Leaderboard

Yet another wheel falls off the C*unty Propaganda Caravan. So much for the huge investment they made during the summer to put an end to the drainage issues, turns out all they did was install USH and relay the surface.

Mr megabucks has taken my earlier thread to heart and is now going to invest in a proper drainage system - better late than never I'm really enjoying that the sheen of the early season County hype has been tarnished and the reality is coming out for public display.

This link to The Sun has a picture of the flooding which, despite the caption, appears to be located off the pitch and on the ground where the managers would be. http://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/sport/spl/4721758/Derby-goes-down-drain.html

Our Terry was mentioned on one of the Charlie Nicholas Sly Sports segments. Under Chelsea Manager shock news, manager not sacked yet, Inverness have issued a hands off Butcher message. Not much I know, but touted for the Chelsea job eh

Negativity? All I said was we haven't achieved anything worthy of this outpouring of praise yet, the last two posters haven't exactly changed my mind on that front lol I never said anywhere it was all about to come to an end either, me saying I think we should be doing better isn't being negative at all. Complacency has stopped better teams than ours in this league. I just hope the attitude shown on here doesn't filter into the playing staff, they'll be expecting an open top bus during the winter break for being in the top 6 ffs. It's when we start to take our ability for granted that we won't be coming back from being goals down, you lose all urgency and intensity in play when you assume you'll come back regardless of the effort you put in, its already been evident in our last two draws. When you have players who believe they've already achieved something due to the level of celebration in their honor, aswell as not feeling the need to prove themselves as much, they'll feel they deserve rewarded for it by a better contract, which is something else we're seeing from a couple of players atm. We could end up being the victims of our non-existent success without even playing a game in January.

Keep everyone. Stability is the key in this case. I can see the likes of Oswell going. Billy wont leave unless we get a great offer for him. Cant stop lads leaving if they want to further our careers. If they leave we will replace them. We did it in the summer and we can do it again. Wouldnt want to be Motherwell right now. Murphy is already away. Randolph isnt signing and they have plenty more that will be leaving either now or at the end of the season and with them operating on the losses they have they will struggle to sign players of equal quality.

OOOh dear a little bit too much negativity creeping in, get real, this team has surpassed your expectations, why start wearing the blinkers now? The ICT deserve every bit of praise given to them for the first half of the season they have not beeen negative they have fought like tigers and redeemed themselves on many occasions when they have slipped up, yes two thrashings but lessons were learned and came back all the stronger for it. How much more can you ask of a team on their performance to date. Virtually a new team playing like an established side and you moan, come off it , go and get yourselves some decent glasses, watch carefully the progress the manager and team are makeing and get behind them in a positive manner. Who knows you might even think of getting a rose tint in your lenses by the end of the season. Happy New Year all. . . . . remember the watchword is togetherNess.

Well done to all the people above for making that happen. I'll postpone typing about the team being in 2nd, scoring the most goals in the League, going to a cup semi final for the 1st time in years, having the leagues top goal scorer, having a player who has the most goal assists (if thats still current) and our players being called up for their countries. I'll mention that another time for fear of offending some posters.

Your right Mantis, we have done well, even a non happy-clapper like myself can see that. The tone of your post suggests you're in agreement with me that some on here appear to be going OTT though? We aren't the finished article by a long shot, really open at times and so far this season we haven't really achieved anything. I'd be alot happier if it was the bad luck you talk of that's having us lose out on extra points and not sloppiness or poor preparation, which is how I see it. To me bad luck in football is conceding an exceptionally good goal, a poor refereeing decision, the conditions cancelling us out, a bad deflection or I guess any unpredictable event that any team has to weather over the season. Bad luck isn't conceding when you're defending on your 6 yard line for the last 10 minutes, a poor back pass isn't bad luck, sloppy sideways passing in midfield isn't bad luck, nor is your keeper being beaten by weak shots or giving away corners through flapping bad luck. I'd like to think those praising us aren't doing so in a patronising manner, I know the media are. If we do end up finishing in the top 6 we will rightly take praise but until then we're very much the plucky highlanders who are going above and beyond themselves. I mean there were calls amongst Hibs fans for the manager to get sacked up until they beat Celtic last weekend, yet nobody is commenting on them having an exceptional season? Theyre only 3 points behind us, so you would assume their fans would be as delighted as some of ours are. Same could be said for Aberdeen or Dundee United, both are only a couple of wins away from us yet they're having average seasons. This business of us doing well by our own expectations is nothing but an excuse for playing sh1te and dropping winnable points. Even I've been surprised a few of the new players coming in have been good, they've exceeded my expectations, by all means let us say that. However aslong as we have a team capable of beating most sides in the league then that's what our new expectations should be, once we get back to having a worse side than the likes of Aberdeen, Hibs or Motherwell then we can settle for dropping points and inconsistency. I just worry complacency will put all of our good work to waste, there's no need for it.

A couple of things Clacher: First, down where I live I can't count the number of times people have come up to me and said how well we're doing. They even know some of the players' names....... Contrast that with other years when we got dismissed as a long ball team that scrapped hard for every point. Hibs in particular - they used to say how ugly it was when we came to ER. Second, just as your luck evens out over a season, it more or less does that over a half season too. Every club counts points lost and forgets the lucky points they won. The shadows are saying they NEARLY beat Celtic and lost last minute goals to st mirren, hearts etc, but they forget the dire games like dons away where they got murdered yet escaped with a point. You're just choosing to do it the other way round for a change. Our team are playing with confidence and can recover from going behind (even 3-0!). No predictions, we could lose a couple of players in the window but it would take a real collapse to be as bad as last year. After all, who predicted we could lose Jonny Hayes and not miss him at all?

Global Warming Stadium.

Why did their megabucks sugar daddy not spend a few more quid and get a working drainage system for the pitch.

By the time the game takes place I'm pretty sure County will have strengthened their team, whereas the best we can hope for is that we keep hold of everyone.

Don't know why we are berating C*unty about a postponment. If you ask the fans of Celtic, St Johnston or Q o t S they would brand us as "the joke of the Highlands". Postponments happen.

As we are on page 7 it appears that others don't find it boring. Like it or not the merger is part of ICT.

I'll make a plea to the club to go back to solid red and blue vertical stripes for the next home top. Please!

As an inside outsider, having followed the whole merger shenanigans, I'd have to agree with Caley D the greatest loss from the merger was any sense of history and identity. ICT are perceived by most as a completly new entity with little history. I am aware of the great achievements of both town (city) teams relative to the resources available,also Elgin and County and the injustice of central belt bias in the Ferranti Meadowbank scandal when a strong Inverness Thistle side could have stood it's own no problem. History has a great say in which side was to be the dominant partner in the merger and timing was all, with Caley perceptually being the stronger partner at the time of ICT's conception. Would I be bitter if I was a Thistle fan? You bet yer arse I would! Identity in Football is a massive factor in the supporters psyche and loyalty is engendered from the links with past.Having lived in Sneck far longer than Dundee it would have been a logical and easy step to take up supporting ICT but a sense of history and loyalty bonds me to my roots. In my opinion, ICT need to work on building that sense of history and belonging that is missing at TCS,the young up and coming support have much to be optimistic about, i wouldn't be at all surprised to see the League (Communities) cup end up at TCS this season and Europe is absolutely a reality,the work on the pitch has been an unmitigated success, their needs to be a wee bit more attention to building the identity and history, thus engendering long term loyalty within the support. Just my opinion.

As I've mentioned before , the lack of respect shown to Thistle is the only thing wrong with the merger . Otherwise it has been one success story after another . 2nd in the league , managed by a former Captain of England , and just knocked off Celtic in their own back yard , trust me , it will never be as good as this ever again , but why oh why , the insulting playing strip , how would Caley fans like it if Caley Thistle played in black and red stripes , with a few (almost invisible) blue squiggles through it ?

Havent posted on this thread yet as the merger time was not a particularly happy one for me and I saw a lot of friends take a lot of flak for sticking to their guns and pushing through what we now know was definately the right decision. I, at the time, would have loved Caley to have entered the league on their own but I now believe that they would just be like Elgin, a lower division SFL club. My brother is to this day a refusnick. Theres not many of them left beleive me and as Im always telling him its his loss! As Luke implies this is just history to the younger supporters who have grown up as ICT all their days. Much as I think its important to remember where we came from and for me very happy days, it really is time to move on from this debate.

Capacity of Kingsmills circa 1970 7,550. Full to capacity for a match on a Wednesday night in a match against Celtic to inaugurate our then new floodlights. The Jags won 2-1 against a Celtic XI including a sprinkling of first team players. Until Jock MacDonald had a few dozen seats boarded over to avoid having to comply with safety regulations post the Bradford fire disaster we had the largest Grandstand in the Highland League.

Quite frankly who gives a flying f**k about the merger, we have been a successful club putting the highlands on the Scottish football map and I am happy for it. It's a bit like 20 years after marrying your wife still obsessing about the the guy she pumped before you met.