MORTON striker Robert Thomson says the club should look no further than Stevie Aitken for their new boss.

Thomson played under the 41-year-old, who has been in charge at The Rock since 2015 after a three-year spell managing Stranraer, for one season before his move to Cappielow last year.

In the previous two seasons Aitken guided the Sons to Championship safety and this year he took them to a Challenge Cup final.

This year is the first time Dumbarton have finished ninth and in the relegation play-off in their fiveyear stay in the league.

They beat Arbroath in the first leg of the relegation play-off semifinal at Gayfield Park on Wednesday, with the next tie to be played tomorrow.

During his time at Dumbarton many of his squad have earned moves to full-time clubs.

Thomson was one of them, and the 24-yearold believes Aitken has what it takes to do well at Cappielow.

He told the Tele: “You just have to look at what he’s done at Dumbarton for the past three years he’s been there, keeping them in the division in a team with limited resources in a league full of mainly full-time teams.

“That speaks volumes in itself, and personally I thoroughly enjoyed my time there.

“Obviously his name has been mentioned, but he’s definitely a more than suitable candidate for the job.”

Under Aitken, Thomson was the club’s top finisher scoring 11 league goals, and was the league’s fifth highest goalscorer, behind then-Hibs striker Jason Cummings, Queen of the South’s Stephen Dobbie and Nicky Clark of Dunfermline Athletic and Dundee United’s Tony Andreu.

He added: “I thought he was brilliant, he made it a good place to play football and he was brilliant when Jim Duffy told me he was going to offer a pre-contract to me.

“He said it was a good opportunity and never held any grudges with me, and in that respect he was brilliant.”

Thomson is one of four players signed up for next season at Morton, along with Bob McHugh, Michael Tidser and Jack Iredale.

And he was surprised as everyone else when Duffy left the club by ‘mutual consent’ on Sunday

He said: “I think everyone in the dressing room was fully behind him, and then we’ve had a disappointing end to the season which has ended in him losing his job.

“I don’t think anyone in that dressing room could say a bad word about him and would speak highly of him.

“He’s been brilliant for us, and I think we’re all disappointed to see him leave.”

Morton’s form dropped towards the end of the campaign, winning only two games in their last 11 league outings.

But Thomson doesn’t think it’s been as bad a season as some people think.

Despite finishing seventh, the Greenock side only had two less points than last season, when they finished in the play-offs.

Thomson added: “It’s just the way the league’s gone this year, we had our dip in form at the end, which resulted in us missing the play-offs.

“If you look at our form up to the last quarter it was good, and we could still mathematically reach the play-offs with two games to go.

“We were only a couple of points off the total for last season as well.”

Meanwhile, John Baird, who was on loan at Morton last season from Inverness Caley Thistle, moved to League One side Forfar as a player/ assistant coach.