Libero

Cant find any confirmation that his contract has expired or has been released. Would love to see him at the club and there have been rumours for a while that we have spoken to him. Always a possibility that his contract will expire at the end of June and will then speak to clubs. Going by what the press is saying today then Terry has identified and spoken a target and is awaiting word back however a signing is unlikely to be made prior to pre-season training starting on Thursday.

He took us and St Johnstone for suckers after leaving within a year. Never really had a good bite at making a mark on the SPL, mind you his performances were pretty mediocre, didnt like using the wings and he always struggled with a good cross so questions will always be resurrected about his cape-ability

I hadn't noticed that. Would be happy to have him back

The official site has updated the squad details for the coming season, interesting to see that we have 26 in our first team squad. Clearly a few will be predominantly if not entirely U20 squad players but still a decent sized pool of players. Back up GK and maybe a loan signing or 2 to add some competition and were pretty much there. Cant say I ever remember a time when we were so well organised going into pre-season. Impressive close season work 1. Allen, Curtis 2. Cheyne, Jay 3. Christie, Ryan 4. Cooper, Matthew 5. Devine, Daniel 6. Doran, Aaron 7. Draper, Ross 8. Esson, Ryan 9. Evans, Adam 10. Ferguson, Calum 11. Foran, Richie 12. Gorman, Joe 13. Greenhalgh, Ben 14. Hooman, Harry 15. Mckay, Billy 16. Meekings, Josh 17. Pepper, Conor 18. Polworth, Liam 19. Raven, David 20. Ross, Nick 21. Shinnie, Graeme 22. Taylor, Charlie 23. Vincent, James 24. Warren, Gary 25. Watkins, Marley 26. Williams, Danny

Its almost as is Terry has been reading these pages. Article in today's P&J regarding trying to sign Scottish or Scotland based players: Whilst we would all rather more Scottish players in the team it is simply not feasible given our wage structure. Personally I fully understand and accept this and have no problem where Terry sees fit to source our incoming transfers.

I think it would be safe to assume that our starting line-up will be something along the lines of: ESSON RAVEN MEEKINGS WARREN SHINNIE DRAPER FORAN A.N.OTHER DORAN A.N.OTHER McKAY 81.8% with SPL experience. Not quite the 95% I suggested but my point stands, we will have a starting line up will a very high percentage of players having SPL experience. The way people are banging on about signing players with SPL experience you would think that the SPL was some amazing league full of technically gifted players and superstars

I would much rather us sign younger players with potential who have no SPL experience than has beens from bottom six SPL teams just because they have SPL experience We have retained about 95% of our team from last year and we can all agree that last year was a very successful campaign ergo 95% of our team have SPL experience. Do we need more? I'm more than happy to supplement that with players from down south with no SPL experience.

Todays P&J suggests that we are in the market for one more player, a goalkeeper, and that TB has identified who he wants to sign and is awaiting a response. Sounds like the squad we currently have will be pretty much be the squad we start the season with. Given that we have used the loan system over the last few years I would expect a couple of loanees to come on board to supplement numbers

I'm sure I heard somewhere that Adam Evans is primarily being signed as an U20 player. Likewise with Hooman and Gorman I would expect Would think that the remaining winger slot (given that Doran will be starting) would be contested between Greenhalgh, Williams and Watkins

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/22902962 So they cant sell their most sellable asset, makes you wonder where else they're going to raise the money needed to get them through the next couple of months

A lot is being made of our recent signings being recruited on a national basis rather than a local one and quite a few posters seem to be concerned that our team seems to be increasingly 'foreign' I have just read an article here: http://sport.stv.tv/football/clubs/inverness/228510-how-does-the-spl-compare-to-europe-in-blooding-under-21s/ which thrown up some very interesting figures on how we compare to other SPL teams and indeed how we compare to other leagues in Europe for homegrown and domestic U21 players I'm reasonably surprised to see us doing well compared to others on playing a reasonably high percentage of Scottish U21s. Our homegrown figure is pretty low but considering that 4 of the top 5 finish teams have figures of less than 6% then it seems to suggest that playing homegrown talent does not guarantee success in the SPL. Motherwell seem to be the only team bucking the trend. Very low homegrown and Scottish U21 figures from our neighbours across the bridge despite claims at the beginning of last season saying how they wanted to sign/play local players. Whilst its almost universally known that most big teams (Barcelona and a couple of others excluded) make their teams up from a multitude of nationalities it is interesting to see that the averages for playing homegrown U21s for countries like England, Spain and Germany all are less than 7%. A lot lower than i would have expected. Personally I am of the opinion that while it would be great to have a team made up of 11 loyal talented local lads playing for their hometown club, realistically this will never happen given that Inverness and surrounding areas have never historically been particularly affluent when it comes to producing footballers capable of playing at the highest levels. Whilst I do not mean this to be disrespectful, I do realise there have been many talented players to be born,bred, raised in the area but the amount of players reaching the upper echelons of the football world have been limited. For that reason I fully understand and back the idea that we will be a club who will recruit wherever necessary to entice players North to play and succeed for us. I feel that discriminating players on the basis of them not being local would be a huge mistake and if we did then the club would probably settle in a position somewhere in the lower divisions. Views? opinions?

Nice to see us signing someone who can score from freekicks: supposedly Ben Greenhalgh can hit a decent dead ball as well so we might have more luck from direct free kicks this season. Been a while since we've had a player who can hit the back of the net with free kicks

Just looking at the squad for next year (U20s in italics IMO ) and thinking where we still need strengthening, Goalkeeper and striker seems to be the priority areas at the moment GKs Ryan Esson DEFs Davis Raven, Josh Meekings, Gary Warren, Graeme Shinnie, Danny Devine, Harry Hooman, Mathew Cooper MIDs Aaron Doran, Nick Ross, Ross Draper, Ritchie Foran, Connor Pepper, Liam Polworth, Ryan Christie, Jay Cheyne, Calum Ferguson, Adam Evans, Ben Greenhalgh, Danny Williams, James Vincent, Marley Watkins STRs Billy McKay, Curtis Allen NB, some positions are assumed either to being a youth player or new signing

Signed up till the end of season 2015-16: Aaron Doran Signed up till the end of season 2014-15: Josh Meekings Nick Ross Gary Warren Graeme Shinnie Billy McKay Daniel Devine David Raven Liam Polworth Ryan Christie Signed up till the end of season 2013-14: Ross Draper Ryan Esson Richie Foran Conor Pepper Matthew Cooper Jay Cheyne Calum Ferguson Ben Greenhalgh* Danny Williams Adam Evans Curtis Allen Harry Hooman James Vincent Marley Watkins * One year deal signed with optional 12 month extension. This may apply to other players recently signed on one year deals also (Butcher, Malpas and Marsella are also in this category) Although today's papers are reporting that Butcher and Malpas are in talks to extend their contracts

I'm pretty pleased with the away top, definitely better than last years

If its is the Curtis Allen from Coleraine then he sounds like a decent goal scoring forward which we could do with for competition/strike partner/injury cover for Billy happy to see we may be strengthening further:

time to get onto wikipedia I think delighted to hear so much work being done so early http://ictfc.com/news/team-news/943-caley-thistle-signing-spree

Tommy Wright given the new managers job, with Calum Davidson assisting

No thanks for me, didn't show enough in the games he played for us to warrant a contract here IMO

Heres the link to the Courier story about no fee being required to sign Vincent http://www.inverness-courier.co.uk/Sport/Football/Vincents-delight-at-move-to-Caley-Jags-07062013.htm

Best oxymoron i've seen in a ages!! I agree with you that we appear to learned from recent seasons that its better to get sorted sooner rather than later. Clearly a lot of teams will be very busy in the transfer market in the coming weeks so it will be interesting to see how teams start the season. Motherwell will be one to keep a close eye on, they've lost a lot of quality recently

Why don't we have ignore buttons anymore?

Id be very intrigued to hear how many local (to Inverness), home grown players are playing at a standard of Scottish Division 1 or better. I honestly think that getting a full team out of said players would be almost impossible so for two North teams to field numerous local players is just wishful thinking. Unfortunately the north of Scotland is just not a area of the country renowned for producing talented footballers in any great numbers. Back onto the original topic, both the P&J and Inverness Courier are reporting that James Vincents transfer involves no fee as it is a cross country/border transfer. By the sounds of it some more news on signings is likely next week with contracts of players down south expiring

Im hearing that we are signing James Vincent, no official confirmation yet, will do some digging to find out more