Stevie

Hmm, a fair amount of sarcastic comments regardin Duncan's re-signing. Okay like the club, Russell isn't going through a particularly great spell, but a wee look at the bigger picture will tell us that he's consistantly been a stalwart through much of the history of our young club. I'm delighted he's put pen to paper. He's one of the boys that has got this club to the position it is now.

So should we not have bought Cowie ? he was a member of a Ross Co. side relegated from the First Division !

We had this last season too though ! Remember last autumn when Johnny Rankin scored two long range goals against Falkirk, well the following 9 games produced no wins, 4 draws and 5 losses, a mere 4 points out of 27 ! Charlie Christie was getting it big time from a fair amount of posters, check out the site history from that spell ! To be honest with you, as I've said, I'm not happy with the wage thing regarding Niculae, and I don't feel the team is as good as it was (we're missing Rankin &Dods) but I really think folk are over reacting to little more than a bad spell

Very interesting stuff IHE, you may well be right I don't know. My take on the situation is more....boring. I was a great CC sympathiser as my site history will confirm, I spent a lot of last season arguing on here, fighting his case, and I was very sorry to see him go. I don't think the signing of Niculae has been good for the club, I'm sure he's a nice guy, he's certainly a good footballer, but he, to my mind, is not what the club is about. Brewster has though, undoubtably, done well. To win 5 games on the trot is a fantastic achievement in the SPL, it actually developed into 7WINS IN 9 SPL GAMES ! That's impressive stuff. To be 2 goals down to Celtic and beat them 3-2 is a truly great achievement for Inverness, I mean this is a Celtic team that flirt with the elite of Europe. I really believe that the present run is little more than a bad spell, inconsistency rules in the SPL. We're actually only a point poorer off than we were at the same stage last year. My only real concerns are of the wage structure, I don't think the Niculae signing has been good for the club at all.

Yes, this has been mentioned last week by Govan Jaggie. It's hard to believe though that the club wouldn't have worked out a bonus scheme for reaching the top six that would make that the more appealing target for the players

SPL clubs (O.F.) apart seem to all be very inconsistant, so hopefully the law of averages says we should be coming out of our bad spell and headin for a good run, just in time for a charge on a top 6 spot :022:

Come on IHE you're the man who's usually " reliably informed " and you're normally fairly good with the intuition. What's your take on the situation ? I'm not incidently, disagreeing with you, merely interested in your opinion. Do you think it's the "Niculae factor", Brewster's management (although your thread was started in the CC reign), or more of a problem steming from the Boardroom ?

Rory McAllister was born on 13th may 1987, so he's 20 :blah01:

Johnboy, I couldn't argue with any of that. I'm with you on this one.

??? I thought you'd moved north Gringo Not yet Stevie, its was Gringo Jnr who moved up in....erm.....2006. Ah, I see. I assume from the "not yet" bit, that you plan on eventually moving ?

??? I thought you'd moved north Gringo

All true. Also, I remember Rory playing a great game against Celtic last season @ home. The guy hasn't deserved some of the abuse fired at him on here.

I don't know if you're being sarcy Ken, but is there not plenty unrest amongst the posters ?

I'm happy. A club of our size will always be relatively inconsistant, one moment winning 5 in a row then before you know it ,losing 5 in a row. That Inverness are walking at the same pace as Hearts, Hibs, Aberdeen,Falkirk, Kilmarnock etc is very heartening. In fact if you think about it there is really very little difference in the quality between Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Motherwell or Dundee United. Therefore take the Old Firm out of the equation and you find that ICT are basically as good as any Scottish club. A staggering statistic considering they didn't exist 14 years ago ! The worrying thing for me though is "The Niculae Factor". This club got where it is via men like Hastings, Duncan, Tokely, Munro, Wilson etc. etc. Really good honest pro's, club spirit was of paramount importance. I know Niculae is possibly the most gifted player we've had BUT the ICT thing was built on solid foundations and like many others I don't think that many of those good pro's can be happy with the wage situation. I appreciate you've got to try and get to the next level, but I don't like it, I desperately hope that it doesn't lead to too much unrest. So to sum up I'm presently happy with our performance/position, but concerned about the future

The Fergie MacDonald Band, various places. Now that's a proper band !!

Well said Sir !!

Beautiful photo ! Nice one Mantis.

If that was the 4-3 game (3-2 maybe) then I only saw the second half :029: but he didnt look great at all. He has always been disappointing to me, always puts in alot of effort but hardly makes a contribution when on the ball, for an important position like his we could do better. We sold Rankin and have Imrie now, I suspect he'll do alot better than Pat, both are the same age I think? You had me doubting myself there Clacher, so I checked back to page 46 of this forum. Paatelainen got good reviews from the fans for that particular game. I should stress that I'm not particularly bothered if Patti doesn't get a new contract, merely surprised that he hasn't been given more of a chance.

Could be Dougie Imrie ! :010:

Watched Sportscene last night and must say I was very impressed with the Saints St Mirren haven't normally impressed me but last night I thought that it looks like MacPherson seems to be getting his team together now thats the best I've seen them in years, and of course when we head there next week they'll no doubt be giving a debut to Jim Hamilton, he and Dargo could be good together. So anyhow getting to my point, it's going to be a difficuly one BUT if we can win then we'll have a good chance of going 5th. The 2 clubs above us Aberdeen and Falkirk are both facing the Old Firm. Not only that but we'll have a game in hand on both of them. BIG GAME on Saturday and I'll be there to see the 1000th goal ! :clapping03:

The Paatelainen situation is a strange one for me. The lad gets signed from the 2nd (or was it 3rd) division last year and does reasonably well, he gets a few games and scores a couple of goals. To all intents and purposes he'd managed to cope with the step up to the SPL very well. I recall one game last season down at Kilmarnock where Markus looked the real deal, our most potent threat. Because of injury he's only managed one start this season. You wonder what's gone wrong

I actually made a point of watching him in the "live" game a couple of weeks ago (Clyde v Dundee Utd.) On the day of the game I'd read in the paper (Express I think) that Imrie was hoping that the television game could put him in the shop window, so I made a point of watching him closely throughout the match. He, in my opinion, was very effective. He certainly was very prominent in the game. To be honest I kinda got the idea though that he hadn't played to his full potential, he almost had a great game if you know what I mean. I had previously been under the impression that Imrie was a striker but if this game is anything to go by then he is a left winger. On the little that I've seen, I think that Imrie will be a success at Inverness :022:

I'm not too downhearted at all, whilst Rankin managed a few goals last season, he never totally convinced me. I've seen Imrie once or twice and I've got a sneaking suspicion that he'll be a big success for us. And whilst I'm sad to see the departure of Caff, I don't think it will be detremental to the team.

I can see many reasons why Brewster may want to let Bayne go. He has just signed another striker to add to Rory, Deano, Denis, Marius - my count that's 6 in the squad not counting any up and coming pros in the U19's. As much as I like GB (not the DofF GB) he doesn't score goals so maybe we should be listening to offers? Aye but Bayne is more of a Joe Jordan type than a Kenny Dalglish, they have a tendancy to provide more than score. The thing about Graham Bayne too, is he's a big game player, he can score the winner at places like Tynecastle and Ibrox, for me that's invaluable. Bayne in my opinion is one seriously underated player

As far as I'm concerned, we really missed Graham Bayne today. There were a lot of high balls flying about today and Bayne, in a standard 4-4-2 would have been my preferred option. Why Brewster came up with the idea of Roy McBain in right mid is very strange. Having said that thought the team played generally well and I remain confident that Brewster will take ICT into the top six this season