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I realise the club are on warpath re the issues last week but totally agree with today. One steward in particular seemed to be permanently in their faces all second half and the kids he was picking on were about 13 or 14 years old. All they were doing was standing singing. The number of stewards round them kept increasing probably due to the the aforementioned stewards behaviour. Just seemed totally unnneccessary.

Don't usually post but a bit peed off , older fan who's seen it all . I Reckoned Doumbouya would have cost Ritchie his job had he persisted playing him week in week out , Yes like any striker he'll score you the odd goal whenever but this guy is as clueless as the manager at the moment ( it's like playing with 10 players most of the time ) Worst Caley displays I've seen in many a years and if not sorted this is going to cost the club financially and their premier league place . It's not going to change unless Mr Cameron and company act and sort this out !! Enough is Enough it's embarrassing to watch

Do we really need 7 stewards standing all round 20 kids, half a metre from their faces because they are singing at a football game. Why don't the club just ban all singing and kids from the games.That'll ensure we have no future support...

Richies deluded if he thinks we are making top six we will be lucky to stay up at this rate we need to improve drastically

I'm trying to find a positive in RF's comments, so bear with me: If accurate, he was faced with something of a crisis this morning, with a series of half-fit guys + some suffering from a sickness bug. It serms his solution in advance of the game was (a) to cover up these issues (good plan) and (b) to hike the importance of the game to "must win", with the idea of galvanising a fighting performance from the players (always dangerous). The season has just been a series of frustrations - we've not been fortunate with injuries, which has highlighted our lack of depth. RF has continually fiddled with formation and personnel, with some surprise choices week after week. Much of this is enforced, but some smacks of poor judgement from an inexperienced manager. The frustration is that this collection of players is not relegation material, but the team is right now. It is the manager's respinsibility to mould players into a team and Richie needs to learn fast. Consistant performers are: Mackay, Tremarco, Draper (today aside) Guys who we know can do it, but are erratic: Fon Williams, Warren, Tansey, Doran, Polworth, Vigurs, Meekings (currently injured), Raven (just back from injury), Cole Fringe players with potential: King, Mulraney Unknown quantities: Anier, Boden, Ebbe Not sure where Doumbouya fits! Richie - build your team around your consistant performers, all in their best positions. Find a way to get the best out of your erratic performers: Drop those that have bad days, no favouritism. Your formation is determined by the players at your disposal. 4-4-2 didn't work today because under-fit players were selected in midfield. Why? Doran was dropped, but is coming in to form and is fully fit, so find a formation to accommodate him. If Draper and Tansey aren't fit, go with the guys that are! Frustrating! That was a game we could have won, but were nowhere near winning because the wrong team was fielded.

When this latest deal was finalised, the BBC admitted that it was operating on commercial grounds rather than "community" or whatever grounds you might call it. In other words, they've stopped pretending that they serve all of us.

We've only won 3 games all season and yet remarkably we are only 6 points off 5th place! Clearly we have some problems and unless we start winning soon then we could become adrift at the bottom, but we are not at the "must win" stage yet. Richie seemed very pleased with the draw and I think he is right to take some positives from the game. We did generally look a little more solid at the back and managed a rare clean sheet. The draw took us a point closer to Hamilton, Motherwell and Dundee and improved our points per game ratio. In Cole, Mulraney and Doran we demonstrated that we have got creative players who are capable of creating chances - and before Mulraney and Doran came on, Tremarco could have had a hat-trick! Having said that, there were undoubtedly more negatives than positives. I was actually quite shocked to hear the manager say that Warren and Tansey were up last night with a vomiting bug. If so, why on earth were they playing? They should have been resting up at home and not risking passing a virus to their team mates. Playing them will also have taken a lot out of them and they may now be struggling for fitness for Tuesday's vital game. Draper could have dropped back to centre back with Vigurs and Doran starting instead. Can't have done their confidence much good being benched in favour of a couple of invalids. I don't know if Doumbouye was also not well but that was far and away the poorest I have seen him play. With competition for places quite hot, he should have been really fired up to keep his place but he looked disinterested and his control of the ball was poor. Unless he was also unwell he may be out of the side for a while. Anier had a chance to shine but unfortunately failed to impress. He seems unwilling to head the long balls to him and instead backs into defenders in an attempt to let the ball drop and turn the defender. It's a foul every time. He seemed to work reasonably hard but rarely really made himself available. The one time he did he was harshly adjudged to have fouled a defender. He certainly would be worth another start but rather than be a target man, he needs to play off someone who can win the ball better. Polworth was another who disappointed. He also seemed rather lacklustre today and gave the ball away rather too much. He had a couple of decent chances and really should have scored when put in with a cute pass from Draper. I'm surprised Cole was taken off rather than him because I thought Cole, while not at his best, had a reasonable game. In my view, Doran should have started and if only he could get a confidence boost with a goal he could reinvigorate us as an attacking force. Mulraney did his usual trick of exciting us only to then disappoint us immediately after. He does some great work on the wing to skin defenders but more often than not completely wastes the opportunity he has created. So it's a bit of a mixed bag. I do believe we have the players who can comfortably lift us clear of the relegation zone by the end of the season, but we need players who are fit and well and we need them to be hungrier for the ball than they were today. We need players to take responsibility for driving into the danger areas and looking to shoot. We need players scoring and feeding off the confidence that brings. At the moment we look disjointed going forward and that is perhaps due more to the manager than the players. There needs to be a shake up of tactics as we seem to be playing to our weaknesses rather than our strengths. It's not all doom and gloom yet, but we certainly do need to get back to winning ways soon. There may have been legitimate excuses for today's lack lustre performance, but the bottom line is that if we play like that for the rest of the season, we will be in the Championship next season.

If RF was delighted with a home point then something is very wrong.

Barry Wilson and Willie Miller were both bang on with their post-match comments. Forget top six ... Richie is completely deluded with that. Flat, boring, unimaginative. I hope the team sickness story is true because some players, especially Tansey, seemed anonymous, flat, lacking passion or invention. Patrick bossed us for long periods and were more deserving of a win. I normally religiously stay to the end but had to be away early today ... Coincidentally I had no particular wish to stay. We are sleepwalking to relegation and sadly I don't think the board has a game-changer in their locker. Tuesday is big but certainly not decisive. Plenty more points to play for but at the moment I honestly don't know where a win is coming from because I've no confidence we'll beat any team on current form.

as poor a display as ive seen in a long time from the home team needs a shake up before its too late

Quote: “However, it is worth revisiting the issue of the disproportionately low fee that Scottish football gets for its TV rights. Simple arithmetic indicates that if Sky and BT are happy to pay £1.712bn a year for English football the comparable figure for Scotland should be £142m (Scotland has 8.3% of the population of the UK). To be getting just over one tenth of that at £15m a year needs to be reviewed. “Equally the BBC gives just £1m a year to Scotland’s football clubs against £66m for its Match of the Day highlights. These figures are only exacerbating the gap between English and Scottish football and should be examined in more detail by the appropriate authorities.” This is from the BDO annual report on the EPL and SPL . My suggestion is that the fans tell the TV companies where to go by not attending televised games and not buying tv packages if you really want to change things, the only thing sky and BT understand is loss of revenue. IF 200,000 football supporting Scots pay Sky £500pa that's £100M, save your money and use it to buy a season ticket for your local team, these companies would soon get the message.You could save the game and your club by doing so, otherwise half the current SPL will be part time within 10 years.. Disclosure: I don't watch Sky BT or most other TV.

2nd best all over the park. Sounds like there were a few casualties playing for us today, which might explain the flat performance. Fon Williams kept us in it and defence did OK, but we didn't deserve the win. Top 6 is a million miles away.

Anyone who's looking for a reason not to go has one in the fact that it's on terrestrial TV. By offering this option the club have a chance that at least some of them will come along and watch it at the stadium with other fans and spend a bit in the bar instead of heading in to town and spending money there or in the supermarket for their carryout. Providing a service for fans and also trying to recover at least some of the lost gate revenue from those not travelling would seem like a sensible move on all fronts, IMO.

Lack of fight and too often 2nd to the ball, got criticised for suggesting this before but I don't see us having a team of battlers and fighters out there where those around us do and being regular struggles at that end of the table know how to scrape and fight to stay up. It may have been a clean sheet but we were lucky and Partick despite having chances were poor in front of goal - we are not getting better at defending and instead of bringing in average players we need an experienced defensive minded coach to assist. The tactics are dross and predictable. Long hopeless balls, a keeper who can't pass and has awful distribution. We play strikers who can't compete in the air or have the physical attributes to hold up the ball or give an out when under pressure. Our wingers don't run the line or press on, the play or cut inside too often and for mulraney with his pace he can drop back to pick up the ball to run at defenders no point him standing off the defender and expecting to win high balls. On this display we are on an express route to relegation, maybe sickness was a reason but seems we always have an excuse but never a solution. Can try dress this game up with positives but reality is we were dross all over the park and 2nd best side by a margin and that's without even considering the lack of entertainment.

I will never agree more with a post, I was absolutely gobsmacked listening to that interview

Just listened to Richie - sorry that is incredulous. What must the players on the bench think if half fit individuals are being preferred. That should have been the other way around !!

But don't you know we don't have the time and sometimes you have to take the day by the throat and shake it. Don't mind going down fighting but not whimpering. Things need to change and Hamilton is not just a must win game - it is a season definer.

Woeful is my sum up of this game. I went to the game full of optimism that we would see ICT having a right go at Partick oh how wrong i was. No where near enough attacking. We dont seem to be able to attack as a unit. Their is never an out ball up front and most of the time just no one up there well 1 striker. We could play for the rest of the year on today's performance and not score. We need to start attacking and take the game to teams. Also attack with pace as currently a snail would attack quicker. I just hope we get stuck in against Hamilton and take the game to them from the off and just keep attacking.

Fon Williams: 9. Kept us in it during the first half. A couple of good saves and one quite outstanding one. Raven: 6. Did OK for his first game back, but a bit rusty. Warren: 6. Solid performance, but a crazy yellow card for dissent. Mackay: 7. Solid throughout. Tremarco: 8. Our full back had our best chances again! Header across goal in the first half and shot over the bar in the second. Polworth: 6. Worked hard, but not very effective today. Had our only "shot" on target, I think. Draper: 4. Didn't look fit - game passed him by. Tansey: 5. Also out of sorts - explained by his illness. Cole: 5. Struggled to reproduce brilliance of last week against better players. Flashes of skill, but not enough to influence the game. Doumbouya: 4. Curiously found himself in wide positions too often. Failed to hold the ball up effectively and was sacrificed to put an extra man in midfield. Anier: 5. Worked tirelessly, but gave away too many free kicks, for which he was eventually booked. Very unlucky to be penalised for a foul when he burst through on goal. Vigurs: 7. Impacted on the game when he came on. Pulled the strings in spells, as we know he is capable of. Mulraney: 5. Skinned the fullback regularly when he came on, but final ball lacked quality. Got wiped out very late by a defender....not punished by the referee! Doran: 6. Very unlucky not to start after last week and contributed for his short spell today. Spurned a good chance when he mis-hit a curler. Foran: 5. Most of us liked the look of the starting line-up, but it didn't work. Credit to him for changing it early to try to win back the midfield, but the balance wasn't right throughout. There's still the feeling that he's still no idea what the best formation and starting 11 is (illness and injuries aside). Ref: 3. First half, he seemed to give everything our way, often wrongly IMO. Second half, he redressed the balance with some shockers in PT's favour. Anier and Mulraney have particular cause to be agreived!

Our keeper really upped his game and pulled off some excellent saves. The defence held firm, assisted with the protection of midfield to claim a much needed clean sheet. Better positioning for picking up the 2nd ball when taking corners too. Subs Vigurs had a good game, so did Doran and Mulraney, we could have really punished them on the counter attack with Mulraney and Doran but it's a work in progress. Once the confidence builds, I can see us as possible top six but I think the majority of us fans would be happy with a bit of daylight between the bottom 2 positions and us. Anier was showing there's quality about him but his biggest battle was the ref instead of the back line. The linesman missed an obvious offside when the ball hit the cross bar, plus others, let off a Partick player when offside for chasing the ball on the way back to OFW which I thought, fair enough as he kind of didn't interfere with play yet when the tables were turned and we had a player off side but more importantly one onside in a dangerous position the flag goes up. A lot of positives to take down to Hamilton, to play against a team whos fans are planning to start boycotting their matches.

If we lose to Hamilton we are down and the board had better act quickly rather than dawdling as they did with Brewster when it was obvious with half the season gone we were in deep trouble.I think the players have lost confidence in RF, once you lose the dressing room it's finished. All the good work JH and Latapy had done, the passing, game management, organisation has gone.

I honestly can't believe I used holiday leave to get afternoon off work for that! I'm pretty used to standing watching boring disappointing drivel, but that today was on a different level. I may have nodded off but I don't remember one shot on or near target, and the amount of possession we held was alarming. Partick were crap but seemed to open us up with relative ease and I'm amazed we managed to hold onto that draw.

Not a 'must win' more of a 'if we can't win this what can we win?'. Gonnae be a long, cold night in Hamilton on Tuesday...

True, but ultimately this was another step towards relegation. Home game against a very makeshift and mediocre side, yet we still can't score, and the BBC stats show Partick had more possession, shots and shots on target, with OFW coming to our rescue more than once. You don't get any reassurance that Foran knows our best formation or best line up, it's just rolling the dice when it comes to midfield and attack, hoping but not expecting that someone will do something. I just don't see how we are going to get out of this with Foran in charge, all the evidence is that, great player as he was, he's just a dud as a manager. Hope I'm wrong, of course. That's 11 without a win, against a string of poor sides. Foran himself said today was a must win, our biggest game of the season, and he failed again. The Hamilton game ought to be his last chance.

^^^ File under "Phrases you don't see very often!"

I agree that kick off times nowadays are ruled by the TV companies. For us 'long distance' supporters, late changes to kick off times has always been a real pain, making travel arrangements a nightmare, and usually much more expensive. I notice too that airline schedules seem to have changed for the worse as far as I'm concerned. Whereas it used to be possible to get up and down in a day from London to Edinburgh/Glasgow for 'away matches, when the last flight back was about 9pm, nowadays the last flight from back to London is usually about 7pm, making a day trip impossible. The added cost of overnight accommodation on top of travel costs makes it much more difficult to justify. Consequently, I've only been to two live games this season. I hope I can manage another in the next couple of months.

I see Blair MacLennan has joined Brora on loan.

Away tickets in EPL are now pegged at £30 thanks to protests by the fans, who actually wanted a ceiling of £20. Compare this to a game v Liverpool at the Etihad about 3 years ago where I paid £55 for a very average seat in the away end. FA Cup prices tend to be even lower nowadays. In our case £26 or so to attend CP for a league game is not realistic. £16 or so would be more like it if we had the same clout as the English fans. I usually give the league games at CP a miss but will go this time as ICT get a share of the ticket price. Somebody mentioned part-time football. Scottish clubs will be part time soon enough due to having the EPL on the doorstep. In the greedfest which the EPL has become, the fans could actually be let in for free and it would not significantly affect turnover. The only hope for the game is if Sky goes tits up.

I doubt that the club had much, if any influence on the kick off time so offering Inverness fans the opportunity to watch in the company of fellow fans with refreshments for such a modest price is a good and sensible initiative. Well done. Hope there is a good turn out at the stadium and remember none of the proceeds have to be split with anyone whereas the club will get only about 40% of the match proceeds once expenses are deducted.

Morayshire Police have just distributed a phottie of the hoolies.

As Richie said in his interview most of the team are proven at this level. For a few season the core of the team has been Warren and Meekings with Draper and Tansey in front of them. Go back to this. Punt Vigurs. Sure, technically he is possibly our best player but a central midfielder needs mobility when he severely lacks (or the motivation to be mobile). Even putting Vigurs as an attacking midfielder is a problem as he wont make runs beyond the striker. The whole point of the 4-2-3-1 formation is the 3 have the freedom to make runs beyond the lone striker which has rarely happened this season. Draper was successful in that role because he would make those runs. I have generally agreed with most of Richies team selections and I am positive for the future despite our position but for me the main issue is Vigurs. Drop him and I think it will improve the team greatly.

Your not Caley anymore!!!!!!

City 3 Merger 0

If you want to kill Sky TV's domination of the game, don't attend, especially for games in the final stages of competitions held at ridiculous times. Remember the league cup final? Sky panicked about their being no ICT supporters being there so they subsidised the travel via the Sun (Clue) Newspaper. All it would take is a boycott of a final (and make it public) and things would change, I just don't mean by ICT supporters. If you play their game they win but it takes a combined mindset amongst supporters to destroy it. Stop being a slave to Murdoch and his like. It's a small price to pay to kill this money driven monster. Jock Stein said " the game is nothing without the supporters" and he was right. Realise the power is with all the supporters in the league and they can change it if they would only think and organise. Sky rely on the fact that we wont. Sky is killing the game as regards attendances and the money going to players which is destroying clubs including our own. Scottish football will become part time with the exception of a few clubs if this continues.