While it's par for the course for Morton fans to tar and feather our latest esteemed manager, it's good to see one of his signings is looking to be one of the finds of the summer, at almost any level of Scottish football.
Honestly, big Dom hasn't put a foot wrong in this opening spell of games - if it weren't for him we'd be even deeper in the mire.
Considering he's being dragged down by the ineptitude of *insert centre half here* on a weekly basis and he's settling into a disorganised, low confidence and geerally dishevelled side - it only serves to make his quality and consistency that bit more special.
He's only 21 next month FFS...

St Mirren reject
=
Morton Legend

You've rejected a player who would walk into your back line at the moment.
Congratulations, you must be so proud.

Have to say, i wouldn't swap him for any other defender in the league. He is a class apart from any other central defender in this league IMO and will be gone by January or the summer at the most so im going to enjoy him while he's still here. He has absolutely everything. Pace, strength, good positional sense, wins most of his headers and the ability to stay calm under pressure and play the ball out of the defence along the deck...its that last quality that i think makes him the best defender in the league over everyone else.

its just a shame the rest of our team with the exception of Mcalister is a class apart from everyone else in the league aswell, pity it is a class lower.

No, not really, we saw him in pre-season and to be fair he was 1st division quality at the time but he's not SPL.

Glad he's got a gig and doing well, but he certainly wouldn't walk into our back line and isn't up to the level of the SPL.

St Mirren offered him a contract, he didn't accept it. St Mirren are the rejects in this situation.




To be fair he was nowhere near fit enough then, The English pre seasons start after ours so he needed games to get him fit, he is fully fit now and would walk into any bottom 6 SPL club at least.

I didn't think Gus offered him a contract.
Even if he did it was made clear he would be way down the pecking line, you wouldn't reject St Mirren to go to Morton

He was, but as backup, which I believe is why he never took it.




Shhh...


http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/t...ren/7522616.stm

You have John Paul Potter and Scott Cuthbert in your defence.
Dominic Shimmin is twice the player either of them are.

I still don't think so, it wasn't so much his fitness but his sharpness and ability to read the game.

Got no problems believing he has improved, and he did look a decent 1st prospect when we saw him, but I still doubt he would play well in the SPL. That said if Bamba can get a midfield role with Hibs, hell.. then anyone can get a game..

Wish the lad well, he certainly seemed nice enough, just not good enough on what we saw.


btw, the mischievous of us would suggest he can't be that good if you lot are rooted to the bottom of the table..




Take off those blue and white specs. For a start Cuthbert is a Scottish U21 international captain and contracted to one of the OF. To suggest that Shimmin is better is just silly.

As for Potter, I know he has his critics (me included) but he would still be ahead of Shimmin in the team sheet.

That is no reflection on Shimmin, btw.

Seeing him in pre-season and seeing him now is a tad different. I must say when I saw him against Hartlepool pre-season I thought he was just a Stewart Greacen Mark II - with little pace and a tendency to overelaborate clearances. He has since gone on to handle everything that has been thrown his way. I'm not even saying that as a wind-up: I think he would get into your side on currrent form and ability, although I'm sure he'd like to do better than next year's 1st division also-rans.

He didn't offer him a contract. The BBC article is because MacPherson said "We're going to talk to him" or something similar during his trial spell. Which, with us, is not usually about a contract but rather the equivalent of a woman turning to her boyfriend and sayign "We need to talk".

We'd be sitting on something like 1 point had it not been for his performances. There's only so much oine player can do, but he is doing it. One good defender out of four isn't really up to standard.

Was he the defender who was dreadful on Saturday? The black guy with the weird hair?

Its the players he has around him, he seriously must be wondering what he's let himself in for. He hasn't put a foot wrong and been MOTM in most of our games along with opposition fans on here always saying he played well against them.

He has been playing in defence on his own at times this season and sometimes its actually embarrassing to watch seeing the difference in class between him and the rest of our defenders.

He definetely won't be here long, i liken it to Rangers with Cuellar. You realise that he is far too good to be at you and won't be there for long so you should enjoy his performances while he's there.

He's only just turning 21 aswell so has so much time on his hands to improve further which is the scary thing, i'd bet he'll be playing for a good SPL club or Championship team withing 2 years.

'The' defender who was dreadful was Ryan Harding. I've never knew he changed race...

If by dreadful you mean Man of the match who didn't give your strikers a sniff all day despite our other centreback harding being awful then yes....that was him that was dreadful.

From what I was told he went to give him a contract but his agent dicked about regarding money and Gus dropped it. So in essence we did offer him through his agent. That could, of course, be nothing more than pub gossip.


I agree fully. Although I will add the caveat that players tend to find themselves at the level they deserve (ignoring the Bamba reference above) and he is sitting at, and no offence intended from this, a struggling 1st division side.

He may be an under-21 international, but that doesn't stop him being crap. I offer you Kieran McAnespie and Stuart McCluskey.

Seriosuly, you should be seeing Shimmin playing in the SPL either in January or next season, at a team quite a distance above yourselves, not that they're in short supply.

Wow. You can tell Morton have been really shit if he classes as a great defender in the eyes of their fans. Maybe shit was harsh (intentially(sp?) but all morton's players looked really really ordinary

In fairness his Scottish career is currently running at 2 months and one transfer window move. It'd be difficult to say that he's 'settled' into his 'natural level' yet, no?

That is just silly, ignoring the fact he had a bad cruciate injury and was out of football for a year despite only being 20 and him only just getting back into it, your suggestion that players find their level i find stupid...otherwise no club would ever buy from lower divisions and those players would never turn out to be a success, which be both know happens a lot all over the world.

'All' is IMO over the mark. I'd say 9/11 on Saturday or any other Saturday look(ed) ordinary, McAllister and Shimmin being excluded.

Must say I wasn't impressed with him against Dundee. He did well to limit Curier to only a few half-chances, but then that wouldn't be hard. He didn't look like a good ball player, and one who could read a game very well, but I was slated for thinking that, so he must be better than I think he is. He reminded me a bit of Brent Sancho actually (not just the looks).

Personally, I wouldn't like him in our starting 11, even though we've been shipping goals of late.

Your one shot on target during the game suggests otherwise, and considering we were the better team and you have Stephen Glass in your team then your players looked less than really really ordinary. Since we've both seen each others team once, which is enough to judge a team on we can agree that Dunfermline are ordinary aswell.

Shimmin or Shields, Thomson or Wilson? i'd rather play Shimmin on his own than play with those three in defence.

Where was he playing before? I rest my case...


And equally so your rebutal. If a player is good enough he will improve and move onto another team. This guy has gone from Arsenal youth team to conference football in England to Morton. Now I'm sorry but if he was that good he would have been picked up by a better team by now.

In fairness Ric he is Morton's best player, by quite a distance it would appear.

That must count for something...

He had a cruciate injury and has been playing at this level for two months. While I respect your right to disagree I suspect there's an element of fishing in your replies.

No I think you are getting mixed up with Kevin Harper although he is not a defender.

He went from Arsenal youth to QPR where he played some games, he then damaged his cruciate ligaments and was released from QPR, then after a year he was with Crawley while trying to get his fitness back and get over his injury.

i dont get what you mean picked up by a better team by now, he's only 20 and has had a year out of the game through injury. If you'd only played about 10 proffessional games in your career and then lost a year of your career before the age of 19 then i'd love to try and see you get a club at a higher level.

This season was his first pre season since his injury and was offered a contract at an SPL club despite not being anywhere near fit and has became the best player at a 1st division club, i'd say thats pretty well done on his part.

you can tell how good Shimmin is by how critical Morton fans are of most of their players, yet Shimmin is singled out as being the one good thing about our club just now.

Ach, well we'll see gents.

As I said, decent enough player, but not one who would just walk into any SPL side imo. Time will tell.

Immence on his debut against Hartlepool, I don't think anybody left Cappielow that night not hoping we'd sign him.

Ever since rejecting St Mirren and signing for us, he's been out standing.

If we had lost out to him, the situation we're in at the moment would be a whole lot worse.

Despite this, Davie Irons is not excused.

Was definatley nothing special i thought Morton's left back was very good, never gave Kevin Harper a sniff all day...but Shimmin definateley wasn't anything special i would rather have Partick Thistle's Maxwell.

Agreed.



Smith can be caught too easily, and Harding had to do quite a bit of covering for him on Tuesday night, but he was much better at sticking to his role on Saturday. Shimmin did have a cracking game though, making an absolute shitload of interceptions and tackles, limiting the number of chances you guys had almost single handedly as most of the defence were nowhere to be seen.

Shimmin is woeful with the ball at his feet though. He takes far too much time to decide what he's going to do with the ball, and it could well cost us on a few occaisions.

While I'm not yet decided just how good he is, he is certainly playing at a level below his capabilities. The doubters I'm sure will be won over in time, the guy is a class act.

Glad to see Maxi playing well for Thistle. Was a shame when he went, but injuries last season coupled with his age and the cover we had it was the only option. Good player at 1st division level and could still play in the SPL imo.

The most interesting thing about that post, was your spelling of definitely.

Nobody's saying Shimmin is shitting over everybody else in the league, merely just a thread of due credit to a guy playing so well in such a pish team.

A bit of advice, if your going to try and take the piss and say "I'd rather have... ", pick somebody who's not arguably the best defender in the league. It makes it seem as if Shimmin is close to comparable - which doesn't help you out.

^^^^^^?




I'd say there is somone saying Shimmin is shitting over everybody in the league...

Alex Ferguson

St Midden reject
=
Man Utd legend.

I fail at the internet ?

Explain to me how you actually do the internet in the first place, you mentally disabled, Fife underclass ?

Infact don't bother. I don't have the time or the patience to sit an decrypt your misuse of the English language.

What you know about football can be comfortably inserted into the full stop at the end of this sentence. Maxwell isn't even an impressive defender, he's just scored a few goals...

You know thats funny how you managed to just completely ignore the fact you just got proved wrong...again...

Looked a decent player when I saw him at cappielow earlier this season ...... still wouldnae swap him for Mcpake for anythin in the world mind

Then fucking well done to you then, maybe you'll get off your leash as a reward. I'd imagine you've probably told all your pals - you probably stopped shagging your mother in order to get the delirious celebrations underway ! You'll now be considered Fife's closest best thing to a prodigy.

Seriously though, start going to School.

To be honest though, I never said we were not ordinary. Just that Morton's players were ordinary.

I wasn't trying to be offensive, just I dont think he looked like that good a player.

With the exception of Jim McAllister, this is pretty true.

Iain Russell you could make a case for as he was causing a few problems down the right, but the miss that he had in the second half is unforgivable.

I have no idea how Dunfermline never caught onto the obvious misgivings of Chris Smith at left back. Harper was constantly making space because he knew Smith was gonna leave it, and not a single Pars player attacked it. This must have happened seven or eight times, possibly more.

Shimmin was very good when it came to his defensive duties, and I'm pretty sure you lot can put a lack of chances down to the work that he was doing at the back. He's way off being the finished article though.

Kevin Harper was dreadful. Although he wasn't helped by the sheer incompotance(sp?) of Glass and Burke. How on earth Mcintyre thought it was sensible to substitute Phinn instead of either of those two numpty's is beyond comprehension

Incompetance I think ... your guess is as good as mines.

I honestly think that if someone else had been down the right, the number of chances you lot would have had would have been triple at least. Inverness did it, but we were lucky that Harding did a great covering job. Harding was posted missing on Saturday and you could have done a LOT to expose that.

He was probably the best player on the park on Saturday,

In fact, such statements as yours should be ignored.

Was Mr Maxwell a St Mirren reject?

You'd love to have HIM back.

Edit: but you're no' so