MORTON complete the first third of what is shaping up to be a gruelling Championship campaign as they take on Hamilton Accies at Cappielow tomorrow afternoon.

They go into the game sitting in the relegation play-off zone, without a win in nine league matches and afflicted by what has become a startling inability to score.

It's not pushing it to say that the team, and supporters, are screaming out for goals after finding the back of the net just twice in their last eight fixtures.

They haven't managed a single strike since Cameron Blues fired home against Arbroath on October 2 and more worrying is the fact that games are passing by without them posing much of a threat.

If opposition sides were riding their luck and Ton were connistently creating plenty of chances then their record of only seven goals for would be a little less worrying.

But when they are struggling to fashion opportunities to begin with, it is a cause for concern.

Their last two fixtures have illustrated the problem perfectly, with successive goalless draws fought out against Queen of the South and Partick Thistle.

The Greenock men have defended impressively in both and thoroughly deserved the shut-outs earned, but the Doonhamers and the Jags were barely troubled by them over 180 minutes of football.

A Robbie Muirhead chip off the bar and an Alan Lithgow shot blocked on the goal-line was as close as they came to finding an end product throughout.

They are not working defences and goalkeepers anything like enough and have to do much better in an attacking sense, because while clean sheets are undoubtedly welcome, they will not hoist Ton out of trouble on their own.

It is only by posing more threat to their opponents that Gus MacPherson's men will give themselves a chance of winning matches and collecting the points that they need to turn things around.

The principal problem Ton have is a glaring lack of creativity in the team.

They do not have a recognisable playmaker in midfielder who can get on the ball and produce telling forward passes.

They don't have an established orthodox wide player either, so they lack penetration in those areas of the pitch too.

The squad, like others at this level to be fair, also lacks someone who can produce a bit of instinctive individual magic.

Issues like these can of course sometimes be papered over and compensated for.

If a team is fortunate enough to have an individual who can sniff a chance out from almost nothing or even someone with good dead ball delivery who can lay on goals off set pieces, then they can get by and more.

Unfortunately those are attributes which have not been on display until now and it's difficult to avoid the thought that a lot of reliance was placed on summer signing Gozie Ugwu to do the heavy lifting up front by utilising his physique, close control and power.

Sadly the big striker has been unavailable more often that not so far and his absence has been keenly felt.

Ugwu was the man who made the difference when Ton last met Accies, netting the only goal of the game in what was the last time that they tasted victory in the Championship, way back on August 7.

MacPherson would love to have him back in the fold for tomorrow's match but if it is too early he will have to continue to make do without him for now and find a way to get service into Gavin Reilly, who has shown with his track record that he can finish but has barely had a sniff of goal since arriving on loan from Livingston.

If the onus is rightly on him and his fellow attackers to offer more clever movement up top then equally the responsibility lies with the midfielders to do more in a creative sense.

Too often when Ton are in possession in the middle of the park they lack conviction - they need to be much less one-paced and a lot more incisive with their final ball to make openings.

The frustration is that at the other end of the pitch they have, a couple of aberrations aside, been solid at the back - well organised, hard-working and resolute.

They also have a very capable last line of defence in Jack Hamilton, as the free-scoring Thistle found out in midweek.

If they could only build on that platform by finding a bit of guile, flair or inspiration - whatever you want to call it - then it'd make an enormous difference to their fortunes.

Having already beaten Accies this season and picked up draws in very testing conditions in their last two outings, they have a foundation which should give them a bit of confidence ahead of what is a crucially important fixture.

Their opponents sit three points ahead of them after they picked up a precious win in midweek - Morton must follow suit soon, but first they'll have to find that vital spark that has been missing.