dead_ball_specialist

He isn't rangers class. No doubt this story is a result either of lazy journalism or Cowies agent trying to hype his man up with a bit of dodgey used car salesmanship. I remember many moons ago Phil McGuires agent claimed he was being watched by liverpool. The reality is, Cowie has been tosh this season and could probably do with being dropped for a while. Perhaps he isn't quite the player he first appeared to be, or maybe his early success has gone to his head. Either way on his current form he wouldn't be a great loss.

I think he's trying to "sit down, shut up" ICT fans with a dose of "you can't compete with big clubs like us". It brings flashbacks of Charlie Christie's infamous "just the fact that we're in the SPL means we're overachieving / punching above our weight blah blah blah" post match interviews. The fact is, there's more to football than money. Previous ICT managers / squads have achieved great success against so-called bigger clubs. I see no reason why we can't aspire to finish above a team like aberdeen. They may have a bigger budget than us, as do most SPL teams, but they're still sh*te. So are Falkirk, Hamilton, St Mirren, Kilmarnock and Motherwell. None of these teams can go out and sign quality players, and any time a good one emerges it's only a matter of time until they're poached by an english third division side. So money isn't exactly the be all and end all, especially at the lower end (i.e. scottish football) nobody can sign superstars. What counts is knowing how to build, nurture, organize, motivate and develop a TEAM. Other SPL clubs don't have an absolute comparative advantage over us in any of these respects and we shouldn't fear any of them. As we've seen in the past, a half decent ICT team playing the right way is capable of humping these teams, and on a good day, Hibs, Hearts and Dundee Utd to boot. Even the old firm aren't exactly invincible anymore.

It's starting to become apparent that brewster doesn't have what it takes to fix the problems with the team, ideally we'd want someone to come in with a bit of charisma and some new ideas to freshen the place up. Our current form is as bad as the run of results that preceded the resignation of Charlie Christie. Can anyone honestly say we've made progress since brewster came back? I don't think so. The average age of our first team has decreased, fitness levels have improved, but that's about it. Those calling for a 'total clearout from top to bottom' are fools. I don't think we're that far off being a good team, our problems are mainly psychological and tactical. We have a very talented young squad (brew deserves some credit for signing imrie, rooney and esson, and promoting vigurs, sutherland and duff) with lots of potential. Yes we are crying out for an experienced defender / striker and a new home system, but wholesale changes to our playing squad are not required IMHO. For whatever reason (motivation, communication, tactics, organization, training etc) the current manager simply isn't getting the best out of our players and as a team ICT are playing far beneath the level they have shown they are capable of in spells in the recent past. Ian Mcall, Mauris Malpas, Billy Stark, Craig Brown, Paul Lambert, Sandy Clarke and Jimmy Nichol are all absolutly useless and shouldn't even be on the radar sceen quite frankly. If anything they would take us backwards! John Robertson knows the side well and would be an instant hit with the vast majority of fans so I think he's the most sensible option. Ideally I'd like to see Steve Paterson back as I think he's a far more talented manager than Robbo, but with his recent personal problems I doubt he will be considered unfortunatly.

Good to see that police resources are being used sensibly, the north stand is a hotbed of political radicalism and potential terrorist activity.

Craig Brewster clearly does not have a clue. 4-5-1 at home has given us the worst home record in the SPL yet he persists in playing exactly the same system every week. Can't he see what everybody else sees? Doesn't he have ANY other ideas? The team has looked lethargic, fragile, disorganized, clueless in the final third, and utterly stale at TCS for months. Theres an obvious pattern here. Doesn't he analyse our performances on video? What the hell does he do all week? Our home performances have exactly the same shortcomings every week and NOTHING is changed. The manager isn't doing his job.

Lol it sounded like about 12 guys chanting to me, but given how few home fans there were today that probably wasn't all that far off from being half of the north stand. I was suprised by how LITTLE abuse Brewster actually received. He got off very lightly IMHO.

Surely there can be no more enjoyable result for an ICT fan than humping aberdeen? This is a perfect opportunity for Brewster to obliterate the clouds circling ICT and boost his sagging popularity among the sneckie faithful. A brilliant performance / scoreline on saturday would get the home monkey off our backs and could set us up for a run.

Judging by how fast the tide is turning against Brewster (aided by some baffling, self-destructive decisions in the last couple of weeks) perhaps a new man will be at the helm in time to offer Barry Wilson a new contract? Let's hope he holds his horses before signing for someone else (especially one of our relegation fight rivals).

We're finding it hard to score goals at the moment, most of our strikers are of quite similar stature (Wood, Barrowman, Rooney. McAllister) do you think we need a wee man like you to act as a foil to our target men or is that just an old fashioned cliche?

I think some of the abuse aimed Brewsters way in recent months has been a little OTT, but todays gutless performance was indefensible. Wrong starting line up, wrong system, wrong tactics, VERY WRONG substitutions. I wouldn't mind losing so much if we played the right way but today you'd have been forgiven for thinking that the managers decisions were made using astrology, or a magic 8 ball. I just don't see any logic! Perhaps he's a tactical genius but our results hardly suggest that.

"You don't need to look far to see Inverness's problems, thats 17 games without a clean sheet, they're all over the place."

Those weren't the subs I had in mind. Interesting that they were greeted with a chorus of boos. Probably the away fans. Is he taking the p*ss?

This is awful, I can't believe he's decided to change our away system (which has been working so well) in a 6 pointer like this. And the inclusion of McGuire an Barrowman? What the **** is he thinking. Sounds very much like we're being outworked and outplayed. FFS Brewster, get some subs on!!!

Nice earrings

I get the impression some people are suspecting that Ralph Milne is actually Craig Brewster himself. The only way to prove otherwise would be to make a post DURING an ICT match when he would obviously be unable to do so.

Steve Paterson or John Robertson.... or perhaps Steve Paterson AND John Robertson. What a team that would be!

Hmm that sounds about right. We should employ Kevin Keegan tactics in most of our home games. Free flowing, all out attack. Whats the worst that could happen, losing? We're already almost always losing. And 1 victory is worth as many points as 3 draws. With the crowd behind the team, and opponents having to play a less adventurours, more defensive game, we'd be far less likely to go behind and never recover, as we always do these days. Even if we lost the odd game 5-3, at least we'd have had a go and would have been entertained in the process.

When Barry Wilson is introduced he almost always makes a huge impact. I think he's still probably our best attacking threat. To release him at his stage of the season, without a similar player lined up in the wings (no pun intended) to replace him would be a shocking decision. He still has alot to offer, particularly taking into account our lack of creativity in the final third particularly at home. The only good reason I can think of for this decision would be to give Zander Sutherland a run in his place but given the fact that Vigurs was played on the right wing ahead of both him and Wilson on saturday (when we ought to have been chasing the game) I'm not sure if thats going to be the case. :018: :thumb04:

I think we missed Tokely the attacker more than Tokely the defender. There was a case to be made for playing proctor at right back i.e. he has more experience in that position than duff. But there was also a case for playing him at centre half i.e. he's been playing well in that position in recent weeks, and why unsettle the back 4 even more by making 2 changes rather than one. I would probably agree that proctor is our best right back, but the frustrating thing is I reckon if proctor HAD been played at right back and had a bad game we'd be hearing about what an idiot Brewster was for making that decision.

No he's a promising young manager who's brought a new level of professionalism to the club, is building a good team for the future and should be allowed to finish the job. PS I don't think this forum is representative of the bulk of ICT fans. The mental health of certain posters on this forum (not to mention any names of course ) is questionable, particularly Craig Brewsters more obsessive, histrionic critics. It wouldn't take a rocket scientist to create multiple accounts and post the same OTT bullsh"t 1,000 times. Most fans I talk to are p"ssed off with our home form but they also tend to be of the opinion that we've been very unlucky at times this season and aren't far off being a good team. I don't see any magicians waiting in the wings to magically transform us into world beaters overnight. It'll take time but I believe Brewsters descion to favour youth this season will reap rewards in the future. Take a step back, look at the big picture. We're only 4 points off the top 6.

Out: Lionel Djebi-Zadi, Barrowman, Fraser In: Scott Dalziel (Stenhousemuir) Big, strong, pacey, skillful young striker with quick feet, excellent control and good goal poaching instincts.

The 'pro-Brewster' posters have already had their say. We just don't feel the need to repeat the same thing 1,000,000 times every few days unlike some people.

I don't understand why we played 4-5-1 again today, it's abundantly obvious that this system isn't working for us at home. The decision to play Barrowman as lone striker was nothing short of madness. Arguably the laziest, most cowardly player in our squad - hardly capable of putting a dent on a solid Utd rearguard, particularly when most of the service he received was in the shape of straight, high balls. That old cliche 'meat and drink' comes to mind. Why on earth was Imrie subbed? He was working harder than anybody else in an ICT shirt. We ended up with Vigurs out on the right wing WTF? Does anybody think he's a more effective winger than Imrie? What nonsense. When we pushed men forward and played with the ball on the ground we caused Utd problems. We had spells when we were pressing the ball, putting in crunching tackles, winning the midfield battle. But, as is often the case at home, we limped into 'loose' spells (to put it politely) where Utd were allowed to stroke the ball around with impugnity and had nothing to defend but idiotic high balls to Spannerman. One last moan, why do we only start playing AFTER we go behind? We should be playing with intensity and attacking focus from the first whistle, not only when we're already chasing the game. The 1-1 with Falkirk a few weeks back comes to mind. Positives? Zander Sutherland got a run out, but not enough time to make an impact.

Fraser is lucky to be a full-time professional footballer AT ALL. The club would be insane to give him a bumper contract. There are plenty of higher quality goalkeepers in the SFL who could replace him.

There were a group of about 30 Stenny fans at the game, most of them looked about 15 - but they weren't neds. Their chanting was quite good natured and amusing. I didn't see any cops at the game, just a couple of gormless guys with yellow vests. There weren't any signs of impending trouble at the final whistle. It was so cold that most sensible fans just wanted to get indoors ASAP. As I was walking into town 4 police cars and a police van went speeding past in the opposite direction, I figured there must have been some aggro at the game. Can't say I'm suprised, just a shame I missed it as it'd probably have been more entertaining than the garbage on the pitch. PS Stenny's Scott Dalziel looked like a potential SPL quality player. If we're still short of a goalscorer come january he could be worth a look.