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If I get on a train between the times of the ban then I'm likely to be too p!ssed to drink anyway.

Now that Rangers are potentially out of the way for a minimum 3 season that we have a fight to make an impact on the SPL. All the pressure is with Celtic and the media will go into "Treble" overload. All the other teams have nothing to lose but to fight it out for 2nd place and the league & Scottish Cups. I believe this is our best opportunity to kick some A*se in this division. And remember; there isnt a team in the SPL that we have not beaten convincingly over the last few years, so we are more than capable of holding our own. We have lost a lot of good players and it will take time for the newbies to settle and gel, but gelling a team is one of Butchers talents. Im happy to say it nice and early I BELIEVE! Anybody else?

The problem is that in the current Scottish football financial mess the board need to attract more funding just to survive as a club. We can‘t afford anyone else. However i am happy with the squad and we appear to be better prepared tthan last year. There is so much potential in our squad. I‘m looking forward to the new season.

Hope that is just a keyboard slip and not a reference to donkeys or the like....

This seems to have arisen because Sky have removed the slot from their schedules. There is now nothing where there used to a TBC entry. If they were pulling out I would not have thought they would remove the fixtures from the schedules before making a statement. The other way of looking at this is that they are just about to confirm the schedules. There are also rumours floating around that South Africa scored 637 for the loss of only 2 wickets against England, that Ernie Els won the Open and that a British rider has won the Tour de France. All just fanciful nonsense, of course.

Wonder if the SPL can't meet their contractual responsibilities with the SFL if that will sign the death knell for the SPL and a return to reality for Scottish Football? Would be good to get back to a previous time when the wee doggie of Scottish Football stopped eternally humping the leg of the monstrous self-important OF, like this--> and remembered that no other league anywhere wants them....because if they did they wouldn't still be here causing all these problems..so Scottish football is the only game in town for them. There are no bears, even the very few non-vituperative ones on forums, who even remotely consider that Rangers is no more and that Sevco are a new club with no playing history, no silverware and are, into the bargain, flaming lucky to have been able to get into any league at all, without also having to buy an up and running club and replacing them as Airdrie United had to do, given the Newco has just been invented out of clear air. Reading the Rangers forums, the punters are quite blithely throwing around the prospect of 3rd division wages of £5000 plus for their players...which is where all this came in in the first place, methinks..buying success.

excellent thread, no mention of munro, duncan or tokely so things must have gone ok

Excellent performance. As I've always said, ICT are a far better team when the balls on the deck and some of the passages of play (particularly for the third goal) were really good, even more so when you consider the amount of new additions. Doran was very good, the two Shinnie's will be big players this season and I think Draper shows signs that he'll come on to a good game. Unlike last season, that team looks like a much more solid unit, with each player doing their job very well in the grander machine. Two points of note though - McKay, while a good player, is not a lone frontman. He needs support. I'd like to see him and Oswell getting a run together as that could be a combination that works well for both players attributes. The tactical game for me this season would be to scrap the 4-2-3-1, and go for either a straight 4-3-3 or a 4-4-2 Diamond with Foran moved out to wide left, Doran at wide right, Oswell and McKay up top, with Shinnie in the "hole". The other point, which is linked to the above, regards Shane Sutherland. The guy is not, has not and will never be a winger. He's a battering ram centre forward and nothing else. There's no point in saying, "well, he might come good". He won't, as he doesn't have the pace, balance, the ball work or the physical build to do that job. Overall a good display and the kind of football that we need to see next year. PS - Since when was Ruud Gullit Coventry manager?!

County beat Elgin 4 -1 today after also having beaten Coventry midweek. It sounds as though the 2 Highland teams could be well matched this season. If we are playing a more attractive style of football this season then it could be a pretty memorable season. Bring it on.

Impressed with todays display. Defensively we were as solid as weve looked in ages and thats even with out King, Warren and Hogg in the team. Glad to hear Raven is ok, was a bad knock he took. Draper got into his stride a bit more as well and he seemed to grow in confidence as the game went on. Pick of the bunch for me was Graeme Shinnie. He defended solidly and bombed forward on a few occasions, also worth noting he set up 2 out of the 3 goals. Feeling a bit more confident about the season ahead now. Cant emphasise enough how important it is keeping A Shinnie and Doran fit but hopefully we should hold our own.

They're just a wee diddy third division team. Who gives a fekk!!!

The reason we have no coloured players this season is that those who were offerred contracts decided not to accept them. But I agree with others here that a lot of what is perceived by the politically correct brigade as racist is simply banter and there is nothing malicious about it. Skin colour is simply a visible characteristic in the same way as height or weight or hair colour. However, if you make a comment about a person and make reference to their skin colour it is somehow deemed as a racist remark but make the same comment about another person in the same situation and make reference to hair colour then that is fine. There will be those who will acuse folk who called Claude Gnapka lazy as being racist by picking on him, but in reality they picked on him for being lazy because he was lazy and not because he was black and lazy. Of course we would be naive to think that racism is a thing of the past and there are still a lot of people in this country who will pick on, abuse and attack poeple simply because of the colour of their skin. That must be awful for the victims and I guess over-sensitises people to innocent banter and leads the PC brigade to over-play their hand. People actually stop treating people equally because the PC brigade, rather perversely, keep banging on about minority rights and draws attentions to the differences rather than what we share in common. By overstating the "rights" of minority groups and finding discrimination where none exists the PC brigade actually create a resentment against the very groups they are theoretically championing. So to answer the question, no, I don't think the club could be called racist and I've never heard what could be called racist abuse at the TCS. I am sure we would welcome anyone to the club as long as they could play football. It doesn't matter whether they are black, white, yellow, green, red or multicoloured. Anyone will be welcome ...... ..... as long as they haven't got a blue nose.

bighead

Why didnt the "powers that be" get together for next Saturday's friendlies. Clach v Hearts (quite interesting)(especially with ICT playing Hearts at least twice in the next season) and ICT v Coventry City (interesting really only for us ICT fans). Could some heads not have got together and had one game early and one a bit later and then the total football fans could have watched both games, encouraged both Inverness teams and more money into both turnstiles. Needed some "joined up thinking" but didnt happen as both ko's are 3pm.