btb Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 3 minutes ago, Soctty said: If we blow it now, it won't be anything to do with fate, but a full on collapse, the like of which has never been seen before. Going back a bit, but still Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pozbaird Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 Just now, Coventry Saint said: Yes. I've written off their chances of reaching them. Poor Morton. I think they could do it.... nah, I really don’t. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Demented Zebra Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 Got the afternoon off so catch the 12 o'clock ferry then no doubt join some Morton fans on the train to St James , straight into the 1877 club for the prematch party wonder if there will be a Dj again. As long as the title is confirmed not really bothered about the score job is done. Into Paisley town after the match for the party in many pubs cant wait. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gmfc 23 Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 41 minutes ago, Coventry Saint said: The parts in bold may well be true: we came down pretty quickly in 2000/1, but you guys were nowhere to be seen. Next season's league will be tight and I reckon you'll be looking over your shoulders. With duffy in charge youd be pretty much spot on. With a competent manager willing to get his buisness done early get the balance right and stick to his strongest team and formation from the off im sure we could give it a real go next year. So thats now the boards choice duffy who has a year left or replace him. Imho his times up but fear we will be left rotting for at least another season. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scosha Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 5 minutes ago, Gmfc 23 said: With duffy in charge youd be pretty much spot on. With a competent manager willing to get his buisness done early get the balance right and stick to his strongest team and formation from the off im sure we could give it a real go next year. So thats now the boards choice duffy who has a year left or replace him. Imho his times up but fear we will be left rotting for at least another season. Duffy’s got the safest job in Scottish football. I’ve never known of a manager to not have a set aim. And given the way he speaks in the media it’s never about having an end goal. It’s just “we’ll see how high we can go”. He’s happy with mid table and the board are probably happy with it as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coventry Saint Posted April 12, 2018 Author Share Posted April 12, 2018 15 minutes ago, Scosha said: Duffy’s got the safest job in Scottish football. I’ve never known of a manager to not have a set aim. And given the way he speaks in the media it’s never about having an end goal. It’s just “we’ll see how high we can go”. He’s happy with mid table and the board are probably happy with it as well. I think that's your biggest issue as a club. To progress would require a bit of speculation, which they're clearly not prepared to do whilst preparing/considering an exit. Duffy is a largely capable manager and I think he's done well for you - is the failure to take the next step really his fault? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IainMorton Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 21 minutes ago, Scosha said: Duffy’s got the safest job in Scottish football. I’ve never known of a manager to not have a set aim. And given the way he speaks in the media it’s never about having an end goal. It’s just “we’ll see how high we can go”. He’s happy with mid table and the board are probably happy with it as well. Yep you are right. That’s the thing that annoys me the most as it feels like there is no ambition at the club. Same thing happened after the 12/13 season, all Rae had to do was put his hand in his pocket and strengthen that team but he cut the wage bill instead and we got relegated the season after. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sergie's no1 fan Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 1 hour ago, IainMorton said: Yep you are right. That’s the thing that annoys me the most as it feels like there is no ambition at the club. Same thing happened after the 12/13 season, all Rae had to do was put his hand in his pocket and strengthen that team but he cut the wage bill instead and we got relegated the season after. Morton do seem like a funny club with regards to things like that. Last season was a brilliant achievement and Livingston have took that a bit further this season. I think a mid table finish for a club like Morton is roughly where you should be finishing, with the view of challenging for the play offs. Saints, ICT, Pars, Falkirk, United will all have bigger budgets, bigger crowds, and have had recentish spells in the Premiership. Queens have Dobbie which propels them up the league too. It seems Duffy could be becoming a victim of his own success, although he seems to shoot himself in the foot every so often with team selections and formations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Poet of the Macabre Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 Enjoyed the OP. Have Morton really not been in the top flight since the late 80s? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Millions Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 Enjoyed the OP. Have Morton really not been in the top flight since the late 80s? The exact amount of time you've been a tragic VL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Poet of the Macabre Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 25 minutes ago, Millions said: The exact amount of time you've been a tragic VL Actually it's been so long since Morton have been in the top flight, I wasn't even alive to see it. Thought you lot had managed one season up there in the mid 90s for some reason. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GiGi Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 3 hours ago, Coventry Saint said: Duffy is a largely capable manager and I think he's done well for you - is the failure to take the next step really his fault? This season it is. He did the hard part by (eventually) signing the right players. Then leaving them on the bench to get his wee pals appearance money. Once again we haven't beaten a full-time side since February when we looked a certainty for 3rd at worst. Last season we looked good for 2nd and barely hung onto 4th after winning none of our final 9 league fixtures (0/11 if you include the 2 legs of the playoff). It can be annoying if you do it over 2 legs but if you see it happen over 2 years via a thousand cuts (or around 20 league ties) it is infinitely more annoying. I chucked going to away games at the start of March and even missed a home game by choice for the first time in a very long time on Tuesday. The board are the biggest problem by not setting Duffy an actual target of promotion but Duffy is responsible for the run in the last 2 years. It hurts even more when your club media officer, a diehard Morton fan, asks Duffy at the start of the season if the goal is go even better than last season when we made the playoffs and Duffy says "well, we don't really set targets so we'll just try and get as many points as we can as see how we get on" wrong fucking answer. Good luck getting crowds up with that non-committal pish. Other than that he's been awrite I suppose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie_M Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 I think that's your biggest issue as a club. To progress would require a bit of speculation, which they're clearly not prepared to do whilst preparing/considering an exit. Duffy is a largely capable manager and I think he's done well for you - is the failure to take the next step really his fault? From an outsider looking in, and to his pals in the media, he is doing a great job.To the Morton fans who have to experience the day to day, week to week, game to game, Duffy is an idiot and continues to balls it all up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dunning1874 Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 2 hours ago, sergie's no1 fan said: Morton do seem like a funny club with regards to things like that. Last season was a brilliant achievement and Livingston have took that a bit further this season. I think a mid table finish for a club like Morton is roughly where you should be finishing, with the view of challenging for the play offs. Saints, ICT, Pars, Falkirk, United will all have bigger budgets, bigger crowds, and have had recentish spells in the Premiership. Queens have Dobbie which propels them up the league too. It seems Duffy could be becoming a victim of his own success, although he seems to shoot himself in the foot every so often with team selections and formations. The point about finishing mid-table not necessarily being under-performance came up on the Morton forum recently. On the basis of the post being huge and quoting yourself being the behaviour of a massive VL I'll put what I said about it in a spoiler. I agree that ahead of a season starting it's not as simple as saying 'We finished in the playoffs last season, therefore if we don't do so this season the manager has to go'. You have to examine the circumstances of each season and while budgets aren't everything, we probably have the sixth or seventh biggest budget in the league and there were seven or eight teams who had a top four finish as a realistic target. If every team who had it as a realistic target sacked their manager for failing to do so each summer the turnover of managers would be ridiculous, no manager would get a chance to build anything long-term and no club would have any degree of stability. However, you also have to revisit what constitutes a realistic target as the season progresses and take a look at the circumstances of the division. So as an extreme example of how it can swing, the target for Peter Houston as Falkirk manager when the season started was to make a credible title challenge and win promotion, even if that was through the playoffs in the end. Fast forward to October and that obviously isn't a realistic target for Paul Hartley; keeping them in the division is all that matters and finishing any higher than 8th is just a bonus. The same reevaluation applies to us. While at the start of the season you could say that failing to make the playoffs wouldn't necessarily be a disaster on Duffy's part, come the start of 2018 you can look at the division with the aforementioned Falkirk basketcase, ICT not being much better, extremely average Dunfermline & QoS teams and conclude that a playoff place is there for the taking. You also look at Livingston sitting comfortably above us and acknowledge that it blows any argument about our budget being a insurmountable hindrance out of the water. Then, to Duffy's credit, we go on an excellent run of form to put ourselves in an excellent position to push for second place and put real distance between ourselves and fifth place. From that position at the end of February, it is entirely reasonable to conclude that failing to secure a playoff place from there would make his position untenable. It won't in the eyes of the board obviously but if we do end up failing it will for much of the support, and rightly so when you look at how he's directly thrown away 8 points from the last 9 alone. This also ties back into last season. Clearly the club and support shared the feeling that making the promotion playoffs would be a success, however we had second place there for the taking after that win at Falkirk. We should have waltzed into it from that position. However, that night also saw us basically wrap up the playoff spot as well and the club as a whole collectively downed tools, accepted that fourth place was fine then meekly capitulated in the first round of the playoffs, proclaiming the season a success anyway and saying we couldn't possibly hope to do better, to sycophantic hero-worship from an alarmingly large portion of the support when we should have criticising the collapse. To be clear, I don't buy into any ridiculous conspiracy theories about Duffy deliberately losing games because the board don't want promotion or anything like that. That kind of stuff is the preserve of OF supporting taxi drivers and old men in pubs who've never actually set foot in a football ground in their lives. Obviously they all want to win promotion, but I worry that the lack of belief that we're capable of doing it and lack of ambition to improve our chances at boardroom level infects the whole club, the fish rotting from the head down. The shrug of the shoulders about last season's capitulation followed up by rewarding Duffy with a two year deal for it strongly suggests that's the case. The board do get unfair criticism: anyone blaming the board after the Falkirk game is entirely missing the point. We lost that game because Duffy made an absolute mess of putting out a weakened team when there was no need to, so the blame should 100% start and end with him. It's on a season to season basis that the board's lack of ambition comes to haunt us. If - and again it's only an if - we fail to make the playoffs this season then that’s not because of the board’s lack of ambition. The manager has the tools to do it and if he fails to do so that’s on his head. What is relevant regarding the board is their attitude towards a manager who does so. All the signs suggest they're going to be perfectly happy with a manager who floats around mid-table and has decent cup runs for eternity, while rolling over at the first hurdle in the odd seasons we do make the playoffs. There's going to come a point where they should be saying yes, things could be far worse, we're never going to be in danger of relegation, we're not dangerously underachieving, but we're also showing no signs of overachieving the way clubs like Livingston are and we've got no prospect of actually winning promotion if we continue to tread water like that. Jim Duffy has ultimately performed over the course of every season in charge at Morton. No matter how difficult he made it we won League One at the first attempt, then he kept us up comfortably in our first season up, then he took us into the playoffs and now we're fighting for the playoffs again. It could be far worse and it has been recently. Regardless of any criticisms we can make about his signings, substitutions, slow starts, tinkering or tombolas, he's done a solid job on results. There comes a time though where every football club should be looking at how they can realistically keep progressing, and if the answer to that in the case of Morton progressing to being serious contenders for the top flight is to find a manager who builds on what Duffy has done through avoiding those imbalanced squads and needless bits of tinkering, then we need to take that step. On an entirely unrelated note which definitely couldn't force this change sooner than expected, have Dundee sacked Neil McCann yet? tl;dr version: Being mid-table might be a realistic expectation based on budget, but considering where we were going into the final quarter of the last two seasons it's entirely reasonable to question Duffy's position. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rudolph Hucker Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 10 hours ago, Coventry Saint said: How many Ton fans will show up to face abject humiliation. Err, "abject humiliation"?? I don't think so. Away and throw shite at yerself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coventry Saint Posted April 13, 2018 Author Share Posted April 13, 2018 7 hours ago, Rudolph Hucker said: Err, "abject humiliation"?? I don't think so. Away and throw shite at yerself. I may yet have to: the home end is sold out so fitting in correctly at the away end is the only option. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Munoz Posted April 13, 2018 Share Posted April 13, 2018 12 hours ago, Jamie_M said: From an outsider looking in, and to his pals in the media, he is doing a great job. To the Morton fans who have to experience the day to day, week to week, game to game, Duffy is an idiot and continues to balls it all up. Not according to a Ton supporter in my work. He's a season ticket holder that goes to the occasional away game. According to him , Duffy is doing the best he can with limited resources. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scosha Posted April 13, 2018 Share Posted April 13, 2018 1 hour ago, Munoz said: Not according to a Ton supporter in my work. He's a season ticket holder that goes to the occasional away game. According to him , Duffy is doing the best he can with limited resources. Sadly there’s many amongst our support who feel that way. And according to them we shouldn’t moan about Douglas Rae because he saved the club, despite the majority of his time at Morton being a failure. We could’ve got second this season had Duffy not messed about with the team at crucial points this season. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GiGi Posted April 13, 2018 Share Posted April 13, 2018 1 hour ago, Munoz said: Not according to a Ton supporter in my work. He's a season ticket holder that goes to the occasional away game. According to him , Duffy is doing the best he can with limited resources. That excuse doesn't wash any more. Duffy has the players at his disposal for promotion IMO or at least a very good go at it. Our current run that has seen us fall away from the playoffs is entirely self inflicted while he's never fielded his strongest team. The players that got our best run of results are all fit but just don't play, or when they do it's in the wrong position and wrong system. That's all Duffy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coventry Saint Posted April 13, 2018 Author Share Posted April 13, 2018 On 30/05/2017 at 14:08, virginton said: Unlike Saint Mirren, Morton are actually on a discernable upward trajectory year on year. On 30/05/2017 at 14:22, virginton said: Clearly you don't know what the word 'trajectory' means, hence your 'confusion'. No you're not agreeing with me, because I didn't actually state that. You're in fact agreeing with NorthBank and the poster above. It's just a shame then that none of you understand what 'trajectory' means, or simply can't cope with the fact that Saint Mirren's current trajectory points only to further, abject failure. So hardly the clincher that's going to keep your mercenary boss from knocking back an offer from a bigger top-flight club then. Safe to say that this has turned into an absolute disaster for you. Rather than bump the other thread, this seems like a good place to leave these. It's a bit word salad-y, so I've picked out the best bits: "None of [us] understand what trajectory means." "Morton are on a discernible upward trajectory." "Absolute disaster." "Only points to further, abject failure." What an absolute laughing stock you are, wee man. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.