RiG

He was mentioned on here the other day but Sam Winnall has moved from Barnsley to Sheffield Wednesday for between £500,000 and £700,000. Allegedly, he will be on wages just shy of £20,000 a week. EDIT: Someone having a laugh on Wiki with his scoring record for us!?

The 'terracing' behind the goals is just a grass bank isn't it? We'll get a wee bit of the covered terracing down by the corner flag but I would imagine any folk wanting a sing song will be behind the goals.

Got mine. Looking forward to it!

Match threads reach a new low on CTO.

Absolutely agree. Concerning that some fans think that 'a season in the Championship would be a good thing' (or something along those lines). It would be disastrous. We have to stay in the Premiership. It may be dull but in Scottish Football it is the only place to be.

We were still taking players from the Highland League when we were in the second tier with some success and the likes of Danny Williams came from teams in the 7th tier of England but you'd imagine that would still be a better standard than the third tier of Ireland. The lad is 22 so clearly not a signing for a couple of years time. This is a signing for right now so let's hope he can bag a few goals and fire us up the table.

I think maybe a few folk are jumping the gun. Like a lot of our players I suspect he's just happy to be home for a wee bit of a break.

Two clean sheets this season I think one of which was against Arbroath. We currently give up an average of nearly two goals every game (1.9 goals conceded per game). To overcome that we need to grab three goals to get three points something our pretty toothless attack is looking unlikely to achieve. Other things worth nothing are that we concede the opening goal in over three quarters of our games this season (76%), we are typically in a losing position at half time (behind in 62% of our matches at the break) and we score more than two thirds of our goals in the second half (69%). Appears to me to point towards problems in the first half which puts us on the back foot and struggling to get back into games. We've often struggled against teams who sit in and defend against us, inviting us to break them down. Looking at the numbers this season that appears to be exactly what's happening. After we lose the opening goal we struggle to find our way back into the match.

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.

The team needs all the backing they can get at the minute to help them get out of this situation. I really hope you change your mind and get across to Dingwall to support them.

Don't really know where to begin with that performance tonight. Seems to be a pretty predictable pattern of ICT 'dominating possession but not getting the breaks'. We certainly seemed to have more of the ball compared to Well but again offered very little in an attacking sense I think it'd be hard to justifiably claim we should have won the game. Best chance of the first half for ICT fell to Vigurs who saw a header from a Mackay cross hit the post whilst Well nearly went ahead when Ainsworth hit the post (I think) with an effort which had Fon Williams looking lost. Perhaps the main talking point of the first half came when Cole lunged into a challenge on a Well player which led to a brief stramash between all the players. Cole looked like he might have gotten away with one as he was just given a yellow card. At the start of the second half Polworth played in Doumbouya and he shot / crossed the ball to the back post where Cole was just too far behind it to slide in to score. Not long after this Well nabbed the opener. Clay found himself at the right edge of the ICT box and sent the ball flying into the net from about 25 yards. From where I was I thought it either caught the fierce wind or took a deflection which left Fon Williams with no chance to save it but others have save that he (FW) didn't really cover himself in glory with his positioning. Maybe the Well highlights will clear things up but either way it was a strike that certainly looked good and came out of nothing. Vigurs and Doran then forced Samson into a couple of flying saves curling efforts in from the left and right of the box both turned round the post. A corner from Vigurs which also caught the wind nearly snuck in under the bar but agains Samson was alert to tip the ball over and the subsequent corner saw the ball end up at the feet of Doran and he cracked the ball off the bar with a shot and then, with Samson stranded, Draper followed up to head the ball into the net but he seemed to be bundled over by a Well player. No penalty given there nor a few minutes later when Draper gain went to ground under a challenge from another Well man but this claim looked piss weak by comparison. As ICT continued to huff and puff in the search for an equaliser the more Well looked likely to grab a killer second goal on the counter attack and that's exactly what happened. After an ICT attack broke down Moult skipped down the ICT right and crossed for McDonald who tucked the ball past Fon Williams who refused to move off his line to claim the crossed ball, something he's previously looked suspect on, and secured the three points for the away side despite the late goal from Tansey who poked the ball in from about 6 inches out. Vigurs was announced as Sponsors Man of the Match which drew boos from the home fans and rightly so but he wasn't the only sub par performer. There are a number of our bigger players not really up to standard at the minute. Tansey is an obvious one here. I can count on one hand the number of good games he has had in 2016 but the problem is who would we replace him with? Of course we can't keep playing players who simply aren't doing it for us but with limited options it's hard to see what we can do. A key theme of our games over the last few weeks have been our apparent inability to turn possession/chances into goals. All too often our attacks fizzled out with a slack pass, a blocked cross or a wayward shot from a desperate last ditch effort because nothing else was on. Foran seems to have one game plan - lump it high and long towards Doumbouya / Fisher and hope someone collects the knock down. This just doesn't work with Vigurs because he simply doesn't work hard enough to get up to support the target man and collect any balls that are knocked down to him. Doumbouya, during the time he was on, struggled to really win anything in the air and although Fisher had a bit more luck he again was somewhat isolated. There seems to be little in the way of support from one of Tansey or Draper getting forward with both sitting pretty deep and letting the front four try and create a chance. In the wide areas Polworth is just lost played as a right midfielder. We looked a bit more threatening when Doran came on and he forced Samson into a couple of decent saves one and also hit the bar with another shot. If we are going to play with big lumps up front perhaps it might be an idea to play the likes of Doran on the wing, instead of a central midfielder like Polworth, and they can try and get some crosses in for Fisher or Doumbouya to attack? Our last good performance at home came against Dundee were Vigurs was dropped and Polworth played behind the striker. Something maybe to try against County with Doran and possibly Cole on the left and right? Cracking Well support in attendance tonight given the time of year, evening KO and aforementioned costs. ETA: Having seen the brief highlights it doesn't look like a deflection on the Clay shot. Just kind of catches the wind and seems to go into the net in slow motion. Probably not much Fon Williams could really do. Not convinced the first shout by Draper was a penalty but I still think Fon Williams should have come for the Moult cross.

Getting relegated to the Championship would be absolutely one of the worst things that could happen to the club. I've seen a few people on Twitter say this tonight after the result and I cannot fathom why relegation would be a good thing.

Motherwell have a 60% win record between the sides in Inverness. Smashing(!)

Good to see that even on Christmas Day all Ross County can think of is Inverness Caledonian Thistle. No wonder they are forever in our shadow

Really poor game overall. We lacked any attacking intent in the first half and seemed to have no plan for most of the game other than lump balls towards Doumbouya and Fisher. It was desperate stuff. Second half was a bit better but still we lacked an real incisive play in the final third. We seem to absolutely refuse to try and use our wingers and try and cross the ball into the box for the striker to attack. Looked like there was a hint of a handball when Coulibaly took the ball down when he scored the opener. Still, poor defending from Polworth to let him cut back inside and Fon Williams beaten again at his near post. Atrocious marking for our equaliser. Warren seemed to get in between two Kille players and still had a free header to plant the ball past MacDonald. Injuries really disrupted us today. Doumbouya, Horner and Mckay all taken off. Our reorganisation was a bit odd. Polworth at right back was strange. Far rather have Meekings there, drop Draper into defence and stick Polworth into midfield. He (Polworth) seemed to be one of the very few ICT players willing to carry the ball forward instead of battering it towards Fisher. Massively underwhelming first half performance, slightly improved second half but there's a lot of work to be done specifically in terms of our attacking play. We remain one dimensional, predictable and largely toothless. Think we deserved a draw but there's a lot of concerns there for me from an ICT point of view.

I agree with the above solely just for this splendid appearance during an interview with a Celtic fan after the Scottish Cup Semi Final.

All part of the fairy tale of Ro$$ Bounty.

I would endorse this approach. More seriously, one majorly disappointing issue on Saturday was the seemingly irreversible decline in our crowds. That was the first game v Hamilton that has dropped through the 3,000 barrier in the last few years (maybe ever I haven't gone back beyond the 2010/11 season). Hamilton have never brought a lot of fans to our place so it looks like we've lost almost 1,500 fans for this game between August 2010 (3,851) and December 2016 (2,473). Ouch!

Not much to add to what alternative says above. Good number of chances for both teams. Hamilton started stronger and ended the game looking pretty threatening whilst we probably controlled the match for the parts in between. Some really wasteful finishing from us at times. Doumbouya, Tansey, Draper and others must have misplaced their shooting boots. Shame we didn't really have any other attacking options on the bench who might have come on and grabbed a vital second goal. Defence looked a lot better with Draper just in front of it and Vigurs looked like he was more effective further forward and put in a reasonable shift actually trying to win the ball at times (but not every time). Fon Williams positioning was definitely suspect for the opener and once he had placed himself that far over with his injury he was going to struggle to get back across to keep out the Crawford shot. Well taken goal by Cole. Seemed to take an age to go in and I wondered if it deflected off an Accies player causing it loop up and over. Despite our pressure I can't think of too many times when we really had the Accies back line scrambling to keep us out. We still seem a little light up top. EDIT: How on earth did we not get a penalty in the first half with that blatant handball by the Accies defender blocking Doumbouya's header!?

I'm going to be missing the Rangers game

You'd be surprised how easy it is to start a rumour on Twitter or somewhere like CTO or Pie and Bovril and have a journalist pick up on it and then run with it.

Foran has strained his beard IMO.

Apparently Horner, Raven and Mackay could return according to the Inverness Courier. Might mean we could have something resembling a defence if that's the case. Maybe something like this... Fon Williams Raven / Horner Mackay Meekings Tremarco Tansey Draper Mulraney Doran King Doumbouya With our creaky defence I really feel it needs more protection. Sorry but Vigurs doesn't offer that so pop Draper back in there please for a wee bit more cover. Cole doesn't seem to have a cutting edge in the final third but Doran always has a creative eye for a pass. Maybe try him behind Doumbouya? I'd like to see Mulraney get a start as well. he's still very raw but he is so quick he could offer a real threat on the flank. Last week we seemed to insist on cutting inside all the time and jogging across the edge of the Saints box. Get Mulraney in and see if he can hit the byline and get some crosses in.

Courier says Mackay, Raven and Horner could be back for the Accies game.

That's clearly not what he's saying at all. Poor defensive cover from any of the midfield two that we tend to play with has often contributed to our defensive frailties. Vigurs on Saturday was culpable for one goal conceded in such a manner but the others came from poor play as well. No one is denying that. It's clearly not just one player at fault but one of the reasons we seem to be conceding lots of goals this season was again clearly evident on Saturday with this slack piece of play by Vigurs which has been highlighted above.