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Highland Derbies Next Season


MorayJaggie

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Would I be happy to see Robbo continue next season?  Yes.  Do I think he'll be manager at the beginning of next season?  Possibly.  He has a habit of leaving jobs though and left County due to a lack of finances.

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Oh Dear!

Not really the nicest thing to say about an unsuccessful past Manager who earlier in his career brought great football from his boots into the club's domain and was a good servant of the club  to boot. Management should have taken the blame for appointing a rookie manager  like Mr. Foran, not blaming him for doing his unseasoned and inexperienced  best against increasingly heavy odds. Let sleeping dogs lie methinks because that boat has sailed and has already sunk. A helping and empathetic  hand for Richie would sure be a nice gesture at this point in his life. Remember..."There but for the Grace of God go I."

Frank Kelly speaking, I'm more concerned as to what John Robertson will be able to do  next season. to motivate players and  pull this club up by it's bootstraps.  He seems to be a genuine and well-intentioned man but whether he is tough enough for the job is, IMHO,  a definite moot point....and a half.

I am far from sure that I detect the hard-enough edge to John's personality which may be required  to bring this club together as a highly-motivated group willing to put-it-all-out for the club. You might also suggest to me that where can one find that in football these days without a bundle of money to dangle in front of players as the direct incentive.?    Sigh...I know, I know!

Some of the indiscipline can be fixed  by strong measures but when you have the situation where you don't have the money to replace deviant types playing on the field then  his hands can be  tied I suppose. Where headstrong and/or big-headed players act in a way that can undermine your manager's strategies  you can deal with it by giving one warning and then, the next time, he gets his jotters. OR you can give him 100 more warnings and he laughs like a drain behind your back with the latter way not being an example of strong management, eh..?  In his present circumstance  perhaps he should have discussed all this in depth and made it clear to the apparently-inexperienced Board before he took the job that tough measures may have to come before babysitting ones. 

Drastic?...Well,  let's just call it "salutary". But If you allow the current set of players to continue ignoring your instructions  then your long-term goals may be totally compromised. I would not like to be in his shoes because  he has to have the Board behind him  strongly or his own future may be compromised as well.

Finally, fine motivational techniques must be in the lexicon of John's attributes as Manager of this club right now. And each fan knows how difficult it is to attract that kind of  strong and knowledgeable overseer... .like it has to seem like he is '"all things to all men".  Yet, I.m afraid that's exactly what he needs  to be in his role at ICT right now. 

Good luck, John.

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4 minutes ago, Polo Chick said:

lets get them to fix the pitch instead :laugh:    many would get pleasure seeing Foran digging away covered in S***e :cry:

Would we really ? Charles Bannerman references Faust , and I would ask whom (past or present) he thinks sold their soul to the devil, contributing to the (current) demise of our club.  Would he cite the many Charlatans that have held senior positons within the club over the years but have really given nothing in return, as Faustians ? I suggest we get those who took from the club and gave nothing in return  the pleasure of relaying the playing surface whilst the rest of us strive to build a club worthy of top flight football. 

 

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13 minutes ago, Caledonianfc1885 said:

 I would ask whom (past or present) he thinks sold their soul to the devil, contributing to the (current) demise of our club.  

Over these 24 years, the club has - probably in two separate phases, 1995-2000 and around 2013-1017 - spent money that it didn't in any realistic sense have in order to pay players more than the club could afford - and more than they were worth in real market terms. Following the first period, it was obliged to accept massive assistance from Tullochs, which I would struggle to call The Devil but which still, reasonably, accepted ownership of the stadium in exchange for warding off the Administrator or the Receiver with big bucks. During the second phase, the Devil was in the detail of the windfalls that the board depended upon to finance - or indeed fail to finance - well over the top payments to a procession of duds brought in by John Hughes and then Richie Foran.

The brutal fact is that Inverness Caledonian Thistle has fallen short by something like £6-7 million over the last 20-odd years to generate earnings to finance what it has paid out to function as it has as a football club. Until recently, thanks to Tullochs (I don't expect many green dots for that, but this is the truth) and a few other five and six figure benefactors, the club has lived a charmed life. However Auld Nick has now changed what he breathes out from Chanel Number 5 to Sulphur Dioxide.

The age of Reality has now dawned.

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I am pretty sure these games will be back next season. 

I also think that RC will have a better team though with RMs fat wallet. 

Bring it on though!! :ictscarf:

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23 hours ago, Charles Bannerman said:

FJ, to be brutally honest, you are the one who needs to ask yourself about reality. The high points you describe were attributable to a perfect storm of favourable breaks (arguably going back to 1993) plus a policy of living from hand to mouth on windfalls which happened to go the club's way which allowed remarkable progress along a tightrope.

However, any tightrope walker just has to make the tiniest of errors and he plunges into the abyss. In the case of ICT, these errors were in the areas of financial strategy and managerial appointments and make no mistake about it - the current board have one hell of a situation to rescue.

So perhaps we should look on the said Scottish Cup run and the said encounters with Aberdeen and Celtic from a Faustian perspective. Things were indeed sold to the Devil for 24 more years of life and ICT is - literally - in its 25th year.

Plenty of words but no substance or facts on how it has all gone downhill so quickly from a person who gives the impression that he is in the know.

The reality is we are closer to the relegation playoffs than promotion and to me that is under achieving.

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Gentlemen, gentlemen.

O.K. So youse all went tae the  Academy. Big deal. So did auld Scarlet but he prefers proletariat lingo to that of the Literati so that we all have a chance to get it, like.

But Faust never did wear our blue blazer so, Charlie,  what on earth has his ancient utterings got to do with our plain speaking punters who express valid concerns at this stage of the "rebuild" but also understand that J R has tried very hard to get his ducks all in a row and, not only that, but things were going along rather nicely only a month or so ago were they not? Then the winds suddenly changed without his permission and our Quinquereme started to severely list to port Therefore, IMHO,  he  deserves a second season as Manager.

As for the Board, they do have the rest of the season to attempt to get more moneybags into Tulloch stadium. One swallow in one season does not a summer make.  But, next season  the same kind of consequences may sink our ship. And that 's why there just may be the outside chance that J.R. will decide to jump to starboard.    

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2 hours ago, forresjags said:

Plenty of words but no substance or facts on how it has all gone downhill so quickly from a person who gives the impression that he is in the know.

The reality is we are closer to the relegation playoffs than promotion and to me that is under achieving.

After Tuesday night we could be 12 points clear of the relegation playoffs and only 7 off the promotion playoffs.

So hopefully come Tuesday night we are meeting your expectations.

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2 hours ago, forresjags said:

Plenty of words but no substance or facts on how it has all gone downhill so quickly from a person who gives the impression that he is in the know.

The reality is we are closer to the relegation playoffs than promotion and to me that is under achieving.

It's not really rocket science, and the analogy I used yesterday is still probably the best inasmuch as a tightrope walker survives until there's even a modest disruption - and the effect of that is then catastrophic.

Under Charlie Christie in 2006-7, I'm led to believe that there was a very strict, board-imposed wage limit of £650pw. Combined with crowds a bit higher than latterly in the Premiership because this was still a relative novelty, and probably higher TV money as well, the club just about muddled along in the lower half of the table.

When you get to the Terry Butcher era, well Terry's assertiveness seems to have managed to wheedle a bit more out of the board for wages, but on the other hand he at least partly justified that by making good signings, reaching the Top Six, and gaining the corresponding performance payout. But by now we are into the realms of having to depend on windfalls like high performance payments, transfer fees etc, and when these aren't quite enough, the Social Club also needs to be sold.

Then enter Yogi who flatters to deceive - to a large extent thanks to the team TB put together. But TB's signings begin to move on, so Yogi needs to take in his own, and there are two problems here - most of them were duds and, worse still, even further over the odds seems to have been paid for them. Latterly the Ryan Christie money, for instance, and anything else available, simply disappears into the black hole Yogi has persuaded the Board to extend in order to recruit the said duds.

The club is still, however, hanging on in the Premiership, but by now only by paying way over the odds for players way under the required standard. At this point, the whole thing has become an car crash waiting to happen.... and that car crash is the appointment of Richie Foran. Saddled with a bunch of poor players, lacking the managerial skills to address the situation and allowed by the Board to continue in the job, there's only one place Foran and his team are going - out the door and down a league respectively. By now crowds are also declining so what we have is a relegated club which has allowed all its crown jewels to be blown on an expensive, relegated side. Meanwhile income streams are even lower than before  - hence a £422K loss.

When you have to put round the begging bowl for £450,000 simply to remain solvent, as has just happened, the current situation is more or less inevitable. As for the Faustian bit, everything was thrown into the black hole in exchange for the last few years of life in the Premiership.

The tightrope walker has now fallen from the wire, on which he had for some time enjoyed a charmed life in any case. It would be very wrong to assume that ICT's default position is the SPFL Premiership, where it remained for years courtesy of chickens which have now come home to roost.

Edited by Charles Bannerman
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That's an excellent summary by Charles.  There are 3 ways of getting back into the Premiership.  One is the County route of having a rich benefactor.  However, as this season is showing, splashing the cash is no guarantee of success and despite a budget way above ours, County are in serious trouble.  Having a sugar daddy carries significant risks .  Many a club has gone bust because a chairman used the club as their own vanity project and when the cash stopped coming in, the club was over-committed and couldn't survive.  That is not a price i would want to pay for a few more years in the top flight.

A second way is by increasing revenue by increased gate receipts.This has gone round the houses time and time again and whilst we may think that a city the size of Inverness ought to get more in the way of crowds, it just isn't happening.  No doubt people will keep plugging away but it's not going to happen any time soon.  To feel reasonably secure as a top flight club, we would need to at least double our gates.  

The third option is to punch above our weight.  To a large extent, that is what got us into the premiership in the first place.  St Johnstone have managed this for some while.  The key to this is having a Board which knows what they are doing and who can get the right managers and other backroom staff in.  Whether we have or haven't got that is not something I am qualified to talk about, but what I would say is that John Robertson is more likely to get the team kicking above their weight than either of the last two managers.  

But we have to recognise two brutal truths.  The first is that the Premiership is stronger now.  We were fortunate that our rise coincided with several of the big clubs hitting the self destruct button  in an attempt to compete in an increasingly high money player market.  It will now be far harder to get into and then stay in the top flight.

The second is that we do not have the fan base or regular financial backing to fund a team that can be expected to compete at the top level.  We may get there from time  to time with an exceptional manager and good player recruitment.  But, as we have often experienced, a good manager and good players move on in order to further their careers, and replacing them with guys of the same or even better calibre at a price we can afford is difficult to say the least.  Success will be short lived.

I'm afraid the Championship would appear to be our natural level.  Over stretching ourselves in an attempt to meet unrealistic expectations  will end in tears.  We might find ourselves in the top flight briefly  and equally we may find we slip down a level from time to time.  We need to  enjoy the success when it comes and continue to support the team through the bad times.  A sense of reality will make those cup runs and any promotions to the top flight all the sweeter when they come.

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59 minutes ago, IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER said:

See the source image

An excellent illustration, IHE. The tightrope is there as described, and the safety net corresponds to Tullochs who, once you subtract rent paid for the stadium until now, have been club benefactors to the tune of around £3.5M net of that. Had that safety net not been rushed into place in the early noughties, the club would very probably have disappeared into that whirlpool long since.

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I would have truly loved reading these posts in the Highland League days of the 70's and 80's but I would definitely have blamed the LSD. I for one have relished the journey and we are far from back to where we started. As Titus Livy once said to me in a Sneck Pizzeria "Johndo, Inverness Caledonian Thistle has grown since its humble beginnings that it is now overwhelmed by its own greatness."
 

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2 minutes ago, Charles Bannerman said:

An excellent illustration, IHE. The tightrope is there as described, and the safety net corresponds to Tullochs who, once you subtract rent paid for the stadium until now, have been club benefactors to the tune of around £3.5M net of that. Had that safety net not been rushed into place in the early noughties, the club would very probably have disappeared into that whirlpool long since.

Its not a whirlpool - Its a feckin aquifer :lol:

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18 minutes ago, DoofersDad said:

That's an excellent summary by Charles.  There are 3 ways .......... all the sweeter when they come.

I'm going to indulge in a bit of mutual back scratching here and also commend the above by DD!

Football's wage structure and expectations make it very difficult indeed for a large number of clubs to balance their earnings and their expenditure. In the case of the two Highland clubs, the ICT situation is as already described. Twelve years in the Premiership, ending in a very precarious financial situation, have only been achieved as a result of being propped up by a ballpark £6.5 million of other people's money - mainly Tullochs'. In the case of Ross County, the actual numbers are a lot less accessible but it's very clear that their twice yearly signing spree and a lot more have depended critically on subsidy by Roy MacGregor and very probably others. I would be a bit surprised if the total over the years is any less than the approximate figure quoted for ICT.

The bottom line is that the Inner Moray Firth isn't capable of sustaining two upper tier SPFL clubs with both (or maybe even just one of them) standing on their own two feet. However, although I believe that the Inverness/ Easter Ross population conglomerate is becoming less polarised due to incomers, there is no way that this two club arrangement is going to change. Indeed I'm sure the SFL didn't envisage the progress made by BOTH the neighbouring clubs they elected in 1994 to the extent that they both need the current level of rnourishment from limited local sources. That progress and growth has created an unsustainable and very precarious situation whereby a twitch on the ICT tightrope or the withdrawal of Roy MacGregor could precipitate a collapse which would see much of what has been achieved flushed unceremoniously down Johndo's aquifer.

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On ‎26‎/‎02‎/‎2018 at 12:11 AM, Charles Bannerman said:

I'm going to indulge in a bit of mutual back scratching here and also commend the above by DD!

Football's wage structure and expectations make it very difficult indeed for a large number of clubs to balance their earnings and their expenditure. In the case of the two Highland clubs, the ICT situation is as already described. Twelve years in the Premiership, ending in a very precarious financial situation, have only been achieved as a result of being propped up by a ballpark £6.5 million of other people's money - mainly Tullochs'. In the case of Ross County, the actual numbers are a lot less accessible but it's very clear that their twice yearly signing spree and a lot more have depended critically on subsidy by Roy MacGregor and very probably others. I would be a bit surprised if the total over the years is any less than the approximate figure quoted for ICT.

The bottom line is that the Inner Moray Firth isn't capable of sustaining two upper tier SPFL clubs with both (or maybe even just one of them) standing on their own two feet. However, although I believe that the Inverness/ Easter Ross population conglomerate is becoming less polarised due to incomers, there is no way that this two club arrangement is going to change. Indeed I'm sure the SFL didn't envisage the progress made by BOTH the neighbouring clubs they elected in 1994 to the extent that they both need the current level of rnourishment from limited local sources. That progress and growth has created an unsustainable and very precarious situation whereby a twitch on the ICT tightrope or the withdrawal of Roy MacGregor could precipitate a collapse which would see much of what has been achieved flushed unceremoniously down Johndo's aquifer.

Did Terry Butcher pay over the odds in players pay ? Charles

Did John Hughes not leave because he could not meet the players pay demands?

In American Football, winning the Super bowl and getting the ring is known as the curse of the super bowl ring.

Success has to be matched by a pay rise.  My feeling is we couldn't reward the players for winning the  Scottish cup, so those who could left.

Cup winners expect cup winners pay

Edited by Laurence
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52 minutes ago, MorayJaggie said:

It would appear county are now in free fall. 

John Hughes needs a job. So does Richie Foran lol

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