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My relationship with Caley started almost five decades ago standing under the elm trees at Telford street wearing my red and black scarf and cheering the opposition ?

Happy Ballistic Day

You must have been very lonely there on your own.

Claiming Yogi is our best manager ever is like saying one of Dundee United's best managers ever was Ivan Golac!

The start of my relationship with Caley

Happy Feb 8th day everyone!!!

Clearly Hughes hadn't yet won over the supporters when this thread was started! Baltacha signed as player/manager but as I recall he didn't play all that often. Like with Brewster, the team seemed to play better when he was on the field. The team made a great start in Division 3 but faded a bit in the second half. I think politics had a lot to do with that. Don't really think Sergei can be judged on his short spell in charge of a team which had only just been formed from a controversial merger. Oh s**t - I said the M-word!!!

Likewise. Best night of my life (but don’t tell the wife).

I still have an unopened bottle of the commemorative Tomatin somewhere...

Let's get pisshed

Absolutely. Even the preceding Saturday was memorable for a different reason with a futile trip up from London (for 4 of us) for the postponed game .

A day that will live in the memory forever can't believe that it was eighteen years ago.

I'm also with OCG and Kingsmills, although I also agree that neither was much good (Sergei and Richie I mean.... not OCG and Kingsmills ). There are a number of factors in mitigation for Baltacha, not the least that he had to take a new club in its very first season into the national leagues with an entirely part time squad, mainly from the Highland League. It has been correctly said that, even though he had had a season with Caley, bottom tier SFL football was pretty well foreign to Sergei, but this was also new to the club environment he was working in as well. Add to that a complete lack of money and all the hassle that was going on in and around the club, and you have a pretty challenging managerial situation so a mid-table finish maybe wasn't all that bad. Remember also that by the time the Pele transformation kicked in, about 3 months into his debut season, apart from Pele's huge personal qualities, most of the internal hassle had been resolved and he had had around £100K to spend on Stewart, MacArthur, Teasdale, Thomson and Ross. As for Foran, OK he was faced with the Premiership not Division 3 but he inherited the guts of a squad which had won the Scottish Cup just over a year before he took over and which, by historic ICT standards, was having money simply thrown at it. What RF inherited was also an established Premiership scenario whereas SB's team had just been put together (OK, with ex-Caley players, albeit not from an outstandingly good side by Caley standards, as a backbone) and were starting from scratch. This is a little bit like comparing apples and oranges, but I think the balance of the evidence finds in Sergei's favour. As for Brewster 2, I have never quite got my head round that. CB did fine first time round here, but when he came back from Dundee United, his own playing contribution notwithstanding, he just wasn't the same manager. Did something happen at Tannadice when he was there? Well we know it did, in the form of a player revolt, but I have always been of the view that Tannadice is a very strange place indeed and a managerial graveyard, or rather scaffold, and I believe that the longstanding difficulty there originates from boardroom level.

He failed to win over some of us at all and some of those he did win over he lost again with his conduct towards the end of his tenure.

If you go through and rank managers on a scale of 1-10 (10 being perfect and 1 being woeful)....Baltacha wouldn't score lowest, so should not be in last place...IMO. My list would also look very different if ranking on managerial ability and coaching ability.

Baltacha had a team of part time Highland League players when the entire club was still finding its feet in the national league system. He was not the best coach in the world but it's unfair to rank him behind Foran who's record was abysmal despite having a large squad of seasoned professionals many of whom were Scottish Cup winners and some of whom were on six figure salaries.

1. Steve Paterson - Took the club up through the leagues, playing attacking football and had a great eye for a player. Would we have ever played in the top flight had it not been for him? Maybe not. The backbone of his side lived on for about a decade. 2. Terry Butcher - Built two or three good sides. Played attractive for a fair chunk of the time and signed so many great players for nothing. He could be a little tactically inflexible and had a habit of blowing big games (like the 2009 relegation decider), but he advanced the profile of the club big time. 3. John Robertson - Promoted to the SPL in 2004, thanks in part to bringing in David Bingham who other managers wouldn't have been able to recruit. Played and continues to play attractive football and has a chance of the play-offs this year. 4. John Hughes - Won the Scottish Cup and a shoot-out away from a League Cup. Brought Greg Tansey back to the club that was a very shrewd move and played some fantastic football during that 2015 season. When it came to replacing players though, he didn't have the contacts that the likes of Butcher had and signed some absolute dross. 5. Charlie Christie - Certainly wasn't bad. Brought Don Cowie and John Rankin to the club and played decent football from what I remember. Had a terrible habit of talking the club down in the press though. 6. Craig Brewster - Was decent enough the first time around and *did* have an eye for a player...at times. Signed Ryan Esson and Adam Rooney who were fantastic signings, along with the likes of Felipe Morais and Pavels Mihadjuks though signed some dross too. Had the players fit but played boring long ball football and alienated the likes of Ian Black and John Rankin. Should never have been brought back for a second spell. 7. Richie Foran - Like having a fan in the dugout. Tactically clueless and signed some absolute rubbish like Henri Anier. Slightly unlucky in that some players like Scott Boden and Billy King didn't perform as expected, while I assume he had high hopes for Kevin McNaughton before he missed most of the season. Doesn't change the fact that he was a very poor manager though. 8. Sergei Baltacha - Only in the job for a year and played highly defensive football that finished 8th in what was then the bottom tier.

Still feel Susan is getting a bit too much criticism from a few posters. He has had injuries and ill health. Zak Elbouzedi has been in a similar situation. When ICT collapsed under Kenny C the new chairman picked up a pile of issues and to be fair to Robbo he has done a remarkable job so far. He had to get bodies in, he had to get bodies out. Early losses put him under significant pressure. So Susan has not made it but out of all the changes perhaps one or two questionable signings was to be expected. Now to Ross County's multiple signing failures....................on very good money.

We're now over a month on from the request to allow time for the CJT board to meet and issue the statement regarding the way forward....is there any update?

Although none of them were rank, they can all be ranked in order of popularity/success/ability/competence. I would put Foran bottom of the list. Top of the list - either John Hughes for what he has achieved with the team, or John Robertson for what he has yet to achieve. 3rd would be Steve Paterson, who set the ball rolling rather well, but probably out of his depth in SPL management. Who knows what might have been though? In between would be all the rest, in no particular order, but I do feel that Charlie Christie never got a chance to realise his potential.