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Which is why it seems all the stranger than our club does not maximise ways to bring in money like similar clubs our size. Hospitality barely runs and is so expensive when it does it only suits corporate. Other clubs do different levels of hospitality to suit all pockets. We didn't even push merchandise at Christmas. Partick and Ayr have fantastic bars at the ground with food and both are packed to the rafters. Our sports bar is awful. Poor fare and service. They changed the season ticket tiers without explanation scraping the 16-25 bracket. I'm told when this was introduced it was the most popular ticket. Young adults this age are more likely to attend regularly rather than young children who I suspect disappear to other activities and when parents have to pay for them. Our SM offering is so sanitised compared to before. Other clubs smaller than us have far better media offering again maximising income. Yes go after battery farms, concerts etc. But don't forgot the day to day money which surely all adds up. Oh and don't get me started on how top heavy we are on management off field. Hardly needed. Local knowledge for corporate stuff sadly lacking too.

I think it's more important that the team turn up than the fans.

Play-Off Second Leg It's only Half-Time in the League 1/Championship semi-final play-offs. Both games are finely poised, Inverness v Montrose scoreless and Accies v Alloa level at 2-2. Inverness had a shocker at Links Park on the artificial surface. However, the reality of the matter is we showed no urgency whatsoever and played second fiddle to Montrose throughout the game. Many fans have said this is the worst team they can remember in the clubs short history. No passion, no swashbuckle, nothing, just completely flat and zero dimensional. Only Lawal and Ridgers were given pass marks by the less than impressed Caley Jags support. As much as we have criticised the Caley Jags performance on Tuesday night, let's not lose sight of the fact that Montrose are a decent League 1 side with a good blend of experience and talented prospects. For our part, let's keep them as a good League 1 side and that means no room for faffing about. Time has run out now, there's no hiding places and no room for shirkers. Ditch the sideways passing or put goal posts in front of the Main Stand and tuck shops. Gardiner, Morrison and the rest of the suits. Are you listening to the fans, because nothing seems to have changed and the standard of football on display is driving people away from the Stadium. Here's a selection of comments from the forums on CTO, have a gander: An utterly shameful performance tonight. Mortifying to be in this position but to approach the game with such little intent or urgency is unforgivable and up there with one of the most insipid performances I can recall in such a crucial game. Genuinely one of the most depressing experiences in 30 years of watching ICT. I simply cannot see us staying up with this group of players and management. Just got home and realised that instead of travelling to Montrose and enduring that p1sh, I could’ve stayed at home and watched the Eurovision semi-final! Awful game. Caley were outplayed and outfought all over the pitch. As others have said, only Lawal gets pass marks - the only one to show a bit of urgency and desire. (perhaps Samuel, too, but he was just so isolated). Lawal's run down the left with a great little turn gave us the only thing to cheer about, and then his shot off the bar, of course. That was it. Imagine if we had a former Scotland U21 midfielder who had played for the club on over 100 occasions, born and bred in Inverness and brought through our youth system. Imagine he’d been available since January. I doubt he’d be as good as the loanees though so no point imagining anything apart from life in League 1 Not really shocked by the result it’s the same old crap week in week out bar the odd lucky result .And by odd I mean ODD Simply not good enough. Can’t believe a former (striker) manager plays a team the way he does! We are a disgrace to the jersey so far. Absolutely honking. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Match/Ticket Info ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Latest Team News Not much has changed since Tuesday, but word has it that Danny Devine is a doubt. However, it's at the other end of the park where most of our troubles lie. Carragher and McAllister are available, Devine a doubt as suggested, and Charlie Gilmour training on grass. Think we all need some after Tuesday night... Mark will be a vital player for us on Saturday. Montrose have three strikers who have totalled over thirty goals between them, so danger all around the box. We can not afford to be complacent, and we need to show more urgency, passion and quality than we displayed at Links Park.

The point was that once you are outside of the top flight and don't have a well-connected big name like Butcher, then, certainly in Inverness, football revenue alone is nowhere near enough to get back into the top flight. So money has to be found elsewhere. Do you have any constructive ideas for recovery?

So those who kept the club operating on a fairly firm financial footing and delivered the club's greatest successes are the villains? Those who thought they could do better and squeezed their predecessors out before delivering the biggest losses the club has ever seen with no plan or means to underwrite the various high risk schemes and who have threatened the very existence of the club are to be pitied for it? The current regime have talked a lot about how vital it is for us to be playing in the top flight in order to balance the books but have put more focus on chasing various failed off field ventures. They even managed to totally screw up the concerts which had previously been a huge success for the club. By trying to chase it all they have failed on every front and brought the club to it's lowest point ever. We are a mess on the park, financially and are more detached from the fanbase than ever.

I don't think you can pinpoint an exact moment where it all went wrong but I think it's somewhere around 2012. We got relegated in 2009, maybe slightly unfortunately with a record points total at that time, and then we gave Butcher leeway to rebuild and he did a great job. He then built more and created the cup winning squad that Yogi inherited, the zenith of the club up to this point. However, during those years when we had regular SPL football, a manageable financial situation (easily recoverable losses, external investment, cup runs, Europe money, transfer fees, money for managers etc) what investments did we make off the park? What improvements were made to the infrastructure of the club, both in terms of facilities for the fans and players? None. We still train at Fort George as far as I can see, the ground hasn't been touched or improved in years, and is now starting to fall apart. We don't have any facilities at our ground like a proper bar or decent food or excellent hospitality. You can extend this to off the pitch too and this is one reason why I don't entirely blame Morrison and Gardiner for what's happened to the club. We generally operated OK in the top flight, the losses were coverable when they happened and some years we made money. However, we didn't do anything to generate off the pitch revenue, something that coudl safeguard the clubs future. Gardiner and Morrison have taken a lot of stick for the concerts and the battery farm but they've had to do this because there was nothing there before. We didn't even control the land that the stadium is on, IIRC, and were paying money to another company for it. Eventually every club of our size gets relegated and we completely failed to plan for that in any sense - on the pitch, financially, from a business standpoint. If people remember the summer after we went down it was chaos, we had three different Chairmen, we were releasing players via social media, putting our press releases every day (Twitter account liked porn - statement, Duncan Shearer released by text - statement). It was clear no-one know what to do and really no-one has known what to do since. Everything that's happened to the club since stems from that failure. The Chairman and the CEO are trying to do positive things but failing because they are hamstrung by issues out of their control as well as their own incompetence. In the meantime the club throws huge money on players and managers, makes massive losses but is at the same time massively penny pinching. Watching the Montrose game via their stream I recall the Covid season where we had one of the worst streaming offerings in the entire league. other clubs have kept streaming and probably make a trickle of cash from it but we huffily insisted ours was fine and now don't do it at all. The only way I can see this improving is if an outside party buys the club and is willing to invest proper money in it, which I can't see happening or the current backers underwrite another few million quid and we finally manage to claw our way out of the situation we are in, we flukily get a managerial appointment spot on. I can't see either happening to be honest - I fully expect to be relegated and to spend a few years in League One.

The majority of our players have nothing to lose either, they’re loanees and will be heading off elsewhere when it’s all over. They’ve also got very little to gain from a win so when it comes to incentive we don’t measure up too well.

As someone said on another thread, it’s scary when it hits you that if we don’t win tomorrow we are relegated. We really ought to have enough quality in our squad to get the better of Montrose, but they have nothing to lose whereas we are the ones who risk playing with fear and trepidation, which would not end well for us.

I have been to 9 home games this season and I didn't think that the attendances were anywhere near the 2k mark. My maths must be bad

With gates of around only 2k fans, we are well behind most clubs in the Championship and even likes of Falkirk or Hamilton - so the level of spend is commensurate with the shortfall in income due to lack of alternate streams (£3m over 5 years is £500k per year so lets get that in perspective in relation to the clubs assets - property, facilities. players). Perhaps its the change in fan expectations and waking up to realise the size of club we are operating at and the premium costs associated with recruitment being outwith the central belt all means we are actually League One sized/structured as such have been punching for many years!!!

Massive game on Saturday https://www.ictsupporterstrust.org/post/the-supporter-s-trust-is-calling-on-all-fans-to-get-behind-the-team

We've managed promotion to the top flight twice before without battery farms and the like. Since 2017 we have amassed losses in the region of £3 million (not including what is being hidden on the 2022/23 accounts yet to be filed and whatever it is for 2023/24 - it could easily be topping £5 Million in total to date) chasing that for a third time. If that level of spending can't even keep us comfortably in the Championship then I would constructively suggest that the first thing we need to do is change the leadership.

This! Plus don't forget we have a cluster of major shareholders who's ego's prevent them talking to each other, Thus, As you stated very well above Chris we cannot look forward and we have the current board scuttling about trying to raise a few grand here and there to keep us afloat! sad times.

Dunc is no "yes man" but he has lost his mojo and his style of football. He has become more of a coaching manual manager. I have been at games and watched on TV where I was happy with the performance when you have a team of mercenaries and a gun with only one bullet to fire and nobody wanting to pull the trigger. I rather see Dunc visioning the opposition and some of his own players as feckin burglars. I can only suggest that he has had some sort of therapy. As for Montrose I would not be surprised if the plan was to defend in depth and nick a winner. That may work with a drilled team in the Bernabeau but not with a team of loanees at Links Park. As with most loanees signings I suspect there are clauses about playing time and that has to be a reason to limit wee Roddy's time on the park. With McAllister injured surely Roddy would be shoe-in rather than Lawal. Wait for another completely different performance on Saturday OR

That's certainly one in a long line of poor decisions from our current CEO (and by letting him make them the board). I think appointing Foran as manager (and in our typical way letting him linger way too long after it clearly wasn't working out) was a huge error. Appointing Yvonne Crook as CEO (yes remember her) was a huge error as she knew absolutely nothing about football or running a football club. We of course followed up with Scot 'Bluenose' Gardiner, while having at least a football background he left a trail of clubs where if we'd spent 5 mins speaking to his previous clubs and their supporters you'd get a clear picture of narcissistic incompetence. Admittedly he has achieved a lot since arriving - alienating fans, betraying local businesses, disrespecting and ignoring the Trust, half empty concerts, failed fan forums, failed 'raise the roof' campain, overt obsessive pro-Rangers stance, BS re the Freeport benefits and a continuous slide downwards on the pitch. To name a few. I do appreciate the board and others who have contributed financially however these appointments are their doing and they have to take responsibility for that. On the park we've had Robbo who stepped back as manager and we kept paying him for years to do God knows what, thereafter Billy likes Fitba who while seemed a nice guy wasn't up to the task and his recruitment was pretty atrocious. Now we have Big Dunc on an alleged £4k a week with whom I've seen nothing to give me much confidence he can recruit or manage the team at anything more than a bog standard level. I could prattle on but you get the gist. Every time me make a big decision especially around recruitment, it's a poor one and we let people linger around far too long.

IMO we were not adventurous enough going forward. We were clearly better than most teams but were happy to knock the ball about, until ultimately the game just fizzled out to nothing. No standout player either who could raise the game or the supporters, we kinda just plodded on regardless.