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I can't help but feel we've backed ourselves into a corner into accepting a cut price offer for his real worth. Celtic know that we want any deal to include a loan back option and also that we need money to strengthen the squad. Hughes has been banging on about this for so long we may as well have included a 'For Sale' sign on Christie's strip the last few weeks. With only a couple of days to go to allow us to use any money from a transfer to improve the team Celtic can come in with a 'cut price' offer for Christie and we will be forced to accept it to get some money now or run the risk of letting him sign a PCA in January and still have no money to strengthen the side.

Perhaps the most depressing aspect of this thread is that it was started back in January yet now, as we are on the cusp of September, the matter of a replacement striker appears no closer to being resolved.

KB, I'm talking about when the original deals were negotiated, not when the damage is already done and other clubs had become interested. No club would sniff about or offer pre-contract when they were both 21 because ICT would be paid a youth development fee. At that point we should be making the decision on what potential the players have and offering suitable contracts to take them to 24. Seeing both these players leave at age 23, as soon as we are no longer due compensation, isn't a mistake I would expect to be made by any of the other teams in the SPFL.

Get Harry Chibber on the board ,and the future will be bright !!!!!!

Pretty sure the Scottish window shuts tomorrow at midnight

I agree, I would prefer he said nothing than stuff like "when the old firm come calling you do not say no". Ryan has a decision to make and comments like this will only encourage him to join Celtic, in the meantime rubbing salt in it for us. Is there any need to publicly tell Ryan that he can't say no to Celtic? Agree - I thought that was a particularly naive comment. I also wasn't very keen to hear JH say that Ryan is a Celtic fan. Honesty is one thing, but there is a real skill to effective communication and these comments in particular were not very pallitable to ICT fans. If this was a genuine club strategy, then it should have been meticulously planned before the end of last season, discussed with the player and then conducted behind closed doors while Hughes went searching for effective replacements for Shinnie, Mckay and Watkins. Now it is all too late and we're not in a position to spend any cash wisely (just panic buys). Hope the Stokes deal comes off in the short term, but please, please, please plan for next season or there will be an exodus in June which will cripple us.

I think that is fair. They are not going to pay a million when they can sign him on a pre-contract in 4 months.

I agree, I would prefer he said nothing than stuff like "when the old firm come calling you do not say no". Ryan has a decision to make and comments like this will only encourage him to join Celtic, in the meantime rubbing salt in it for us. Is there any need to publicly tell Ryan that he can't say no to Celtic?

Well it is depressing enough being stripped of our best players after last season, but with Hughes having broadcast Ryan's availability, and Celtic cannily leaving it until the end of the transfer window, we will no doubt be taken for a ride yet again. We ought to be safeguarding our interests, especially by insisting on hefty sell-on fees, but I have no faith in our negotiating ability after this latest blunder.

There's not really any better alternative to what we're doing though unless Ryan was to sign a new contract with us. If we kept Ryan until January because no club met his asking price in this window, he would sign a PCA as you say and leave for nothing next summer. The other option would be to hope that a club was willing to pay £1 million, or whatever you deem to be his true worth, in this window - which might not happen. That's a pretty big risk to take; cash up front and a loan back until the end of the season is the best option for us. However, it could be argued that the board should have got him tied up on a long-term deal much sooner which I certainly agree with. Ryan is contracted to us till 2017 due to having a year's option on his existing contract so would not have left for nothing next summer The trouble is he's not contracted to us until 2017. The 'year's option' thing is something the club announce quite regularly when announcing new contracts but is utterly misleading. Unless the club have a commitment in the original contract to keep and pay the player for that extra year then the club cannot commit the player to that additional year no matter what the original contract states. Basic employment law. It means nothing and I wish our club would stop doing it. If we wanted to tie Ryan down for three years we should and could have offered him at least a three year contract to begin with. It's what the Likes of Dundee United and Hamilton do an benefit from it to the tune of millions of pounds. High time we learned our lesson so that we don't lose our next outstanding youngster for a few hundred thousand pounds. If we had given Ryan a proper and enforceable three year contract at the time we would almost certainly be looking at a fee that would guarantee keeping us in the black for four seasons.

If he goes and we get him and Stokes on loan, then 20% of our outfield team will be ineligible to play agains Celtic. I assume sponge bob square head John Collins will be in the media how this helps create the strong opposition they need to avoid getting regularly pumped out of the Champions League

Haha not a chance.... I couldn't take the criticism! Might be a few quid short as well.

Stokes certainly sweetens this deal - there's no doubt he's a quality striker, although I don't care much for some of his antics off the field. Right now, however, he'll give us exactly what we're missing and the rest of the season will look a lot brighter.......until he gets injured, of course!

I count 'only' 8 red cards for Hearts in 37 games refereed by Collum - which tallies with the total worked-out on the Hearts forum, Jambos Kickback. (should have looked there first!) For comparison, I've totalled the number of sendings off for Premiership clubs in all Willie Collum matches, in all competitions. Interestingly, he's taken exactly the same number of Kilmarnock and Hearts games, but there's a significant difference in red cards! Doesn't stop Killie fans moaning about him, though!

I think people are panicking too early. I'm far from a happy clapper, and although I understand the frustration, things are not as bad as being portrayed. Barring two stupid last minute equalisers, our very patched up side which started the season would have us sitting outside the top six only on goal difference. The margins in this league are very small, as outside of Celtic and Aberdeen(and arguably Hearts) there is absolutely nothing between the rest of the sides. If we can bring in a striker, get the likes of Meekings, Vincent and Roberts(who I'm really excited by) back as soon as possible, and stop the bombshell that is Carl Tremarco self destructing then we will be absolutely fine. Keep the faith guys, and the #TogetherNess that makes our club so special

We ARE only a small club. A nationally renowned club but with a regular fan base of around 2500 and a small budget we are undoubtedly a small club. That is quite simply a matter of fact. *losing As for the shirts, it's not a matter of when the shirts are available but that the fans buy them when they are. If you had the money to buy one in June why not keep it aside? Though I do feel a pre order system at least would help. We are now an established SPFL club and Scottish Cup Winners.. as for attendances we are only ever going to increase the gates by showing ambition and by being a progressive club. Apart from the big boys our attendances are competitive with others in the division. I would like to see our net spend for this year (in terms of new contracts) compared to last and with others in the division because I am sure we are well behind the rest of them. No, its not a matter of simply keeping money aside for strips. When are you more likely to buy a new strip? a) when you have just won the Scottish Cup and are competing in Europe with the hope and expectancy of the new season or b) when we are no longer in Europe, memories of the Scottish Cup win are fading* and we are 6 games in without a win and scored only 4 goals and worse yet - County are flying. That's for existing fans. What about new fans that we could have attracted after the Scottish Cup Win, are they still likely to keep money aside for a new top? It's supply and demand. We had the demand and still have no supply. Also Cabrini? The fans are paying the same price for football tops that are being made by an inferior brand ... Imagine a new fan or a fan that is being swayed towards ICT, went to the final celebrated with the rest of us. Loved it! ICT release 2 new nice as **** adidas tops (just for 1 season) ... guaranteed sales. Fans delighted walking about wearing these tops, others see them and also want one.. sales spike and ICT has not only made a profit on purchases but also have recruited a new set of fans. An adidas ICT top is more of a pipe dream but even stay with Errea for one more season and just make sure that we have tops available for any potential new fans! If making a new deal with Cabrini ... insist that we have our new strips before now... better yet get ahead of the game and strike a deal before last season had ended!! Show a bit of organisation .... do your job. * to be fair will take a long time before I forget that day

It's a very famous business cliché and is as relevant to our situation as any. It isn't even speculating in the cases for Shinnie and Ross, both have left the club for absolutely nothing due to lack of foresight. We should never have let their contracts end at age 23 when they could walk away the club without us receiving any compensation for their youth development. When contracts were being negotiated this should have been the first thing to take into consideration. Of course players/agents have a say in this but we should have absolutely insisted on this point for our 2 of our own. Why am I not surprised that you would come to defence of the club. Feel free to comment on any of the other points made in the list or all of them if you can provide a reasonable explanation for the position we are in. I'm sure with your position at the club you will have as good an explanation 'excuse' for all the failures in that list. ... here's another relevant business cliché for you: "If you're not moving forward, you're moving backwards" I take your point KB but it's more in terns of Shinnie and Ross I was referring to - why have a youth system if by the time we actually produce 2 excellent SPFL players they are able to walk away from the club for free?! We have shot ourselves in the foot for the chance at a transfer fee but more concerning is that the money we've spent coaching & youth contract to get them to where they are is all down the pan. As explained above we should have insisted on this as an absolute must, if the player leaves for free the following season then good luck to them but I hope the club has now learned their lesson and will look at Polworth, Ferguson, Sutherland & Christie The Foran contract is crazy as well? Why give any 30+ player such a long contract. Impossible to predict injuries he's had but surely a player at his age was more susceptible and that money could have been passed around the team.

Ok then. Two of our most valued assets have walked away from the club for absolutely nothing. Not only have we missed out on a transfer fee for both, our board and their belief in short contracts have made sure that we did not get reimbursed for the time and resource spent on their development. Both players have moved to direct rivals within the same division. We have replaced 4 players from a cup winning squad with players that have never played at this level and unsurprisingly they are struggling We have no striker, needed one since Billy left... Christ we needed one before Billy left Billy is now returning to play for one of our rivals We have 2 points after 5 games and only scored 3 goals all season We are suffering from an injury crisis with half the squad in A&E We now have Cabrini as a shirt sponsor and we still don't have our strips (only team in SPFL) - when they go on sale we can only get them through JD sports and there is a very good chance we have lost a fortune on this deal by being so short-sighted. We are now set to lose Ryan Christie to Celtic and if our history of transfer dealings is anything to go by then he will probably go for much less than he is actually worth. We are yet to see the club spend any of the money they received from the sale of Billy Mckay and last years earnings. For the first time in our history I actually feel that County are a bigger club than us.... luckily we have the Scottish Cup win to hold them off but we need to do something quick or we will take a hiding off them this season. I am sick to death of hearing people say "we are only a small club" and making excuses for the board not doing their job properly. We are literally loosing money because they are acting like a small club and failing to reward our players with contracts that would have resulted in some sort of transfer fee. In all business you need to speculate to accumulate - the board were lucky last year that we managed to have such an amazing season because it was not for their doing.

He's been named in the Wales squad for their upcoming Euro qualifiers.

Considering the money made from our success last seasonI JH should get at least 50% to strengthen our squad. If not, our custodians should be absolutely ashamed of themselves OMG. Another one!

Frustrating that, like Billy McKay before him, the boy quite properly gets into his national squad while Gordon Strachan's eyesight is too poor for him to see this far North.

About time this lad was given his own song.

I think that is fair. They are not going to pay a million when they can sign him on a pre-contract in 4 months. If we couldn't agree a new deal for Christie, I would fancy our chances leaving it to a court to decide what is a fair settlement for training compensation. Ryan Gauld - sold for £3 mil James McCarthy - sold for £1.2 mil Stuart Armstrong - sold for £2 mil Both McCarthy and Armstrong have been awarded PFA and SFWA young player of the year awards, respectively. With Christie being SFWA young player of the year 2014/15, I think a good lawyer could easily make a very fair argument that > £1 mil is fair compensation. Training compensation and market value are completely different things. I'm not even sure we'd get into 6 figures for the former.

I think that is fair. They are not going to pay a million when they can sign him on a pre-contract in 4 months. If we couldn't agree a new deal for Christie, I would fancy our chances leaving it to a court to decide what is a fair settlement for training compensation. Ryan Gauld - sold for £3 mil James McCarthy - sold for £1.2 mil Stuart Armstrong - sold for £2 mil Both McCarthy and Armstrong have been awarded PFA and SFWA young player of the year awards, respectively. With Christie being SFWA young player of the year 2014/15, I think a good lawyer could easily make a very fair argument that > £1 mil is fair compensation.

Yogi is a likeable character but PR is not his strong point. Nor, for that matter, appears to be player recruitment.

A bit harsh on Yogi I think. You cannot force players to sign longer contracts, I suspect many don't want longer than 2 years anyway. As for being unprepared, this is a direct result of the ridiculous transfer window where what is happening with Ryan leaves Yogi with little chance of signing a replacement. He could have had players identified but until he can get the money in for any transfer, he cannot sign any players and by the time he does get the money, the players may not then be available. Does anyone know if the manager or the board dictate contract lengths?. I have more of an issue with board than Yogi over transfer dealings/signings as we seem to be a very soft touch.

agree with Sneckboy on this If we have a one year 'option' on the player then surely the player himself has the option to deny that? otherwise it is very similar to the contracts that Jim McLean used to issue at Dundee Utd 20 or 30 years ago where he tied up all the youngsters on ridiculously long contracts with club options to extend it beyond that. these were eventually deemed illegal or unenforceable and not worth the paper they were not written on !

This glosses over the questions as to why we have got ourselves in to this situation in the first place ? This is like using a steristrip when stitches are needed. Stokes is NEVER going to come to us unless Cellic agree to paying a fair percentage of his wage - and that would highlight how much they want to get rid of him. But he would be as much playing for his own future in a shop window. But if this is knee jerk - as it looks to me - we may well survive but will we prosper ? Or perhaps we are back to reality after living the dream. Let's hope this is not Livingston or Gretna revisited ?

He must have what UEFA look for in a good referee though. He had five champions league matches and one euro qualifier last season.

I 'disregard' the 'one-year-option' when updating the 'Contract Situation' thread. Utterly ridiculous clause in a contract. If say, Dani Lopez had a 'one-year-option' on his contract, but we decided to release him at the end of the season, I don't think he could stay here and claim a wage for another season. We can't just use it when it suits us. As much as I agree with virtually everything OCG posts, in this case, I beg to differ - Ryan is out of contract in the summer!

Well I don't think he is doing us any favours. Plus he seems to be remarkably unprepared and unable to replace these players. So fail in my book. I would prefer he just shuts up about them, instead of intimating that he would be happy to see them go.

Yeah but St Johnstone are s****, they somehow just manage to achieve more points that the teams that finish below!

Excellent point, HtG! Now that they've knee-capped the teams that were 3rd and 4th last year, they just need to decimate Aberdeen and Hearts to clear the path for another stroll to the title.

I agree that there probably is little way the club can 'win' here in the eyes of the fans however by publically broadcasting our position (something I can't recall us doing in the past) I feel we have weakened our position and Celtic can gain the upper hand as a result in any negotiations.

Did you actually read my original post before jumping to the defence of the club? There is no "grand plan" but it is clear for all the good the board has done in the past to keep us out the red, they have missed an opportunity this year. We will probably never have as successful a season as we did last year and we failed to build on it. If we were ever going to attract new fans to the club this was the year but instead they have been caught sleeping. I would only expect reinvestment of the earnings from last year but the numbers don't add up. We are down on numbers and quality from last year when the club should be in our strongest position ever after the year we just had. As for letting Ross and Shinnie leave for absolutely nothing the year we were no longer entitled to reimbursement, that is just embarrassing. If we continue to make basic errors like that then we will always be a small club.

That's not speculation...that's calculated risk/decision making and I agree with the theory of what you say. What is being advocated by HC is that the club spend money they don't have and/or increase annual budgets on the basis of one off windfalls.....something that we, as fans, have been critical of in the past when it looked like the club may be following such a course of action (e.g. Niculae). Not what I said at all.

Have to agree with that one. Probably a sentimental decision from Butcher to give his buddy one last big deal after all their years working together. Richie delivered for Butcher, and Butcher delivered for Richie. Seems fair enough, although maybe not such good business from the club's perspective! To be fair, he certainly didn't look 'past it' before his injury, so he might still come back into the team and make a significant contribution. Since this thread is about looking on the bright side - we've had a terrible start but we aren't isolated at the bottom. In fact, one win would have us knocking on the door of the top 6. We've also now seen enough of the SPL to discern that most of the other teams aren't any better than us. actually Bucher had left the building when Foran got his contract. In fact I think it was also signed before Yogi arrived! Asked whether he was going to sign a contract extension Foran had said that he was waiting to see whether Butcher would sign an extension and then he would decide what he was doing. Far from signing a contract extension, Butcher decided not to honour his current contract and went elsewhere and almost immediately Foran signed his long term contract . Read into that what you will.

Mutombo's dismissal sounds utterly stupid but on the plus side it does perhaps indicate a level of passion. Mutombo's suspension might also force the manager in giving some game time to one of the youngsters. I recall a few years ago when Butcher consistently preferred Barrowman to Rooney. Barrowman was injured and Rooney had his chance. The rest is history.

Whilst I am all for fiscal responsibility, and have espoused that opinion many times over the years as it relates to ICT, there are times when you do need to "speculate to accumulate". Every league placing is worth a significant sum (was 70K) so, although it is too late for this particular one, if a striker like Mackay could have been loaned in and paid say 2 grand a week then his goals (and I have no doubt he would haved scored some) could easily have taken us up 2 or 3 places and paid for his contract and more ! Yes, its a risk and he might not score any ... but we all know what the cost of relegation is

I seen on Sky Sports that he is listed in the squad for Wales, although it says he plays for Tranmere!

One of the real concerns I see is that so many of our players are on contracts only to the end of this season. Had we started off this season as we had last season, then the prospect of another good finish in the league and perhaps another taste of Europe next year, would have seen us in a much stronger position to retain our current players and attract new players. Hopefully our injury crisis will ease soon, our new recruits will demonstrate that they can perform at this level and we will start to make progress up the table. However, if we have not turned things round by the end of the year and find ourselves in a relegation dog fight we will be having players queuing up to sign pre-contract agreements elsewhere. We have rightly been seen as a club which has developed players and allowed them to move on to bigger clubs and as long as we are successful then they may hang around here a little longer - but they have not come here to play in the Championship. If we get relegated we will lose many of our better players and there is not a chance we would bounce straight up like before. Of course our injury crisis is serious but in my view the current contract situation is probably a more serious threat to our longer term success. If we are struggling at the back end of the season and if the bulk of our players are not signed up for the following season then it will not matter a great deal to them whether we stay up or go down. If they are signed up for a further year they will have a huge motivation for the club to avoid the drop plus we would still have them the following year in the event of us getting relegated. It is therefore pretty urgent that the club looks to extend contracts ASAP. And, of course, ensuring players always have at least a year on their contracts means we are more likely to get money for players who do depart. So whilst it is not all doom and gloom at the moment and there is certainly no need to panic, it does make good sense to recognise the implications of not pulling things round and to take steps now to mitigate the potential effects of that. If there are players in the squad with less than a year on their contracts that the manager would like to keep here then they should be told that they either renew before the January transfer window or they will be released at the end of season. You can't stop a player leaving but at least that way you maximise the chance of getting some transfer fees into the club and you maximise the time available to find a replacement.

Yes this is very true I've done it ...but ...Gold bus or Mega bus doesn't go to Parkhead ,Firhill , Tannadyce, Rugby Park , etc. etc. By the time you get yourself to these stadiums you will be lucky to have change of £20 ...

Swindon Advertiser match report from Storey's last game: With Town still looking blunt up top Cooper introduced Storey, but the move backfired. Not only was Storey ineffectual, he gave away the ball which led to the Blades’ opener.