Leaderboard

Mate, I do get what you are saying but football is a business and requires a certain ruthlessness. My concerns are we may have missed the opportunity to build on our recent success and our crowds continue to hover around 2500. Appreciate you cannot drag folk to games and whoever solves the mystery of the disappearing fans will be a rich man, but do we need changes throughout to try and revitalise the club and bring in fresh ideas.

What I meant by small community club, was more of a positive remark than an attempt to belittle the club. As in a close knit community. We are a relatively small, even by Scottish terms, club but a very successful one of which we should be proud. To do what we've done in little over 22 years should be lauded. I was however remarking on a tendency to become divided and ostracise certain sectors of the club, considering that we would like to consider the club as a close knit family and community club. Maybe it's wishful thinking and there are no clubs out there that are really like that, but in a time when so many bemoan football being a detached business from its fans it's sometimes surprising how much it can turn when the chips are down. At many other clubs Foran would no longer be in the job but it's kinda nice to imagine that we're not like that. I get that the board struggle at times with getting everything right, and there are certain elements folk can highlight to criticise them, but on the whole they've, in my own humble opinion, done quite a good job overall given what they have to work with.

Whilst we desperately need a goalscorer, would Storey be the answer? He's barely kicked a ball since August, and in his last 25 games for us scored 6 times, a strike rate worse than Doumbouya.

Aye Craig Storie...lol

If we use the "Pre-Merger Fan Count" calculator.....we'll have about 25,000 claiming they were there.

If the other 4998 reply as well this will be the longest thread ever

Not sure why the surprise - this has been a done deal fer months !! Never mind the stackers like the Walrus and Fisher. What about Storey and Boden ? That would neutralise many of the lumbering centre backs in the SPL, provide us with movement in both attacking and defending aspects, make room for the like of Draper in the "hole" and cut out the hoof tactic. And then we also have the wee Bluebell in reserve.

12th man, you were perhaps being a bit too selective when you chose only to quote the words "Yogi with a team that reached Europe and won the Scottish Cup, was a result of the quality of the players he recruited " whereas if you had instead chosen to extend your quote to the entire sentence "It has become increasingly apparent that much of the success of the Butcher era, which had enough momentum to provide Yogi with a team that reached Europe and won the Scottish Cup, was a result of the quality of the players he recruited" a different interpretation may have emerged. Now I do agree that there would have been no scope at all for ambiguity at all if I had said "the players which Butcher recruited" or "the players which he (Butcher) recruited" . In hindsight that would have been a better way of putting it since the last named person before the "he" is indeed "Yogi" rather than "Butcher". But, given that "Yogi" is in a separate clause interpolated into the statement linking "Butcher" and "he", and that the full sentence doesn't seem as ambiguous as the part of it you selected.... I maybe just got away with it! So to avoid any ambiguity - in my view, much of the success at ICT of John Hughes, whose own signings were less than impressive, originated from players recruited by Terry Butcher.

You're forgetting that some posts are ironic.

Don't worry, this Ebbe thing is all just a clever hoax by the ICT media team. Obviously there's no way a player who didn't make the grade in the LOI and slid down to amateur level over there would suddenly earn a move to our top flight. Just how desperate do you think we are?!

If the team wasn't sitting bottom of the league I'm positive there wouldn't be the same furore surrounding the performance of the board. It's very easy to argue that over a 4 year period where we managed successive top 6 finishes, two cup finals, one Scottish Cup win and European qualification we were really punching above our weight in terms of club infrastructure, fan base, budget etc etc. Surely this comes down to good work on both management and board sides. Terry Butcher had a very good model for player recruitment and left behind an excellent core for Yogi. Now obviously we consistently suffered from losing players due to contracts running down and therefore not being able to maximise revenue from that. Partly the board has to take responsibility in terms of contract length and structure but often it's down to the players not wanting to talk, or the manager wanting players to earn new contracts, which in itself produces good performances which attracts interest. Over the last 12 months several players have been signed on or rewarded with new longer deals. But now the players aren't really performing, so their value isn't maximised. So the board, have moved to rectify one issue (with what I'm sure would be approved and encouraged by the manager) and in doing so have possibly created a different issue. They can't really win. I'm under no illusions that last season showed that we are very much a team in transition now. I said as much at the time. We've lost a sizeable amount of key players (Shinnie, Mckay, Watkins for starters), others will leave this summer and others are probably needing to move on anyway. Frankly it shows what a good job Terry Butcher and his team were able to do season on season with player recruitment after losing Hayes, Rooney etc. They're boldness in moving players like Munro and Tokely on, both unpopular moves at the time but allowed us to move upwards. I think there does need to be a sense of realism around the club. We will peak and trough. Ebb and flow. Our size and budgetary confinement dictate that. Even big clubs struggle to replace a golden generation of players. The vast majority of match day revenue I'm sure goes towards game running costs and club costs. Wages etc. There will be very little left after day to day expenses. Whether the club are able to maximise merch and sponsorship revenue any more is a different question but one I do not know the answer to. Considering the league body went over a year without a sponsor shows that in general marketing within the Scottish game isn't that easy and I suspect it's hard to get a big deal for a club with a fan base of 3000. That's small fry to most advertisers. They also probably don't really see us as a crowd puller in terms of TV viewing so that has an impact also. Sky used to put out some embarrassing viewing figures for Scottish games when they had the most live coverage, some involving us. Sponsors see that. So are the board perfect, no. But I don't think they've done a terrible job. I'm sure other businessmen could do better. But they're not forming an orderly queue. And it stands to reason they're probably looking at bigger things than ICT. Is the manager doing a great job? No. Let's be honest. We're bottom of the league and his selection is sometimes questionable, however I think he's working hard to turn things around and he's been very unfortunate with injuries in a small squad and questionable decisions haven't helped. He's new to management and needs help. Are the players doing their bit? Some are, some have been poor. But that's not surprising when you're bottom. Confidence will not be high. That too has an impact. It will take a bit of magic or luck to change that along with hard graft. Are all players willing to do that?Remains to be seen. What can the fans do? Continue to attend, buy merch, play lottery etc. Club needs the money more than ever. Get behind the team. For a small community club we can be incredibly hostile at times. Stop looking for people to blame. Unless you have a solution. It doesn't help.

Greeny just for this phrase, which I think would be an excellent choice of under-badge motto on next season's strip.

Thank you Kingsmills. I felt entitled/obliged to respond once and briefly to Dougal's initial red herring but would really much prefer to examine the role and performance of the ICT Board, not only at the moment but on an ongoing basis across several years. Just as I warmly endorsed an earlier post from PerfICT, I would similarly want to commend the recent injection of realism from iamthecaptain1.

No complaints from me about that game yesterday (other than the performance of ICT obviously). County thoroughly deserved that win and probably should have been out of sight by half time. I felt they did to us what we had done to them on so many occasions in the past - sit in and hit on the counter. Interesting to see Boyce played almost like a right winger for most of the game. I've not often been impressed with Boyce in games between the sides in Dingwall but I thought he was excellent yesterday. A real menace and he took his goals well although I think he'd be chancing it to say his second was meant as anything other than a cross which seemed to go straight through Fon Williams. The first County goal was everything about ICT at the back this season in the space of a few seconds. Disorganised, chasing shadows and just simply all over the place. Tremarco grabbed a scarcely deserved equaliser before the slightly fortuitous second from Boyce. Third was a classic case of County 'wanting it more' and completely out muscling ICT to win the ball back and then take advantage of our non existent defending to wrap the game up. Whilst Fisher got a goal back after a good positive run by King who saw his effort spilled by Fox and tucked away by Fisher it made the game look at a lot closer than it was. 3 - 2 might look like a close game but it was a pretty straight forward win for the Staggies. They passed up other good chances to add to their lead whereas I can't really recall many clear cut opportunities for ICT to get back into the game. Really can't grumble with the result. Big questions now for ICT. The team looks seriously short on confidence. With players like Tansey and Meekings reluctant to commit their futures to the club they could well be away before we pick up on league business towards the end of January. I still feel we are in desperate need of a Mckay or Storey type attacker. Someone with a bit of pace who can play off the shoulder of the defence. Right now we seem to start most games with a tall forward, playing with his back to goal trying to win countless lumps up the park with little or no support and instead of playing with 'proper' wingers to try and attack down the flanks and send in some crosses for the likes of Doumbouya to attack. Instead we play central midfielders there most of the time. Dropping Polworth yesterday was an odd one and the continuing presence of Vigurs in the starting XI continues to baffle. A lot of players are seriously under performing right now and Forans tactics seem somewhat limited with only one game plan seemingly evident most matches. NareysToepoker on Twitter noted that this is the lowest points total accumulated by any ICT side after this many games in any division. That we have fewer points now than at the same stage of the relegation season of 08/09 is extremely concerning however the only saving grace is that we haven't become completely detached. Yet.

Chirpy chirpy cheep cheep - hovering like a vulture

got a couple of bites.