dead_ball_specialist

A couple of p**fy haired neds going at it like girls, no place for that on the footbal pitch. They wouldn't have looked out of place in Soho nightclub.

CC hasnt done great but with 2 wins against Rangers and a 9 game no loss run he's done ok But you have to question why we've had such wild fluctuations in form. I mean, how can we be absolutly brilliant against Rangers, Celtic, Hearts and Hibs - and then utterly rank against St Mirren, Dunfermline and Falkirk, often the very next week? Yes, football is a 'funny old game' but you have to be concerned with how drastically some of our players performance levels seem to drop from one week to the next without any apparent explanation.

What exactly is it about that quote that you find funny IHE? :shrug01: Charlie may have a point when he says we've moved up a level from last season. The trouble is, so have most of the other SPL teams. (Celtic, Rangers, Aberdeen, Hibs and Kilmarnock - basically every team that reached the top 6 apart from Hearts - has improved). Falkirk have improved, Dundee Utd have improved. In fact, every SPL team apart from Hearts and Motherwell has improved this season. Even Dunfermline are starting to get their sh*t together with their new manager. It's all relative. Thats par for the course. It's a competitive world. We need to keep improving just to tread water.

The game today was similar to the St Mirren match at new year. We were so on top for spells in the first half we should have buried them (Gary McSwegan was instrumental, whenever he got the ball he made good use of it, he was reminscent of Brewster with his first time flicks and sweeping crossfield passes to our wide men) - but we didn't capitalize, and we let them come back into it. 'Russeldinho' looked like a Highland league player today (in fact he was so bad, Highland league fans would probably be offended by the comparison) and he deserved to be hooked. But Charlies decision to take Rankin on in the centre shows he hasn't learned the lessons from earlier on in the season. JR just doesn't cut the mustard as a central midfielder, but for some reason he keeps getting lumbered with that role. I'd have preferred to have seen Richie Hart in there. Graeme Bayne was also very poor. He just isn't dangerous enough. He missed an absolute sitter in the first half, and he had another good chance in the second half when the ball was played through to him in behind the Paraletic defenders, but instead of driving into the middle and having a go - he meekly drifted out to the right and ended up putting in a cross. How often does he do that?! Defenders must love playing against him. At the end of the day, football is a simple game. It's getting the basics right that wins or loses you games. At the moment, we're haemoraging soft goals, our passing and moving is sloppy, and we're not putting the ball into the back of the net. To be fair, it wasn't all about Caley being sh*te today; Dunfermline are a much improved side under Stephen Kenny and played some decent stuff. But nobody (McSwegan and Black apart) really impressed. Our lacklustre performance may perhaps in part be attributable to mental fatigue; a malaise may have come over some of the players following their Scottish cup / Top six dissapointments. Things need to be freshed up. Zander Sutherland, Richie Hart and Alan Morgan should all be given the chance to show what they can do. I'd like to see Charlie be bold with his starting line ups for the remainder of the season.

He's just looking for an excuse to go over there and 'check out the talent'.

We should continue to play him until 7th place, and the financial reward for fininshing in that position, are secured.

County are a much bigger club than Elgin, you only have to compare their attendences, stadia, training facilities and business operations. The only reason they're struggling is that they've consistantly appointed bad managers, from Cooper all the way through to Leech. (I wonder where they'd be today if they'd never sacked Bobby Wilson?) If they do go down it'll probably take them a few years to recover. Financially they've overstretched themselves signing dodgey cetral belt mercenaries who've short changed them. They're going to have to adopt a more affordable approach; scouting the best Highland League talent and deleloping their own young players. In the long run, this might be the best thing that could have happened to them.

Teasedale and Thommo against County.

The most important attribute for a young player is vision. Doesn't matter how gangly, how weak, how rough around the edges they are - if they have a good footballing brain theres a good chance they'll develop into a good player. (the converse of course, is that a young player can have pace, power, size etc but without a footballing brain there's no guarantee they'll ever get much better) I've seen enough of Rory to think that he DOES have a decent footballing brain. In flashes, he's shown good peripheral awareness, an ability to read his teammates, some clever passes, and a couple of audacious efforts at goal. He doesn't manage it for 90 minutes, but he has the rudiments of a decent game. When Barry Robson was starting out he was weak, he made loads of mistakes, gave the ball away all the time and got dogs abuse, it'd probably be fair to say that he was much rougher around the edges than Rory (and he was only playing against 2nd division opposition). But every now and then he'd almost pull something amazing off. You could tell that he had some potential. Wyness was the same, and again that was back in the second division. The knockers need to take the fact that Rory has been thrown in at the proverbial deep end into account.

'Charlie says' by the Prodigy?

Fergie for the treble. :025:

Welcome to the forum Baroness Thatcher! :024: Of course I'm not saying you do the admin at the turnstyle, but for season tickets I'm sure a simple system could be set up. Sunderland manage it, so it's not rocket science. Imagine a supporter, Mr Jones, who is earning £11,000 a year, he has 2 kids who he wants to take along to the football - as things are he simply wouldn't be able to afford it. If we want to get more people coming to games and supporting the club, we have to make it more accessible. You'd really begrudge Mr Jones and his kids a reduced-price season ticket, and would rather have empty seats in their place?

My estimation of CC went up when I read the Courier this week, but this diplomatic olive branch doesn't change the fact that ICT are still a non-fan-friendly club. Inverness is not a particulary wealthy town, and large swathes of the population are virtually excluded from supporting the club on a regular basis by the financial burden imposed upon them at the gates. With the cost of property and renting sky high, thouands of us are really feeling the squeeze. The club should introduce means testing for ticket prices. Sunderland have a scheme like this and get HUGE crowds despite being absolutly tosh. Working class fans on lower incomes should be given some leeway... Snobs and presbeterian eberneezer-geezers might be unhappy at the prospect of the less well off getting in for a bit less than them, but surely those of us with a social conscience wouldn't object? It makes better business sense than the current 'one size fits all' pricing system, and the thousands of empty seats that it's responsible for. Working class fans also tend to be louder and less reserved than the much maligned 'sweetie rustlers', so it also makes football sense.

Why can't we use our full-time goalkeeping coach as a reserve keeper? He looks prett fit. I know a couple of Premiership clubs have registered their GK coaches as players. Why not?

Bannerman will probably dismiss this as 'archaic class warfare rhetoric', but surely the club shoulder's much of the blame for the lack of atmosphere at home games having priced so many traditional working class fans out of the game? I know half a dozen guys who used to stand in the Howden end week in week out back in the day, even when we were getting humped by East Stirling and Montrose - but almost never go to games at all now because they can't afford it, and it's too much hassle getting to and out of the stadium. The club have quite simply sold these fans out. The relationship with the fans has become purely a business relationship. Perhaps this is just a reflection of the modern world. As Marx predicted, the march of capitalism into every area of life, melts all that is solid into air and has torn asunder the motley ties that bound communities, substituting in their place, the callous 'cash payment'. (stick that one in your pipe and smoke it Bannerman!) I'm too young to remember the pre-merger days, but everyone I know who followed Caley and Thistle gives me the impression that those clubs were part of the social fabric of Inverness. ICT certainly is not. And as long as they price so many Invernessians out. (Imagine Mr G's charging £20 for entry, then lamenting how quiet the club had become, and the manager coming out and having a go at Invernessians for not clubbing, it'd be ridiculous) they will never be part of the social fabric. They've made their bed, and they're lying in it. A half empty stadium in the middle of no-where, frequented by sweetie rustlers and the prawn sandwhich brigade. It could all be so different if they thought outside the narrow constraints of the short term balance sheet and focused on building a local fanbase.

You'll find a fair few 'flamers' on any message board, this one certainly. But it sounds to me like you're attempting to blanket-deligitamize all criticism of the club there Bannerman. I appreciate the fact that you need to stay onside with the Inverness football establishment in your line of work, but you shouldn't flippantly dismiss and impugn the motives of those who have a different point of view.

I read an article in the P and J where Pele was talking about Rory as a youngster at Aberdeen. He said that he drank too much... imagine being rebuked for drinking by Pele Paterson! He must have been hardcore. :017:

I didn't call for Charlies head and I didn't say the players were rubbish. And I agree that there are some irritating fans who shout abuse to certain players, who we'd all like to shut up sometimes. But for the most part, our support is very good compared to other Scottish clubs. How many players have been spat out by other clubs and come into their own here? The likes of Wyness, McBain and Bayne were given plenty of patience, support and encouragment by the fans as they found their feet. What I said was that I wish Christie would stop bitching about the fans and start appreciating how much time and money we have contributed to the club over the years. Appreciation is a two way street. Yes the players work hard, but it's their job! They're extremly well paid to do what they do. Fans are paying £300 a year (and thats a **** of a lot of money to some people) and sacrificing an afternoon a week to come and support them - and Charlie has the cheek to belittle us and call us 'ungrateful', for not applauding him enough. Who does he think he is, Jesus? It's disgusting. Who paid for his house, his flash car, his fancy suits etc? US. He doesn't seem appreciative of this fact at all. I have no sympathy with his argument whatsoever. He should try working a 12 hour shift in a factory, or a rainy afternoon on a building site, or slaving in a kitchen for the minimum wage like the ordinary Invernessians who pay his fatcat wages. Has he ever had a real job in his life? Footballers aren't Gods, they're workers like everybody else and don't have the right to expect us to bow down to them. They provide a service as entertainers and if their product is poor they should be slagged off. If Charlie hired a joiner to do his kitchen and the guy did a sloppy job - don't you think he'd complain? Of course he would. What makes his job so special that he's beyond reproachment of any kind? If anyone is out of touch and in need of a reality check it's Charlie.

Wilike was awful yesterday. If it weren't for his size he'd be playing in the juniour leagues. Can't believe 'Berti Basset Scotland manager' picked him. It would have been interesting to have put Zander Sutherland on against him - he might have been able to run through his legs.

Surely we should have our 'auxillary' coaching staff doing the dirty work. If you're up for having a go at the linesman or the ref - get the goalkeeping coach to do it. Who cares if he gets a 5-game touchline ban?

Yes, Richie Hart won the 'super shooter' competition and Mark Brown won the 'keeper keepie uppie' competition.

He's talking b"llocks, there was plenty of backing yesterday. Even McAllister and Rankin who had very poor games were warmly applauded as they came off. Relative to other SPL clubs I think ICT fans are pretty reasonable. Try listening the the vitriol that comes from the Hibs / Aberdeen / Motherwell sections. Interesting to hear IHE's pop psychoanalysis of Christie. I also think he's starting to sound like a man with delusions of personal grandeur... as if he's doing an 'amazing' job taking into account he has to work for such a small, mickey mouse club, with such rubbish fans. When the club is doing well it's because of him and the players, when the club is doing badly it's because of the fans. "Narcissists appear to lack humility and are over self-centered and ungenerous... They characteristically but usually unwittingly exploit others and take them for granted and expect others to serve them without giving much in return. Their self-conceit is viewed by most as unwarranted. It smacks of being uppish and superiour without any substance to justify it." Sigmund Freud When you're playing shockingly bad football it's only right that the fans groan. You can't expect positive feedback and sychophantic applause ALL the time, we're not Americans. When you've got folks paying fortunes of their personal money to support a bunch of guys, some of whom might be earning 3 or 4 times what the average supporter is earning, and some of them aren't at the races - OF COURSE those supporters are entitled to moan. Charlie has got it entirely back to front. If there's a lack of appreciation, it's from him! Relationships are reciprocal. He and the players ought to be grateful to the fans who shell out their hard earned money to come and support them every week and pay their wages. I get the impression he's aloof and thinks that the fans are there to serve his and the players egos - rather than them being there to serve the fans. He gives the impression that the fans are 'privileged' to be watching ICT playing SPL football. Surely when half of those fans have spent thousands of pounds of personal cash supporting the club they've contributed more than their fair share to ICT getting up the leagues - and they're deserving, not 'privileged'. I for one, am sick and tired of his arrogant sniping. If the fans aren't good enough for you Charlie, then feck off and find a club more worthy of your 'amazing' talents.

Morgan can't play left back, last time it was tried was the 3-0 home defeat against Falkirk. A straight swap with Caff coming in for Munro is the simplest and most sensible solution. It'd be absolute stupidity to make radical changes to our defensive system going into such an important game against such a potent attacking side. Up front, on the other hand - perhaps it'd favourable to mix things up and create some chaos. Bayne and Rory aren't working as a partnership. We should stick Richie Hart up front - he's played there before, you can rely on him getting stuck in, he can beat a man, he can pick out a pass, and he knows where the net is.

Rory did OK considering he's still a rookie, he's not match fit, and he got no service. Yes he had a couple of bad touches and a daisy shot - but he had a couple of decent dribbles, some good headers and pressed their defenders. Rosco, Dodds, Hastings, Bazza and Patelinen all played pretty well - and Blackie was excellent, especially after he was booked.

Elgin trying to be the new Blue Brazil?