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I don't think we'll see many changes - last season for the games against Arbroath and Stenhousmuir we only made a couple of switches. I wouldn't mind seeing Agdeistein and Polwarth getting a run out, in place of McKay and Vincent. Esson to come back into goals as well.

The Wine Shed

Vincent is a different player from Andy Shinnie, as every one recognises. However it is no coincidence we are defensively stronger this year, as Vincent has far more defensive awareness than Shinnie had, and as a result are not as open as last year. Aberdeen set their stall out yesterday to stop us playing, and it clearly worked. Given Aberdeen are being widely tipped to be second this year, it is testament to how far we have come, when one of the better teams respects us in this way. I agree that Billy was isolated yesterday, and we never looked threatening, but apart from one piece of quality it had 0-0 written all over it. I wish we could develop another way of playing, so we can change it when our playing style is being negated, but we have to remember we do extremely well given our resources, and maybe this is the restricting factor in being able to change the style we play. However, when put into context we have still got 16/21 points, and been to both Celtic Park and Pittodrie, an excellent return. Onwards and upwards

Think you're being very unfair there. In recent times we've been incredibly successful in retaining the players we want to keep - nearly all of last years squad, for example. Getting Billy Mckay on a 2 year extension when he was the league's top scorer? Incredible. As for the names you quote, they are the exceptions and in each case were up and coming players who perhaps didn't want to tie themselves to us for more than a season, to keep their options open. It's incredibly hard to retain top talent with the very limited budget we have and I don't think anyone can seriously complain about our success rate.

I still think it was over the line and it would definitely have been in had it not struck the arm of the Aberdeen defender en-route to the saving boot !

1. DO YOU OR HAVE YOU EVER WORN A NORMALL FOOTBALL SHIRT? Yes 2. IF YES! WHAT CLUB OR COUNTRY DID YOU CHOOSE TO WEAR? ICTFC, MUFC, Scotland, Australia 3. DO YOU OR HAVE YOU EVER WORN A RETRO FOOTBALL SHIRT? Yes 4. IF YES! WHAT CLUB OR COUNTRY DID YOU CHOOSE TO WEAR? Scotland 5. DO YOU PREFER TO WEAR A NEW OR RETRO FOOTBALL TOP? New 6. DO YOU WEAR YOUR TOP OTHER THAN TO A FOOTBALL MATCH? YES 7. WHERE DO YOU BUY YOUR FOOTBALL SHIRTS FROM? Online 8. WHAT WAS THE REASON FOR YOUR CHOICE? Design of the shirt, price, colour. 9. IF YOU WERE TO BUY A FOOTBALL TOP IN THE FUTURE; EITHER NEW OR RETRO, WHERE WOULD YOU BUT IT FROM? ICTFC Club Shop 10. WOULD LOYALTY TO YOUR CLUB OR COUNTRY STOP YOU FROM WEARING A RETRO TOP FROM ANOTHER CLUB OR COUNTRY? NO

Really poor game especially from an ICT point of view. We lacked any real urgency to try and score aside from the last few minutes when we were already losing. Aberdeen probably edged the first half in that they had the better chances to score but we perhaps had more of the ball. Hayes was whipping in some great corners for the Dons players to attack and Brill looked sharp to turn a couple of efforts away. I don't think we would have had many complaints if Aberdeen went in one up at the break. I can't really recall anything of note from Inverness in the first half in an attacking sense. Doran and Ross did okay when they rarely got ball in wide areas but they seemed to get bypassed as ball after ball was punted towards a very isolated Mckay. Draper probably had our best chance when he hit a tame effort to Langfields left post. We started the second half a wee bit better than Aberdeen and had a couple of half chances before the game went back to a bit of a midfield scrap. Only a couple of things worth talking about in the second half. The goal was an excellent piece of skill by Vernon. Controlling the ball under pressure from behind he quickly spun and rifled a shot past Brill into the next. After this we suddenly seemed like we wanted to try and score and the game became very open as we pressed for an equaliser and Aberdeen looked to exploit us on the counter. Best chance fell to Meekings or Warren who headed goalwards and it seemed to come off someone on the line perhaps even an ICT player but I couldn't see well from the other end of the pitch. Overall no significant grumbles about the result just very disappointing that we played so poorly. There seemed to be a complete lack of ability to feed the ball through midfield and bring the attacking three behind Mckay into play. I guess this is (partly) down to Aberdeen packing three midfielders in the middle of the pitch and stifling us but I also think we just didn't look as sharp as we did at the start of the season. Doran and Ross barely saw the ball in the second half and Vincent was anonymous for significant parts of the game. We badly lacked someone playing behind Mckay who could retain the ball whilst under pressure and take it away from goal i.e. Andrew Shinnie. We also had no real creative spark in the middle of the pitch either. Craig Thomson had a rotten game. Beggars belief that he is viewed so highly.

Collected a signed top from Laura this afternoon, kindly supplied by the club! will hand it over to Lawson quite soon, i'll let you know how we get on!

This thread is magnificent!

If we freed up Billy's wages and sold him for £50k we could maybe afford to get Barrowman back. Might surprise our opponents, nobody would expect it.