloa fans told us was useless.

He is not without his faults and sometimes his tactics and subs are baffling. He does not, however, deserve the level of criticism he gets from many fans many of whom have simply gone on what fans of other clubs said and have been unprepared to cut him any slack at all!

PS: I fully accept that players good enough to get us out of this league and what will be needed for next season to keep us up are two different things. I am sure Jim knows that too!

You've twisted my analogy somewhat. My simple point was that fans might not be capable of doing the job that Duffy has done, but that doesn't mean that they can't make judgements. War and Peace is hardly here nor there. It's like saying that you can't deny the success of Fifty Shades of Grey but you could question its prose (I'm sure even the most basic of reader is capable of that). But getting into what type of book this is would be entirely beside the point. All I was meaning was that of course I couldn't do the job that Duffy has done, I don't have that set of skills (I have no experience on the training ground, managing players, keeping a group together, organising bringing players in, and so on). What I can judge, though, is how that all comes together on the pitch.

I know fine well the point he was making, but it's also beside the point. If you picked a different manager then they would come in and judge the situation on the inside differently. They would see the relationships, potential, and so on, of the group in a different way (see the different in approach between Moore and Shiels, for example). They would also judge performances in training in a different way - some managers place far more emphasis on that than others. And it's certainly not the be all and end all, for example, he picked MacDonald despite not training as much with the rest of the group (because he knows his quality, as well all do). I think while there should be an acknowledgement that there are things we don't know, it doesn't stop fans from having a valid opinion - it certainly doesn't explain everything.

Don't get me wrong, I think some of the criticism and abuse has been over the top, but that doesn't mean that people simply have to hold their hands up and say "what do I know, Duffy is in a better position than me". That's the point I'm disputing. If you look back over what I've said about Duffy you can see I've given him credit where I think it's due (as have others), but I think most of us still have reservations. Quite simlply that's because too many performances haven't been good enough, and that includes the recent wins against Stenny and Ayr. I think those perfomances sum up his time here so far quite well; for the most part it has been unconvincing at best, but we've rode our luck and got there in the end (on the verge at least).

If we win the league then credit where credit is due (and I really mean that), but that doesn't mean that we can't have reservations. And it also doesn't mean that any reservations can simply be waved away by a magical wand of "ah, but we don't know what goes on at the training pitch every day".

[tonnitus]

Jim Duffy started with four signed players and has made not a bad fist of bringing in players good enough to get us out of this league. His percentages in terms of decent signings are as good as any manager we have had in recent times.

He has brought in players and got them playing better than the expectation when we signed them. Ross Forbes was totally unrated by Dunfermline fans and look how he is playing for us. Lamie has improved a lot (Saturday's rush of blood excepted!). He also signed McManus who Alloa fans told us was useless.

My biggest issue with Duffy's signings is his complete and utter failure to build a balanced squad. We currently have 5 centre backs and 5 strikers, but only one right winger and no left-back (Mark Russell is a natural left mid, obviously). Lamie's change in form arises from the fact that he's playing in his natural position. Given a blank canvas, he failed spectacularly to build a squad - what we have now is a squad augmented by further overspending on our pre-season budget. Applaud Duffy for scrambling to save a disastrous summer transfer window if you want, but I'll not be joining in. Duffy is symptomatic of this club's decline, and I'll still be wanting him out even if we just about stumble, shambolically, over the line this year.

[port-ton]

Ok, then,- if that's how you feel, be specific about where you think I've twisted things and what's nonsense.

I don't think you are particularly negative, tbh, but to simply say "75% nonsense" and so on is hardly a detailed response. I'd be genuinely interested to see what you think is wrong with that post.

Firstly you say that fans haven't liked managers because Rae hired them. I don't know one fan who has hated a manager we have had because of the person who hired them. Fans haven't liked our managers because every single one of them has been a riproaring failure. Of every single manager we have had under Rae, only one of them is still managing at this moment, and The highest point Mcinally has got to since leaving us is league 1.

You also state that there's plenty to moan about Rae's tenure, but if fans dont have the money to buy him out then they shouldn't complain about it. You've already stated yourself that there's plenty to moan about, so the fans will moan.

You also say no manager of any stature would come to Morton because of the fans and how they'd be treated. Morton cant attract any manager of good stature, and it has nothing to do with the fans and everything to do with the person we're not allowed to complain about. Every single manager in Scotland knows what Rae is like to work under. A manager thinks they'll be successful at any club they go to, and if a club is successful and the product on the park is good then the fans would be onside, so spare me the nonsense that no manager would come because of the fans.

Losing 11 games in this league (all to part time teams) with the budget we have is catastrophic. Okay so we might win the league despite losing so many games, but we want to win this league to be able to compete at a higher level next year, We're not going to do that with a team that loses so many games against poorer opposition and were it not for a bit of luck and fight in the team we'd have lost even more, which ultimately means should we go up we're going to have to sign a whole new team yet again, and i have absolutely no confidence that Duffy would find the balance in his signings to improve us enough to be able to compete.

Duffy might have signed a group of players with heart and desire to win, and he does get praise for that, but that was at the beginning of his tenure. He can't live off signing players who keep getting him out of a jam forever. Every game i've seen Morton play this season the players looked like they had no idea where they were supposed to be on the park, or what they were meant to be doing. There was no shape to the team, an a weak defence was constantly being let down with a central midfield not protecting them. The players have the quality as they have shown so many times when their back is against the wall, so why can't they do that consistently and for 90 minutes? The manager is the reason. Both Moore and Shiels with a team that had as much heart as this one would have coasted this league this season the way it has turned out, which is a damning assessment on Duffy's season as neither of those two are hardly managerial genius'.

Of course a player is going to say he gets on with the manager, they have to! In saying that though i have absolutely no doubts that Duffy's man management skills are excellent, it's a pity he also doesn't possess the ability to put out a balanced and tactically strong team on a saturday. There's plenty of poor managers out there that players will say they got on well with, but it means nothing without the ability to influence a game of football from the first minute to the last.

Dunfermline last season would have ran away with this league if it wasn't for Rangers. They've been horrific this season but that in no way means we should be judging our season based on their horror show of a season. We're competing against teams who train one or at most two nights a week, after a long day at work. We have comfortably the biggest budget out the top teams and we brought players with good records from higher levels in during January with signings the other teams could only dream of, yet we still manage to lose so many games, and get outplayed by the bottom teams in the league.

Douglas Rae should be thanked for saving the club and always held in high esteem, but since that day there's been very few things he has done that have turned out to be good or correct decisions. There's nothing malicious in the things he's done wrong. He loves the club and tries his best but he's just not competent enough to run a football club successfully, when it comes to his personality, ego, decision making ability and the business acumen needed to run a football club properly. As i said before it's not a case of " if you're a manager appointed by Rae fans either dislike you or hate you ". That may be true, but that's a consequence of him choosing poor managers who have all failed miserably at the club and absolutely nothing to do with fans hating Rae so much that they won't give any of his managers a chance.

We have a poor reputation from other teams fans on here because we either have a lot of wind up merchants, or we have fans who expect our club to be run properly by the people in charge, and to consistently compete and even succeed at a level that a club of our size should be playing at, all things going well. That has rarely happened under Rae and we have streamed from one disaster to another and other teams fans love to let us know it. Those disasters weren't the fan's doing, they were the doing of the chairman, managers and players we have had.

You say you didn't want Duffy as manager and that his team selections, decisions and interviews have baffled you, yet you then go on to say that it's ridiculous that fans would be unhappy with him being given until Christmas next season to fail if we go up. You might be willing to give him a chance, but it's hardly ridiculous for fans who have felt the same things as you about some of the things Duffy has done this season to be extremely worried about someone with as poor a managerial record as Duffy being given time to potentially completely ruin our season in the championship and for us to end up right back where we are at square one.

[Tri-TON]

Did anyone notice in Peaso's interview on Alba that he said something along the lines of "if we go up, it depends on who the gaffer is". Sounds rather odd to me but would have to check to make sure that is what he said mind you!

[TurbineTon]

Did anyone notice in Peaso's interview on Alba that he said something along the lines of "if we go up, it depends on who the gaffer is". Sounds rather odd to me but would have to check to make sure that is what he said mind you!

It was something along those lines, although I don't really know how much to read into it.

[USTon]

Did anyone notice in Peaso's interview on Alba that he said something along the lines of "if we go up, it depends on who the gaffer is". Sounds rather odd to me but would have to check to make sure that is what he said mind you!

He also said that he had a high regard for the gaffer and that his man management was excellent.

[Scosha]

Fully expect Peaso to be player/manager next season. Not sure if i agree with it as he could be another John Potter, or he could be another Paul Hartley. Time will tell.

[USTon]

Fully expect Peaso to be player/manager next season. Not sure if i agree with it as he could be another John Potter, or he could be another Paul Hartley. Time will tell.

He has no management experience and insufficient coaching qualifications. You could be right about him being manager at some point but not next season.

[Scosha]

He has no management experience and insufficient coaching qualifications. You could be right about him being manager at some point but not next season.

He has a UEFA A License. Is that not the best you can get?

He is also a coach at one of Partick Thistle's youth teams.

Edit: UEFA Pro License is the best qualification ahead of A License. However, it is only needed for managing in the top leagues in Europe and any European Competition.

[Myview]

In the words of a famous international coach. A spectators team never plays..... Why because it's picked at 5pm. Meaning.. Have you ever heard a fan going into the pub after his team has won 5-0 saying ' I wouldn't have picked that team or used that formation' . But a 5-0 defeat the fan will always pick a different team!

[USTon]

I thought he only had a B License but I could stand corrected.

[port-ton]

In the words of a famous international coach. A spectators team never plays..... Why because it's picked at 5pm. Meaning.. Have you ever heard a fan going into the pub after his team has won 5-0 saying ' I wouldn't have picked that team or used that formation' . But a 5-0 defeat the fan will always pick a different team!

Are you suggesting that a manager who gets beat 5-0 doesn't think at 5pm if he could play the game again he would have picked a different team or tactics?

Your post sounds very enlightening but it doesn't actually say anything at all. It's probably the worst quote i've ever seen in my life and i've seen plenty on women's facebook pages about how strong and independent they are.

[CBTON74]

Just came into my mind when I was watching sportscene last night. Scott Brown's high tackle, studs showing only gets a yellow card yet by my view it was far worse than Lamie's who was shown a straight red. Dont get me wrong it was a moment of madness from Lamie but surely only merits a yellow card?