MORTON star Jim McAlister has revealed he would rather stay in the UK than move abroad if he were to leave Morton.

The winger has been in impressive form already this season and had caught the eye of Romanian Champions League cracks Unirea Urziceni.

But Championship side Watford have also been monitoring his progress at Cappielow, so much so that boss Malky Mackay had him down for trials last week.

Jim is still a Morton player for now but he exclusively spoke to the Tele about where he would rather play his football.

He said: "Watford was unbelievable and a real eye-opener to me.

"They use Arsenal's old training ground and the facilities they have were just unbelievable.

"I played in a bounce game against a non-league team and did some training with them.

"It was a great experience.

"They're now saying to me that they're going to monitor my situation more closely than they did before.

"It's just up to me first and foremost to do my best for Morton and see what happens from there.

"As for Unirea thing, the chairman is dealing with them just now.

"If I'm being brutally honest, I would rather stay in the UK if I was to leave Morton - rather than go abroad.

"For that reason, as soon as I heard about Watford's interest I jumped at the opportunity, so we'll see what happens.

"But for now, as I said, I just need to keep my head down, work hard and do my best for Greenock Morton." Watford gaffer Mackay insists that McAlister is a player he'll be keeping tabs on.

He said: "We had him down for four days and he has gone back up to his club.

"We thank Morton as it is great they let us look at him and we will be continuing to monitor his situation." Meanwhile, Jim admitted that he and his team-mates were 'gutted' to lose against Dundee at the weekend, in a game they could have won.

Ton lost their league opener 1-0 at Dens Park after Sean Higgins struck in the second half - but McAlister is confident the Cappielow side can bounce back this week against Dunfermline.

He said: "The lads were absolutely gutted.

"Dundee are supposed to be the best this league's got to offer and for the majority of the game I thought we were the better team. Especially for the first 45 minutes.

"I think you could tell by the crowd's reaction at half-time with them being booed off that we were on top.

"But they came out and had a right go at us and unfortunately they got the break which we never got.

"We just need to deal with it and move on.

"We've got to take the positives from the match and blank out the negatives.

"It's going to be a good game next week against Dunfermline and we're just looking to build towards it.

"We only have two home matches in the first God knows how many games and we've just been drawn away in the cup again.

"But we just need to take each game as it comes and get more wins."