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The Greenock Morton Thread - It's Better Than Yours


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4 minutes ago, Toby said:

A few hours ago you were telling us that Dougie Rae wouldn’t have let the club fold in the seaside leagues.

His plan for after his death was to pass the club down to a dis-interested family who chanced their arm at taking the club’s only asset for themselves and charging us rent for the use of it, don’t give us the bullshit that you’re the only one who can see the wood from the trees, here.

I don't believe he would have let the club fold on his watch.

And I actually believe the club in it's present state is fucked.

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9 minutes ago, Colkitto said:

I don't believe he would have let the club fold on his watch.

And I actually believe the club in it's present state is fucked.

How fucked do you think we’d be if his son’s plan to keep the club’s only asset for his family had come to fruition?

Nobody believes he deliberately sabotaged Morton, but he failed in his duty of care to the club by trusting his family to look after it after his passing.

Only a fool would claim that he wouldn’t have left us in such a mess, and it would take an even greater fool to act as some sort of prophet that sees something the rest of us can’t after previously being so wrong.

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47 minutes ago, Colkitto said:

I'd go as far as to say without the Easdales businesses sponsorship of Morton we would already be on our knees. 

You only have to look around Cappielow from McGills to Save Heat and all the others in between to see the money the Easdales are putting in to the club. 

Maybe the question should be can we even survive now without them?  

Yes. 

 

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1 hour ago, virginton said:

Why was he sitting on your board and calling the shots on managers/signings then?

And it's not the end of the story. You foolishly spunked money based on a set of IOUs that left Dundee on the hook for the payments you couldn't make. And so you went into administration, again. 

A warning as if it were needed about the danger of private investors bearing gifts. 

Because we were fucking desperate.

You're correct about the rest of it. 

Thank you.

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46 minutes ago, CammyDick said:


It’s widely accepted that Dundee fans are the biggest gullible morons in Scottish football though. From multiple admins to genuinely believing they’re getting a new stadium. They’ll believe any good news any Walter Mitty character feeds them. Literally never learn. 

All this mince from you without being brave enough to admit who you support.

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43 minutes ago, Colkitto said:

I'd go as far as to say without the Easdales businesses sponsorship of Morton we would already be on our knees. 

You only have to look around Cappielow from McGills to Save Heat and all the others in between to see the money the Easdales are putting in to the club. 

Maybe the question should be can we even survive now without them?  

 

Do we even know what we get from the Easdales? If they're just paying the going rate for sponsorship then assuming we wouldn't survive without them is a bit drastic surely.

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2 minutes ago, #Gary said:

 

Do we even know what we get from the Easdales? If they're just paying the going rate for sponsorship then assuming we wouldn't survive without them is a bit drastic surely.

They must be putting at least £100k int the club right now surely? 

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7 hours ago, Colkitto said:

The alarm bells for me is heading to the seaside leagues.  Fan numbers fall and inevitably so does the the income for the club.

The whole thing could quite easily become unsustainable. For me we really are in troubled times. If that turns out to be me knicker-wetting and nothing else I'll be a happy man  

How exactly would a private owner taking over and chucking more money at running costs/playing squad, leading to the club building up a private debt to that owner, be more sustainable? That's the definition of unsustainable.

The model of a white knight owner artificially inflating expenditure is essentially dead at Scottish Championship level. Yes, there are still clubs with private owners who, like Douglas Rae with Morton, are willing to throw hundreds of thousands of pounds away through ego, sentimentality or a combination of them. Unlike Douglas Rae with Morton, some of that spending might even go on capital expenditure that leaves the club in a better place and provides a platform for future sustainability, rather than simply spending it on inflated wages for crap players and managers at the bottom of the full-time barrel. Maybe the likes of Queen's Park find themselves levelling off in a better place where the money they're spending on the first team becomes affordable as they've made it to the Premiership, maybe Ayr making revenue generating stadium improvements means income catches up with first team expenditure.

It might work out well for the clubs still under private ownership, it might not and they end up where Morton were less than 18 months ago, with over £2M of debt and no way to pay it off. To find ourselves with a debt free club with the stadium secured out of that was no small feat and it could very easily have ended up with the club homeless or dead. Once you've actually gotten to the place we are, to jump right back into private ownership with the first Angelo Massone figure promising to spend millions because we don't like how much the club can spend without a sugar daddy would be an act of reckless stupidity. We wouldn't be likely to get away with it again.

None of this means MCT are above criticism, doing everything right or that we shouldn't be asking serious questions about what can and should be done better. A whole rewrite of their articles is required for starters, and the transparency hasn't been good enough at any point. It is just extremely tedious that any time anything negative has happened since they took over the club, there has been a kneejerk reaction that the entire concept of fan ownership has to be doomed to fail under any circumstances.

If we don't like how things are going then why can we not talk about how fan ownership should look, how MCT can be improved, what a sustainable Morton looks like, rather than just throwing our hands up and begging for a white knight to ride in and save us with their bottomless pit of money?

Edited by Dunning1874
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4 hours ago, Colkitto said:

I'd go as far as to say without the Easdales businesses sponsorship of Morton we would already be on our knees. 

You only have to look around Cappielow from McGills to Save Heat and all the others in between to see the money the Easdales are putting in to the club. 

Maybe the question should be can we even survive now without them?  

What you're saying here is "Without sponsors we would be on our knees".

That's the same of every club. That's what sponsors are for. They pay to sponsor the club. If they decide to end that arrangement we get a different sponsor.

The Easdales/companies they own aren't sponsoring the club out of pity. As far as I know they're not paying massive sums over the going rates for sponsor opportunities. They are getting exposure out of it.

We have a poor squad, on the cheap, because we're not going over our budget. If we get relegated then our budget will be cut and our squad will adapt. It's not rocket science. We might end up trapped like some seaside league non-entity like Airdrie, Falkirk or Clyde but we wont go bust. 

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9 hours ago, Dunning1874 said:

How exactly would a private owner taking over and chucking more money at running costs/playing squad, leading to the club building up a private debt to that owner, be more sustainable? That's the definition of unsustainable.

The model of a white knight owner artificially inflating expenditure is essentially dead at Scottish Championship level. Yes, there are still clubs with private owners who, like Douglas Rae with Morton, are willing to throw hundreds of thousands of pounds away through ego, sentimentality or a combination of them. Unlike Douglas Rae with Morton, some of that spending might even go on capital expenditure that leaves the club in a better place and provides a platform for future sustainability, rather than simply spending it on inflated wages for crap players and managers at the bottom of the full-time barrel. Maybe the likes of Queen's Park find themselves levelling off in a better place where the money they're spending on the first team becomes affordable as they've made it to the Premiership, maybe Ayr making revenue generating stadium improvements means income catches up with first team expenditure.

It might work out well for the clubs still under private ownership, it might not and they end up where Morton were less than 18 months ago, with over £2M of debt and no way to pay it off. To find ourselves with a debt free club with the stadium secured out of that was no small feat and it could very easily have ended up with the club homeless or dead. Once you've actually gotten to the place we are, to jump right back into private ownership with the first Angelo Massone figure promising to spend millions because we don't like how much the club can spend without a sugar daddy would be an act of reckless stupidity. We wouldn't be likely to get away with it again.

None of this means MCT are above criticism, doing everything right or that we shouldn't be asking serious questions about what can and should be done better. A whole rewrite of their articles is required for starters, and the transparency hasn't been good enough at any point. It is just extremely tedious that any time anything negative has happened since they took over the club, there has been a kneejerk reaction that the entire concept of fan ownership has to be doomed to fail under any circumstances.

If we don't like how things are going then why can we not talk about how fan ownership should look, how MCT can be improved, what a sustainable Morton looks like, rather than just throwing our hands up and begging for a white knight to ride in and save us with their bottomless pit of money?

My first preference is fan ownership, but not at any price.

 

It looks like the consensus amongst the support so far is NO to the billionaire businessmen the Easdales taking over the club, NO to anonymous investors and NO to an interest free loan.

That would indeed limit our options to a fan owned club. A club with a business model that's already failing.

No significant investment, a club almost certainly looking at part-time football next season no matter what league we're in, a club looking at the seaside leagues leagues with dwindling support which would have a knock on effect to MCT subscriptions and the consequences of that.

Every avenue has an aspect of danger. Where do we go from here?    

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9 hours ago, Dunning1874 said:

How exactly would a private owner taking over and chucking more money at running costs/playing squad, leading to the club building up a private debt to that owner, be more sustainable? That's the definition of unsustainable.

The model of a white knight owner artificially inflating expenditure is essentially dead at Scottish Championship level. Yes, there are still clubs with private owners who, like Douglas Rae with Morton, are willing to throw hundreds of thousands of pounds away through ego, sentimentality or a combination of them. Unlike Douglas Rae with Morton, some of that spending might even go on capital expenditure that leaves the club in a better place and provides a platform for future sustainability, rather than simply spending it on inflated wages for crap players and managers at the bottom of the full-time barrel. Maybe the likes of Queen's Park find themselves levelling off in a better place where the money they're spending on the first team becomes affordable as they've made it to the Premiership, maybe Ayr making revenue generating stadium improvements means income catches up with first team expenditure.

It might work out well for the clubs still under private ownership, it might not and they end up where Morton were less than 18 months ago, with over £2M of debt and no way to pay it off. To find ourselves with a debt free club with the stadium secured out of that was no small feat and it could very easily have ended up with the club homeless or dead. Once you've actually gotten to the place we are, to jump right back into private ownership with the first Angelo Massone figure promising to spend millions because we don't like how much the club can spend without a sugar daddy would be an act of reckless stupidity. We wouldn't be likely to get away with it again.

None of this means MCT are above criticism, doing everything right or that we shouldn't be asking serious questions about what can and should be done better. A whole rewrite of their articles is required for starters, and the transparency hasn't been good enough at any point. It is just extremely tedious that any time anything negative has happened since they took over the club, there has been a kneejerk reaction that the entire concept of fan ownership has to be doomed to fail under any circumstances.

If we don't like how things are going then why can we not talk about how fan ownership should look, how MCT can be improved, what a sustainable Morton looks like, rather than just throwing our hands up and begging for a white knight to ride in and save us with their bottomless pit of money?

10/10, sir.

There’s been quite a childish response from some folk to this statement - essentially wanting to mortgage the club so they can sign a ‘creative midfielder’ or so we don’t have to endure Easdale upfront (which won’t happen, btw, when Muirhead is fully fit).

The childishness extends to questioning whether or not utility bills have, in fact, more than tripled. Or whether, when applying an arbitrary age or appearance limit, we do indeed have a 20-man squad (completely ignoring the fact that those 20 are all due, at least, minimum wage for 30+ hours a week).

That response is completely blind to what community ownership has already given us - a continued club to support. Make no mistake, that would have been at risk both now and in the recent-past under a private owner.

Clearly more revenue is needed to cover unforeseen costs, but there are a multitude of ways that can be gotten. Thereafter, what the current ownership gives us is the security to set our budgets, every year, directly in line with the revenue we expect to come in (notwithstanding the two-year deals we’ve given out to some players).

What we shouldn’t do IMO, as floated in the Board’s statement, is take on debt, even when if it were interest-free. Otherwise I think the frankness of the Board’s statement is welcome.

This is our reality now, and always was likely to be when MCT purchased the club. It’s imperfect but, IMO, far better than being at the mercy any private owner. If others value on-field success more than the security of having a club to support, you might fit in at Celtic Park or Ibrox.

 

The one risk I would take, personally, is giving the manager a long-term contract as, while I agree the squad and some performances, I am optimistic his sheer presence will see us generally overperform.

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8 minutes ago, Colkitto said:

My first preference is fan ownership, but not at any price.

 

It looks like the consensus amongst the support so far is NO to the billionaire businessmen the Easdales taking over the club, NO to anonymous investors and NO to an interest free loan.

That would indeed limit our options to a fan owned club. A club with a business model that's already failing.

No significant investment, a club almost certainly looking at part-time football next season no matter what league we're in, a club looking at the seaside leagues leagues with dwindling support which would have a knock on effect to MCT subscriptions and the consequences of that.

Every avenue has an aspect of danger. Where do we go from here?    

So are you saying that your, and many others’, support is contingent on the team being successful?

Which implies that Morton have been in any way successful in the past 30 years, to have a support capable of dwindling noticably.

Otherwise your final option, which you paint as bleak, is by far the most preferable. We live within our means, which was evident as anything when we agreed to transition from being underwritten to community ownership, was highly likely to result in a step back on the pitch. It’s childish not to have seen that coming or to complain if/when that becomes reality.

One thing I would like to see Morton try to lead on is league reform. That’s ongoing and there’s a case to be made for the ‘professional’ part of the league to be reduced so as to preserve (and ideally, evenly redistribute) the league’s revenue amongst a smaller number of clubs. If that were, say, 24 teams over two divisions, we likely see an increase in prize money, TV coverage, more games against bigger clubs while still maintaining a small enough league for games that matter.

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17 minutes ago, Morton Supporter said:

So are you saying that your, and many others’, support is contingent on the team being successful?

Which implies that Morton have been in any way successful in the past 30 years, to have a support capable of dwindling noticably.

Otherwise your final option, which you paint as bleak, is by far the most preferable. We live within our means, which was evident as anything when we agreed to transition from being underwritten to community ownership, was highly likely to result in a step back on the pitch. It’s childish not to have seen that coming or to complain if/when that becomes reality.

One thing I would like to see Morton try to lead on is league reform. That’s ongoing and there’s a case to be made for the ‘professional’ part of the league to be reduced so as to preserve (and ideally, evenly redistribute) the league’s revenue amongst a smaller number of clubs. If that were, say, 24 teams over two divisions, we likely see an increase in prize money, TV coverage, more games against bigger clubs while still maintaining a small enough league for games that matter.

No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm giving my opinion on how things may or may not turn out depending on what route we take

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1 minute ago, Colkitto said:

No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm giving my opinion on how things may or may not turn out depending on what route we take

Right, and as you say ending up as a mid-table League One team or worse, with the support dwindling along with that may well lead us into a managed decline where we circle the drain and can wave goodbye to ever being a consolidated second tier club again. It could send us on an Airdrie, Clyde or worse trajectory.

What I'm not hearing is why the risk of that happening with the club living within its means is a greater threat to the club's future than a private owner loading the club with debt again, when our continued existence would then be entirely dependent on that owner choosing not to call in that debt out of the goodness of their hearts.

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35 minutes ago, Dunning1874 said:

Right, and as you say ending up as a mid-table League One team or worse, with the support dwindling along with that may well lead us into a managed decline where we circle the drain and can wave goodbye to ever being a consolidated second tier club again. It could send us on an Airdrie, Clyde or worse trajectory.

What I'm not hearing is why the risk of that happening with the club living within its means is a greater threat to the club's future than a private owner loading the club with debt again, when our continued existence would then be entirely dependent on that owner choosing not to call in that debt out of the goodness of their hearts.

 

As I say every option has a danger attached to it. You way up your options as they come along. 

I don't know what the answer is but I'm not optimistic about the future at the moment 

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The last 30 years of Morton attendances

92 1,725 T2 7th
93 1,908 T2 6th
94 1,541 T2 11th (relegated)
95 2,092 T3 1st (promoted)
96 4,104 T2 3rd
97 2,787 T2 8th
98 2,617 T2 5th
99 2,266 T2 6th

00 1,348 T2 8th
01 1,290 T2 9th (relegated)
02 1,250 T3 10th (relegated)

03 2,319 T4 1st (promoted)
04 2,966 T3 4th
05 2,683 T3 3rd
06 2,760 T3 2nd
07 2,661 T3 1st (promoted)

08 2,728 T2 8th
09 2,250 T2 6th

10 1,969 T2 8th
11 1,913 T2 7th
12 1,826 T2 8th
13 2,137 T2 2nd
14 2,362 T2 10th (relegated)

15 1,728 T3 1st (promoted)
16 2,731 T2 5th
17 2,362 T2 4th

18 1,986 T2 7th
19 1,943 T2 5th
20 1,607 T2 7th
21 0 (Covid) T2 9th
22 1,603 T2 7th

We can take a lot away from that but the short version is our division doesn't make a huge difference to our attendances. Apart from 1995/96 we generally hover around the 2,000 mark.

In years where we are doing particularly well and/or we have decent travelling supports it goes up (In 1995/96, for example, as well as our best team in a generation, a sell out final day decider, etc Dunfermline, both Dundee clubs, St. Johnstone, St. Mirren, Clydebank and Airdrie were all in the league at the time. All whom would have larger travelling supports than at least half of the clubs in our division now.) Other years it's been high would be the post-administration bounce at the turn of the century (we survived. Rangers died), the push for promotion under Moore and a coupla good years with Duffy (with handy crowds from Sevco and Hibs included). 

In years where we don't do well it drops but not must below 2,000. The Hugh Scott years and subsequent boycott/double relegation are the only times it drops below 1,500 until Covid appears.

Also, worth noting, before 1999 we were part time/hybrid and we were also part time/hybrid 2002-05. Both times when we were getting good crowds. Almost as if the fans don't care if our left back is also waiting tables in an Italian restaurant in Edinburgh (Hiya Mel, hiya pal)

So, although football demographics are changing we can assume, for the next few years at least, even if we do end up hovering around mid-table in the league below we still won't dip below the 1,500 crowd. That puts us (well) ahead of the bigger part-time teams in terms of support like Alloa, Dumbarton, Arbroath, Airdrie, Clyde and puts us on a par with the bottom end of the full-time game like Ayr, Queen of the South, Raith, etc. 

Assuming we do what all clubs should be doing and work within our means based on attendance figures and commercial income that puts us around... bottom end of Championship status. Where we have been for the majority of the last 30 years. 

The idea that relegation, or not having a big financial backer will see us crumble into a shit-heap like Clyde or Airdrie who can never escape the third tier is hand wringing nonsense. Not to "crowd-w**k" or anything but we have a bigger support than the clubs people fear us turning into. With fan ownership it also leaves us in a far safer position should that happen as opposed to an investor getting bored and walking away, dying on us or being a charlatan. The very worst outcome for Morton under this scenario is to be a club going part-time with no real chance of gaining promotion to the top flight. In the last 30 years that's something we've only really challenged for three times anyway. A whole one time more than part-time Arbroath. 

It's one thing not being optimistic about the future but what are the halcyon days we're missing out on?

Edited by AsimButtHitsASix
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