Leaderboard

That was an utter embarrassment. Hibs fans won't be able to believe their luck. They were hopeless, disorganized and couldn't put two passes together - so what does that say about us? I'm sure there will be plenty of apologists who come on and say "we had all the possession", "we created chances", "we've had lots of players injured" - these excuses don't wash with me. Our two goals today were a penalty (which looked a bit soft from my view) and a fluke. McKay has played 1,182 minutes of football this season, all at centre forward, and scored one goal. It's more than 1,000 minutes since he last scored. I don't give a damn if he runs a lot and his link-up play is good - it clearly isn't helping the team. He may work harder than big lugs like Garry O'Connor, or Scott Vernon (Aberdeen), or Paul Heffernan (Kilmarnock), or Steven Thompson (St Mirren)...but these guys have all scored far more goals. Tade had a mare on Wednesday, and picked up where he left off; his touch was dreadful and, like McKay, he too made an arse of a one-on-one. Our midfield were pretty dreadful today aside from Hayes (who, apart from a good ten minutes at the start, did little else until his moment of good fortune). I'm sick of watching Tansey apologize to teammates a dozen times a game for giving the ball away cheaply. Foran looked slow and his touch was rotten. These guys have started 28 and 31 league games respectively - what do they have to do to get dropped? Gavin Morrison couldn't be any worse than they are. Graeme Shinnie looked like what he was - a full-back who was out of position. As for the defence...well, watching that would have left Alan Hansen contemplating suicide. Tokely just decided to watch and admire Hanlon's run and free header for their first. Neither of our two left-backs could stop their winger crossing for the second - and O'Connor was given all the time in the world to score. As for the third, Meekings and Tokely just stood off and watched, and even then Griffiths' shot should have been better dealt with by Tuffey. I thought Golobart did all right, but is it possible for a defender to be MOTM when his team have conceded three? As soon as we concede a goal now, we cave in and our manager does not know what to do to turn things around. He has no plan B. His substitutions are bizarre - even though we were losing, he still took 79 mins to make one sub - and then brought two guys on in injury time. What is the point of that? It is clear to see there are no tactics - he simply chooses eleven players and a formation and leaves them to get on with it. There is no organization, and I don't believe there is much motivation either. Few, if any of the ICT team look like they want to be out there playing football. So our last 9 games read as one win, three draws and five defeats, 6 scored, 16 conceded. Remember the end of the 2007-08 season, when we only won three of the last sixteen under Brewster? Watching Caley then felt a lot like watching them right now does. And remember what happened the season after that...

Two games in a row where we have had the lion's share of possession and couldn't turn it into wins. At this rate we could finish 11th and be firm favourites for relegation next season. Our strikers couldn't light a match! Two 90th minute substitutions! Not for the first time this season I ask what on earth the point of that is. Despite many of the posters on here being tolerant of Terry, my patience has now worn thin. He clearly talks the talk, but as he has shown at other clubs before, he doesn't walk the walk. His tactics have been suspect all season. We have massively regressed this season. We can't use the injuries excuse any longer - all clubs get injuries. Many other clubs would have binned Terry by now. In the recent poll about how satisfied people are with him, I voted 'fairly dissatisfied'. I'd now change it to 'very dissatisfied'. I fear the man is a 'chancer', an opinion I felt right from day one, but fought hard to repel for over two seasons, but now I think I was right all along.

Is it true that Butcher wouldn't speak to the media after the game? Presumably he's trying to work out how to explain to the press that this defeat, like all of our defeats, is everyone else's fault but his. And, of course, he'll tell them that he's going to make 42 changes to the starting lineup for next week.

Luke, I admire your optimistic view but have to disagree with some. TB is responsible for the team he has assembled. He sourced them, he gave them contracts and he sets them out for every match. He is no different from any other manager in this regard as they all 'live or die' by their choices. I don't necessarily believe that dismissal (even if we could afford it thanks to the new contracts awarded) is the right call but I do expect him to be scrutinised in what he chooses to do. Blind faith is all very well but....

Cruising at 1-0 up......Tade (motm wtf? surely chosen by a Hibee!) misses the one-on-one (which if he'd scored the game's all over).....Hibs equalise from a corner.....then the epic (Brewsteresque) collapse !!! Embarassing ! I've always been fully supportive of Butcher but tonight I'm having doubts. My shoes are still on but I don't know how much more of this I can take !

FOOK aff with the talks of budgets etc. ICT NEVER needed them before....as we had teamspirit. and THAT is what we are missing now. I dont know if its because most of the team are on short term contracts or on loan...but NONE of them seem to be playing with any passion for the club. Most are mercinaries and would jump ship if they got an extra fiver in their wagepacket. Thats how i see it. ICT strength lay in the camoradarie of the team......a few new faces every season...no wholsesale changes.....and it worked for us.....until tinkering terry came along. Well, i hate to say it...but i believe we have seen all we are going to see from him, i would be preparing for a survival scrap next season

I despair. That's all.

I'm not massively up for managers slagging off individual players - what does it do to confidence? Especially since Gillet has been as good as anyone this season, Tokely had come off two excellent performances against Aberdeen and St Johnstone (and for me is still a full-back filling in at centre-half), and Meekings is a young boy still learning his trade. As regards Meekings, Butcher has more experienced options (Proctor, Piermayr and Tokely himself) but keeps picking Josh, so the buck stops with the boss. If Butcher feels the need to criticize individuals then why not start with those a bit more deserving of the criticism, such as our esteemed undroppable captain, the esteemed undroppable Tansey, or the esteemed undroppable McKay? The latter in particular is clearly so bereft of confidence anyway that you couldn't make him any less effective in front of goal by whinging about him to the media. Or, how about for once TB says "I picked those defenders that couldn't defend worth a damn, those midfielders who can't run, can't tackle and can't pass, and those forwards who couldn't hit a cow's backside with a banjo, so the buck stops with me"?

Inverness Caledonian Thistle manager Terry Butcher : "That 90 minutes just encapsulated our season. "In some parts, we were very good, but in other parts of the game we were absolute rubbish. "We gave away a soft goal at the first because Ross Tokely was not marking his man. Kenny Gillet was then at fault for the second goal and Josh Meekings the third. "In the second half, we had the back-four from hell." Worst post match interview ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How can he blame his 787869774769308757th back four when he changes the back four 75629573205757603728568569 times?!?! There was never enough injuries in the season to warrant as many changes as he did to the back four! Blame game again from Butcher and surprisingly no mention of Tade, Tansey, Foran, McKay, ad any other player. Obviously this is a snapshot from the BBC but if this is the crux of the interview then we need to get shot of this man! What a poor poor poor excuse.

Lets be honest.....we still went down in out first half season with Butcher, a situation which was salvageable when he took over. Second season, we went up from a league which is notriously difficult to win. Season three.....we allow Butcher to throw the whole ICT ethos out the windows and we have struggled ALL season, and have regularly played some of the most clueless football i have seen from an ICT team. Thank fook we have had a team who couldnt buy a win at home all season in the league....or we would have been looking at our second relegation under Butcher in three seasons

I don't think we were poor. We just don't have a striker. We dominated today. They had Griffiths and O'Connor. We had Tade and McKay. Had we a Rooney, we would have stuffed them today. But we didn't and those players are hard to find. No need to slate the rest of the team though. We were better than Hibs besides the (very important) points listed above. We got mugged by an inferior team.

Thats quite a statement. Explain?

Lost for words - we could actually could go down if Dunfermline weren't so poor. There is something truly missing from this team.

They deserve another season as their genius revoloution that was supposed to be put in place this season has be de railed by injuries, harsh red cards etc etc. It cannot be denied that the signings of this season alone have all shown flashes of quality when they have played but what they have not shown and what was clearly evident today and has been seen throughout this season is an outrageous lack of fight, a lack of bottle. Hibs were there for the taking today and we let that slip through our fingers because we simply bottled every chance that came our way today apart from a penalty and a feckin cross (not many more of them will hit the back of the net.) We were a solid unit last season because the team we had then was a closely knitt squad that had a great understanding of each other and how they worked. I saw none of that today and the fact that we are still getting things like that wrong at this stage of the season is making me sick of going to games. It was the closely knitt squad we got promoted with that should have been built upon, rather than a mass exodus. Terry and Mo still have a chance to save themselves but only if they are wiser in the market this summer. What we are needing is some more experience and some more quality and i can only hope they are given some of the Muirfield Investment to do so. Im also fairly sure that with the money in his pocket Terry would be able to attract a higher and better quality of player, the better the quality then the better we will be. If he takes another summer of recruiting youngsters from down south then he can kiss any support and probably our SPL status goodbye.

I post about how bad we are because ***NEWSFLASH*** we are worse than bad, we are relegation material. This season we've been bloody fortunate that Dunfermline just happen to be worse than we are. I'm confident on showings like today, Hibs will finish above us. Don't be surprised to see us as bookies favourites for the drop next season. Being better than the opposing team for 64mins, isn't good enough. You can't polish a turd but you're certainly doing your best to roll it in glitter, eh? You're saying that the only difference was that they had better finishers. Well is that not fundamental to the game?! Who's fault is it that we don't have clinical finshers? Who's fault is it that we're stuck with a clueless but hard working First Division level forward who can't finish a fish supper?...

If you control a game and do nothing up front to put the game to bed then it's all for nothing. It's a results business. IMO that's simply wasting chances and possession, not excellent play. Even after going one up we couldn't kill the game off. When things start to go wrong we don't seem to have the resilience to dig deeper and turn it around, which is worrying. TB needs to take more proactive action when things are not working, Tade should have been hooked for Winnall after an hour, take off McKay for Sutherland (not at 90 mins!), why not? In fact why not start the next game with Gnakpa and Winnall, I always feel Tade would be beter as an impact player who could come on at around 75/80 mins and use his power and strength to go for tired defenders. Regardless Terry has his favourites it seems and they are above being dropped/criticism. It's not all Butcher's fault of course, some of the players need to have a word with themselves. Hibs didn't deserve to win, but they scored 3 and we scored 2, unfortunately that's all that matters at the end of the day. Another dram methinks. Sigh. Edit- Didn't realise Gnapka wasn't on the bench, doh!

I'm sorry, but what? I can only assume that you're on anti-depressants or something but really there's no excuse for the rainbows you're vomiting in that post. The entire team (Hayes excepted) was crap from start to finish. OK, so Tansey got on the score sheet with a well taken penalty and he had a better than average game but I'm afraid a better than average game is just not good enough. Our team as a whole, is just not good enough. The fact that we have to solely rely on Hayes is nothing short of a joke. It's not really saying a lot though to say "we were better than Wednesday"... Faint praise and all that. I admit on first reading, I thought that's what was said too but on reading it again, I interpret it to mean they only intend on attending the derby games. Which by the way, myself and my mate had decided on long before todays result and it's very safe to assume that there are many current season ticket holders will do similar. ~£300 to watch absolute horsesh*t like that is not value for money. Even the money involved in attending one game does not represent value for money right now.

Someone give tm4tj a hug!

Was in a local sport shop in Edinburgh back in 1995 and they had a rack of miscellanous footie tops and I happened to pick the home top from that season. Bit naff and girly I guess but haven't looked back since!

As for those folk who keep saying "who would we get to replace Butcher? We can't do better than him" - look at St Johnstone who dared to give the untried Owen Coyle a chance (did very well, moved on to better things), replaced him with the novice Derek McInnes (did very well, moved on to better things), then came up with rookie Steve Lomas who seems to be doing all right... ...of course the risk is that for every Derek Adams (taking County to the SPL) there is a Scott Leitch (who took County to the second division). But Butcher increasingly resembles an old dog who can't learn new tricks. His 'let's get it up 'em' style appears increasingly obsolete in a modern world where the successful coaches are the ones who know how to set a team up.tactically, and who do enough research to know that, if you press our back line high up the pitch, we'll spend 90 minutes punting high balls at our 5'7" striker instead.

Re Butchers comments - I can understand his frustration as the game was there for the taking and I for one was really frustrated at the teams inability to put this game away. But I unlike he has the ability to change things when it is just not working. Was nervous about this game from the moment I posted my money with Mr Coral midweek based mostly on our previous performances against Hibs and watching it reinforced those fears. Yes on another day we could have won 3 or 4 nil but there never appears to be another day and the longer this game went on I was expecting a sucker punch but instead was forced to watch three. The third was just unforgivable for professional footballers. One thing that is for sure is that without Hayes next season we will be a much poorer team and retaining his services must be a priority. Would not be shocked if he ends up being part of the Hibs rebuild in the summer.

agree with annie mac. since when has richie foran been a central midfield player, not so much a criticism but he arrived as a centre-forward and what we are lacking is a goal-scoring centre-forward why persevere with him in this holding role. would really like to see morrison or nick ross in there alongside tansey but that's never going to happen is it ?.

Have to disagree with gillet out. He had a poor game today however many times this season I've felt he has been MOTM. Starting to agree regarding Foran, he has desire but he's really beginning to irritate me, often giving the ball away then whining that it was the recipients fault. First half today was a joy to watch but must take our chances and build on our corners. 9 in the first half yet all wasted.

Still seething at today's performance. We did it in August against them and again today. Yes there have been highlights through the season but too few and not consistently enough. I don't think it is too much to expect a win today against a Hibs side that are probably the poorest footballing side in the SPL and if anything were worse today than when they beat us 0-1. I don't think we need a full scale clear out but it will need 3 or 4 new players to be added to the squad. The biggest challenge is how do we change tactically to take the next step forward. I know we are not the worst team in this league but at times we like to show that we could be. A new approach is required soon or the rot will set in. Six games to go for these players to show that they want to be part of the set up next season and for our management team to show they have the ability to actually do it.

I agree with much of this. Gillet did have a bad day today. But over the season he has been one of Terry's better imports, even winning Player of the Month a couple of times. I'd give him the benefit of the doubt as it was his first game back after injury. Generally I prefer him at left back to Shinnie. I agree re Foran, McKay, Tansey, Tade. But why did you stop there? Meekings?, Williams? Gnapka? And probably one or two others! Terry made it evident at the start of the season, by his clear out of most of the ICT old guard, that he wanted his 'own team'. Well he has got it and it is clearly much poorer than the old one. So the buck must stop with Terry.

I dont know what to say, Im lost for words, if we got points for corners and wasted chances we would be top of the league.

'Team of strangers' 'No day off' 'No one is safe' etc IMO will be the order of the day.

I wouldnt even give players like Winnall a chance unless Butcher knows they will be here next season much like Doran. Play players who will be here next year and build the team around that.

We should've won that match by half time. It was so so one sided, we just couldn't score. Second half...hmmm, still more chances, yet we rely on a penalty, and a flukey cross going in for our goals. While Hibs play woefully all game, make 3 chances in the whole game, and come away with the win. How Tade is playing at this level is beyond me. He's got no control, can't score, and little else close to skill. Why Butcher ever took Winnall on loan is a mystery, as he must be seriously pish if Tade gets a game ahead of him. Then again, who knows, as he's been given barely a chance to prove himself. Same with Sutherland. The lad looked like he had a bit of promise when he was used last year, but he seems to be turning into the new Rory McCallister this. McKay will come good I reckon. His overall play is very good, and to be fair, he's been a bit unlucky with the chances he's had in the last few matches. To many players (Foran, Tansey, to name 2) seem to want to walk the ball into the net when a chance comes their way, and it's infuriating to see chance after chance go begging. Thankfully this season is nearly over. It'll be interesting to see the transfer activity in the summer. If we lose Hayes we're going to be relegation favourites next season for sure.

so much sympathy for terry, as imo, he put the correct team out and got his tactics spot-on. tade has missed far too many 1 on 1s this season and mckay has 1 goal all season. the game should have been put to bed before ht.

Gregory Tade man of the match ..... easy seeing its April Fools day !!!

I'm not saying Jefferies is who i want to replace Butcher but if he came to be new manager he is more than adequate to do the job. Whats wrong with Jefferies? I think he established himself well as Hearts manager both times and when at Kilmarnock finished in the top six 3 or 4 times. Has Butcher got a better record than that? Geez i don't think so

Amen to that...i think sheer Desperation is the answer!

I know everone will be fuming about this massivelt disappointing defeat, but we actually got most things right today. Dominated possession, created plenty of good chances and restricted the opponents to 3 chances. Sadly It all came down to taking chances, and this game highlighted (yet again) the inadequacy of our forwards when it come to finishing. Sigh.

Why Tudor-jones never started is a bit strange. And I think McKay has to be dropped and we try Winall for last few games. We need goals and McKay ain't where they are coming from. Defensively we were poor and back to the usual ICT score a goal and lose one within five minutes. RAGING today. Need this season over. Regroup and get some new faces in. And obviously hope Dunfermline keep losing!!!

Butcher is completely to blame for this defeat!

I hope they are ready to hit the road running because the current ICT Board have resigned en masse this morning.

They have been found guilty. Pair of total ersehiles.

In my opinion, we are still one win away from safety and that status is far from guaranteed after a frankly disappointing season when we have definately gone back from where we were this time last year. We are fortunate that the Pars have been even less reliable in defence than ourselves and that Hibs are at sixes and sevens. We have similar resourses to St Johnstone and, in comparison with them, have definately under achieved.

Bizarre that a coalition with absolutely no democratic mandate in Scotland is trying to dictate the terms of our future choice. Of the elected Scottish politicians, 188 in total (129 MSPs and 59 MPs), the twins of evil muster 32 between them! A mere17% of the electoral representation. You have a SoS for Scotland who is arguing against his own partys policy regarding voting age entitlement and a Prime Minister that is desperate for Scotland to be independent to insure a Thatcheresque future for his beloved nation! Freedom and self determination is being offered in late 2014. Do we, as a nation, have the courage to grasp it or are we destined to leave our childrens futures in the hands of others? My head says yes, my heart says yes.