"Unlikely" There Will Be Signings In January

At Monday night's AGM Morton chairman Douglas Rae hinted that there may be no new signings in January. The story appeared in Tuesday's Greenock Telegraph in response to a thread on http://www.greenockmorton.org/ .

Rae is quoted as saying: “I didn’t say it was definite there would be no new players coming, I said it was unlikely."

In a post on the aforementioned thread on the unoffical messageboard regular tontastic said: "I spoke to Jim McInally on Saturday after the match at the press interview, and his feeling was that the December window was not a time to be buying players. I don't think I am mistaking the intent of what he was saying when I say that these are quite often panic buys, of players that clubs want or have to get rid of. Jim was saying that he has faith in our young team, and that people should give them time to develop."

I find it astonishing that McInally should make a comment along the lines that January is for panic buys. That is only the case if you are a poor manager. A good manager would have weighed up his squad and identified areas of the team that need strengthened. He would have also watched various players throughout the season ( and his career so far) and should have an idea of who he could bring in to bolster his squad for the end of the season run in. If the right players aren't available fair enough but to rule it out because December is not the time to be buying players is just ridiculous. You only have the summer and December / January window to sign players and even then we waited until the last minute to sign players in the summer. Adam Coakley and Jay Shields are two players I'd look on as last minute panic signings - January could have been the time to make up for the lack of decent signings in the summer but it appears that is not going to be the case.

For me this can only be seen as disappointing news which will ensure crowds will stay as they are or, more likely, go down. Maybe some of Celtic's 'huge army of fans' will decide to go to Cappielow instead of the 'negativity boys' and lend Morton some of their great support.

http://www.greenocktelegraph.co.uk/article.php?sec=2&id=17756

See Post #35: http://www.greenockmorton.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=17788&st=25