How an admin error became an existential crisis for Morton

The Herald Scotland

a day ago

It was announced on May 1st, one day before their final fixture with Dunfermline Athletic, that Morton had been slapped with a Fifa-imposed transfer embargo. This came after the Championship side failed to submit documentation to the governing body regarding the transfer of Jack Bearne which stated that Liverpool had waived their right to a compensation fee. It was reported that efforts to contact Morton were sent to the email of a former director instead of the club.
Onlooking rival supporters, even some Morton fans, had a good laugh about it and everyone assumed that would be the end of it. Instead, it's created a chain reaction which has led to a crucial vote which could massively affect the future of the club.
I'll try to be as succinct as possible in laying out the background in all of this. Morton are a fan-owned club but, similarly to Hearts and Motherwell, they are not fan run. There is the MCT (Morton Club Together) board and there is the Greenock Morton Football Club board (GMFC). MCT own 90 per cent of the club's shares. They have two representatives on the GMFC board. The problem is that neither of them told MCT about the embargo, which had been in place since mid-March. So the owners of the club only found out about it at the same time as the general public.
This, understandably, caused a lot of consternation among MCT and the fanbase at large. It was felt the position of the two representatives had become untenable and they were asked to resign. When they didn't, MCT board members resigned in protest.
Now let's introduce another player in this sorry mess: Dalrada. Founded by Brian Bonar, born in Greenock, the American-headquartered financial corporation has been the stadium and front-of-shirt sponsor since 2022 and has put around £1 million into the club over three years. However, it has been reported that payments were missed earlier this year, roughly around the time it was reported that Dalrada's stock price had plummeted.
They've stepped between the warring board factions and offered a new sponsorship package of £540,000 per season, a not insignificant increase on the roughly £333,000 they've been spending already.
So what's the problem? Well, two things. One, they want a seven-person GMFC board to be made up of two Dalrada representatives, two MCT members and three others who are agreed upon by all parties. The club's articles of association currently state that MCT representatives should always represent a majority on the board. And secondly, they insist the two current MCT representatives remain in place (though later stated through a Q&A that one of them would be a Dalrada representative) along with chairman John Laird, who isn't on the board but is another who has been called on to resign after the transfer embargo mess.
A vote on the proposal will be tallied after the deadline next Tuesday. Fans who are MCT members have to decide whether to accept the proposal of a fresh sponsorship deal, with the existing one expiring later this summer, but at the cost of the fans giving up at least some control of the club.
Not everyone is against the proposal. First of all, without Dalrada's sponsorship, at this late stage, Morton would be severely impacted financially ahead of next season and would likely have to go part-time or adopt an aggressive hybrid model to avoid financial disaster. They would therefore be expected to struggle mightily at a time when they're looking upwards at potential promotion under the guidance of the excellent Dougie Imrie. Secondly, many are happy to take Dalrada at their word when they say they're only interested in giving back to the local community by propping up the football club. And their only reason for trying to take greater control is that they want to see better governance after the farce witnessed at the end of the season.
I doubt very highly that there are too many Morton supporters who will be swayed by what this writer thinks about the situation, but I have to say – this stinks to high heaven.
If Dalrada are to be believed and they only want better governance of the club, then why are they insistent on the people essentially responsible staying on in their roles? It's all well and good wanting to know that your investment is in safe hands, but when it's folk who landed the club with a transfer embargo and didn't feel like telling the owners about it, there isn't much evidence to suggest they're the right people for the job. (In the Q&A the reason stated was that they didn't want to derail the promotion push. Aye, sure.)
That argument is also undercut by Dalrada's actions themselves with all of this happening in late May/early June. That is no way to prepare for a new Scottish football season with the League Cup only six weeks away. Centre-backs Jack Baird and Morgan Boyes have already left, with the former saying a big reason he bolted for St Johnstone was because he didn't know what was going on with his now-former employers. Even if their proposal is voted through, they'll still be hamstrung next season because they've had a later start at squad building than everyone else. There's also no guarantee that Imrie, who opted to stick with the club yesterday after a flirtation with the Partick Thistle job but remains on the radar of other clubs, is going to stick around through all of this. This is no example of improved governance.
Then there's the greatest fear: that Morton could be taken out of the hands of the supporters. The GMFC board cannot sell shares owned by MCT, but they could, in theory, put out a share issue. MCT would have first refusal but fans would have to dig very deep to come up with that kind of money. If they didn't, their stake would be diluted. There's even some suspicious wording in the Q&A where it says if Dalrada ever decided to withdraw from the club then 'it would be expected' that the boardroom set-up would revert back. What kind of guarantee is that?
It's very possible that Dalrada are only trying to sort everything out and have went about it in a cack-handed manner. But this is what fan ownership is all about: to be certain that your club is not going to fall into the hands of people who don't have its best interests at heart. Voting yes will elevate some short-term pain, but long-term it's really not worth the risk.