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Dumbarton in the league next week. They finished last in their group in the league cup, so how we do against them will provide a better indicator of the challenge ahead.

And, Bearing in mind last season's league cup with only one win, we didn't qualify with a much more experienced team! Our aim is surely to beat Dumbarton and get confidence up!

Steady on. Youthful squad up against Premier league side...what do you expect?

Half Time: 5-0 The chase is on but we'll need pushbacks.

Look at the positives. We train at Fort George

And here's what I wrote on the 5th of June https://caleythistleonline.com/topic/36262-kelty-is-this-a-joke-merged-thread/page/33/#comment-566433 "Turn ourselves into a global soap opera on the internet. "See the plucky Highlanders' fight for survival!". Regular update episodes, and global pay-per-view of matches. Spin-offs and merchandising. Prequels covering the past 30 years. Everyone's heard of the Loch Ness Monster, so feature Lionel Nessie heavily. Get written into the Outlander TV series. Only need to hook 1 person in a million to get 8,000 subscribers. Yes, I know, we'd need to finance a production company, scriptwriters, marketing.... I'll stop now before I start believing this stuff "

Based on the decisions the board / CEO have made over the last half decade, and the position Seventy7 seem to have as a business, you're surprised fans are skeptical?

We won't be playing Premiership teams every week, thankfully we can take solace from the fact the rest of our seaside league compatriates are crap too going by results.

pretty grim reading but Dundee are a top six premier team and signed Murray who had a phenomenal season at 2nd worst team in league last season scoring 23 goals. ( I saw most of them). Men against boys, or young boys, need to wait and see what happens when season starts next week. I assume Dundee took the foot off the gas 2nd half? We all know it's going to be a huge effort to remain in league 1 with our young kids and over the hill seasoned pro's.

Queens park must love us. We've been an excellent feeder club for them.

Frontman

Get the bloody lot of them out . Grassa and all the other idiots on the board that are quickly wrecking the club . Simple thing like getting the evil SG out of the club they cannot even manage . Killing the club the lot of them

Given the confusion over the terms shareholder and owner it's probably a similar misinterpretation between down under and going under .. easy mistake

In Australia. Pretty much on brand for our level of business acumen. He'll fit right in.

Who knows? If this company are the real deal and genuinely want to make the club successful they should be open to sharing what their business record is, what their plans are and how they are going to be funded. There is local funding to be tapped into, but it wont be released if local people and businesses are kept in the dark. All the fancy guff in Makwana's quotes count for absolutely nothing. Of course, I hope that there is real substance here and that Makwana can deliver something positive and sustainable. And if it follows a very different and innovative business model, then great! But "maybe" and "perhaps" simply don't cut it. This is OUR club. ICT is not a plaything for some self-styled entrepreneur with little evidence of business success.

Supporters trust did nothing on the kelty situation. They refused to support a boycott never organised the protest they said they would and even put out a statement saying fans should buy tickets and merch before changing their mind shortly after. They have been weak and passive in all of this. Even the recent statement says they are pleased with the news despite not knowing the first thing about it. Rome is burning and they're fiddling.

Maybe someone from the ST should approach 77 ventures using the “work with us” button on their website…

It is clear from the Trust's statement that Seventy7 Ventures have not bothered to consult with the Trust during this process. If I was going to pump £2M into a football club I would certainly be wanting to know the expectations of the club's fans and would be shaping proposals accordingly so that I had the fans onside. But then, if I were putting money into a football club, it would be with a view of trying to make the football club successful. I'm not seeing anything in the club statement that gives me any confidence that this strangely named company has the remotest interest in the success of the club. The Trust's statement seems to me a little bit tongue in cheek in that it refers to returning to be a successful community based football club. Clearly, if Seventy7 Ventures become majority shareholders they will call all the shots and the club will become less of a community club than it has ever been. From what little we know, this "deal" has asset stripping written all over it. I sincerely hope I am wrong but we need to know an awful lot more before we can be assured that this is going to benefit the club in the short term, let alone provide longer term security.

Three other questions. Firstly if, as has emerged today, 77 is a one man band - a company with a single director - what would he want to do about a board that he can be confident would protect his investment? Secondly, 77 appears to be a tiny company that has dealt in five figure sums for its entire three year existence and has net liabilities. So where is the money going to come from in order to fund Caley Thistle? Is there any significance to this company having become the Borrower in a Charge that was created on 28th June, where the Lender is a Channel Islands-based finance company? And thirdly, if this deal went through and then the club went really badly wrong, could there be any danger of the remaining 69 years of the lease on the stadium site being asset stripped and sold lucratively by 77 to a buyer such as a large retail company?

Yes, jury out for me too although I am coming from a position far further down the negative scale. The CEO has to be held to his resignation, that is non-negotiable for me as a (tiny) shareholder. A lot of questions and I am running low on benefit of doubt where our board are concerned. If we hadn't reached for a multitude of other 'Hail-Mary' solutions over the last few years, I might have a more open mind, but after pixellot, concert, park-and-ride, and the battery farm, the monorail video from the Simpsons is all i can see. Please prove me wrong!

Looking at the starting 11 I'm not sure we can use the younger players as an excuse for this one. From the highlights it could have been much worse as well.

Holy ****. I've just seen this. Johndo was one of the first of the ICT fans I went to an away game with. He couldn’t have been a kinder or funnier man, and treated me like I’d been going to away games with him forever. Every memory I have of him is positive and happy, from Ayr away in The Ship when we went back up, to having the daftest Voddy and Coke crawl from Easter Road back to Waverly. If any of his family are on here, my heartfelt condolences go out to each and everyone of you. The (Immortal) Howden Ender will never die

Well, from 5-0 at HT, I'm pleasantly surprised we didn’t set a new record for heaviest ever defeat. And sadly that’s the best thing that can be said about this.

We couldn’t get the ball in the net could we

Waste of time fixing empty stands. Our support is either in the main stand or on the bridge these days.

This style of football is killing us. We need to play a system that suits the players at our disposal. We badly need a midfielder who can break up the play. Our defence is all over the place. Walker is a big miss in there. I don’t think Billy and Adam have touched the ball in the Dundee half.

What is it going to take to get rid of this guy? It's embarrassing listening to him, he's just not a football manager.

We urgently need a hedge fund!

If only we played with a blockchain.

This just emphasises the need to solutionise our gamification. Ferguson just doesn’t get it.

Going to have to get phygital in the second half if we want to take anything from this game.

Hopefully our fans at the game don't turn on the players. Not their fault we're in this position.

What position does he play?

GET MAKWANA OUT!

Hears what the ‘wind’ just said to me!!!. 1) S7V are a face for the real players in the background. (Jersey). 2) They will gain 51% of the shares, so they control everything going forward. Ignore any opposition. 3) They plan to build hotel, flats and gaming centre. No profits go to the club. 4) The council has supported this plan in principle. 5) The football club get 250K rental for the land the hotel, flats and gaming centre stand. 6) S Gardiner is definitely part of the above plan going forward. Take from it what you like or care. For me it’s again non-highland people in control of the club. If we haven’t already tumbled on their interests are not in the long term of the club, city and area, do I question where this all leads in 3-5 years - YES!!!

Beat me to it. Despite my earlier post, I'm finding it hard not to be worried by all this. It's got similar characteristics to what was done by tulloch to move debt away from the club along with stadium ownership. Worse because we don't know the first thing about the person/people behind it.

Selling the lease of the stadium !

Liaising with the council, it must be something to do with lease assignation. How could it be anything else

Seventy7 Ventures clearly does not have anywhere near the capacity or means to become a major/majority shareholder. Going by its latest accounts, it wouldn't be able to cover the salary of one player for a season, let alone purchase any shares. For the board to have been this stimulated, there must be a large source of funding that is not wanting to be reported, which brings many, many questions. It is par for the course that Panos, Gardiner et al. will now fudge everything, to the end. The shareholders now come to the fore, as do the proper legal processes and protocols, to explore if the true provenance of the investment is using Seventy7Ventures as a conduit and any motivations behind the interest. Given the CEO and board's track record and possible motives, and the opaqueness of the situation, some are already on the front foot since yesterday to ensure the articles, regulations and legal processes are followed to the letter.

77 is a one man band and I think we might have been better going with Leo Sayer I might be wrong but when Tullochs gifted the stands to the club when Graeme Rae was chairman (someone put the link earlier in this thread) my understanding is that it was the stands including the main stand but they still hold the option on the remainder of the 99 year lease which include car parks and surrounding area. I think this was a clever move by Tullochs which might prevent something like this happening but who knows we are surrounded by wheelers and dealers and all we want is to support our club and watch a good game of football.

Sadly I’m one of them Yngwie but do agree with you and Robert. I have no depth of knowledge in the field so it’s mostly just perception. From what I’ve been able to gather I struggle to see that in depth due diligence would find this company to be ‘fit and proper’. At the moment it all seems very dodgy with Gardiner’s fingerprints all over it. I hope for the best but fear for the worst…

I’m just about fed up with all this risky crap! As if I wasn’t already! I’m back to thinking I’d rather just work our way back to the safety of the Highland League!

Smells more of a SG deal by the minute .

Looking forward to Duncoin's post match comments.

Not for me. It comes across as wildly imaginative, in the same way that Elisabeth McClure said that when she was young, she had imagination to plan to build a swimming pool in her tree house, but lacked the creativity and knowledge to actually make it work / realise it was not practical. For me, the klaxons are ringing because there isn't any business acumen or monies evident, just a sequence of small-scale loss-making failed attempts at it. Certainly there's no shortage of bombast, but nothing to suggest it is well placed. Steve Riley has said in P&J he is a nice fella, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Anyway, Seventy7Ventures and its director is a complete distraction, as it is yet to emerge where the money is actually coming from and the identity of the actual movers and shakers.

A new owner could see the Trust as being representative of the supporters, in which case it would be in their interest to get the Trust onside. I like the idea of the Supporters' Trust and see it as a practical route to uniting the fans and giving us a voice. You say it's not representative of everyone, but it seems it's the best we've got at the moment.

I think that is the only sensible position to take at this stage. Interesting though that so many of our fans have, without any of the necessary information, already concluded very negatively.

The jury is out for me. With SG still there I can't see this move being of any use to ICT or its supporters. I guess we'll all just have to wait and see if there are mega bucks within this company and they make this work.

Have to also consider the fact that we have a CEO who forgot to buy seats for a football stadium. Hardly the brighest bulb in the drawer when it comes to finances