MORTON boss Dougie Imrie says that his pre-season preparations have gone ok - but revealed he’s been left frustrated at certain aspects of the first few weeks back at Cappielow.

Imrie has seen eight players come through the door thus far, but hasn’t been able to give first run outs to either Nathan Shaw or Dylan Corr, who are working their way back from injuries alongside academy graduate, Alexander King.

And that’s seen the manager having to give players full 90-minute run-outs sooner than he’d wanted.

He praised his backline and goalkeeper Ryan Mullen, who’s working without a goalkeeping coach with no replacement lined up for the recently departed David Scott, for their contributions in their opening two pre-season games

Imrie said: “It’s been ok so far. But it’s not ideal having to play people for 90-minutes only the second game into pre-season.

“It’s not ideal, especially with the defence, who are nowhere near ready to be playing 90-minutes.

“It’s the same with Ryan Mullen as well, but we’ll get there.

“There’s one or two still to come and there’s one or two who are nearly there, who’ve picked up knocks in pre-season.

“Kingy got a jag on Tuesday, so hopefully he’s back within the next week to ten days, and back for the start of the League Cup section.

“Nathan Shaw will be a couple of weeks, as will Dylan Corr, who’s been ill and picked up a knock that will keep him out for a couple of weeks too.

“We’ve just got to touch wood that it’s not going to be the same as last season, where it was injury after injury.

“That’s where we are with that. Hopefully there’s one or two more still to come in the door.

“But yeah, Saturday was good. Tuesday was stop/start and I don’t think the pitch helped us to be honest.

“It [the grass] was a bit long for my liking, I want to get the ball down and play football this season and if we’re to do that then it needs to be as short as possible. On that part I’m disappointed.”