RiG

Doesn't sound overly committal here to be honest: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/34671020

Why has the league thread been merged with the League Cup thread?

Narcissist.

Don't have any leave left to take to make it up for this one so it's a TV job for me. If any Edinburgh based ICT fans fancy it there'll be a few of us in the Constitution bar watching the game.

Without meaning to sound like one of those hilarious #ITK types I had been told that the reason we don't often fill the bench with youngsters is because they get a bonus for making the match day squad so to avoid paying that we don't call any more up than we need to.

I think yesterdays views are based on the fact that yet again we created so few chances in another game. People can bleat on about possession as much as they like but possession means nothing if you do nothing creative or incisive as we did yesterday. One chance is sometimes all you need to win the game. Saints got a chance took it and walked off with three points. For all the time we had the ball we apparently mustered up 2 shots on goal and half of the game was against ten men. You can't dress that up as anything other than poor from ICT and and really solid defensive display from Saint Johnstone.

Knocking the ball about sideways across the halfway line does not equate to playing a team off the park. Just an awful, awful performance from ICT. Lots of the ball, lots of sideways passes 30 - 40 yards from goal but with absolutely no cutting edge against a Saints side that got men behind the ball and challenged us to break them down knowing full well that we didn't have the guile to do it. I don't think anything happened in the first half. Missed the sending off at the start of the second and the longer the game went on without ICT making the man advantage count the more you could see Saints sneaking something with a last minute winner. No idea if the penalty award was fair or not. Devine seemed to make a complete arse of things and as soon as he started struggling you could sense something big was going to happen - a bit like Tremarco in the SCF against Falkirk. I'm struggling to think of a worse ICT performance under Hughes. Apparently we had something like 70% possession. I bet about 0.0000001% of that we actually did anything of note. I can barely remember an attack of any sort from us and as for a save from Mannus? I don't even think we managed that. Even with a man advantage it was Saint Johnstone who looked more likely to score on a counter. We simply couldn't create anything of note. Seems to be a few off the field issues affecting things just now and that certainly appears to be translating into some very sub par performances on the pitch. The sooner the uncertainty about the manager is resolved the better.

CTO clearly buzzing for this one. Press and Journal saying that Draper and Mutumbo are added to our injury list but Raven and Vincent should be back.

First round of league fixtures are done, time for round two and first up it's the Tories of Perth at home who are just one point above us in the table. Earlier this season future 'World Player of the Year' Ryan Christie scored a beauty before we conceded a late, late goal to draw the game. Draper seems to be hinting that he will hopefully be fit for Saturday and that would be massive boost. We lost our grip of the game when he went off so his return would be a nice boost. Does anyone know what's wrong with the likes of Vincent, Sho Silva etc? I'd hope we'd be able to field a side along these lines: Fon Williams Raven Devine Meekings Williams Tansey Draper Polworth Christie Vincent Storey I'm not a massive fan of Tremarco especially in an attacking sense. Given that we often play with a very narrow attacking three behind a striker and the width tends to come from the full backs having Williams at LB would be a better option than Tremarco. He's just as good at defending and better going forward. I would prefer to see some kind of 'wide' midfielder in place of Polworth or Vincent but both had been performing well and we are limited in what we can call upon just now. ICT 6 - 2 Saint Johnstone.

#ITK

You can't support keeping Draper on the pitch when he was clearly injured and risked things getting worse then say we were right not to risk other players on that surface as it might have done them harm. I'm with IHE on this one. That's completely hypocritical.

Quite surprised at the number of posters who think we should just 'move on' and forget about the result. That wasn't a great performance at all and there's a lot of work to be done ahead of our next couple of homes games which are winnable but are still against teams who will be pretty tough to defeat. We were decent enough in the first half although our only real chances came from set pieces we struggled to create anything of note from open play. Perhaps the best chance was Christie's long range effort in the second half which had MacDonald scrambling. Storey, as AM says, seemed to be asked to create something from nothing. You could see he was getting frustrated with a lack of support. No idea why Draper stayed on whilst injured. Maybe Hughes asked him to, maybe Draper himself wanted to stay on but when you see the first goal we conceded a fully fit Draper (or indeed any other player) would have been all over Kiltie and I don't think he would have gotten that shot away. That wasn't smart from us. Later on when the come was getting increasingly congested in the middle of the pitch we strangely took off Williams who was playing quite well and at least gave us some kind of width to our play as an alternative to trying to force it through the middle of the pitch where Christie was struggling to impose himself and Storey was getting no change out of the excellent Killie centre backs. It seemed a very odd decision. Unlucky for Devine I think for the second goal. No way was that Magennis shot going in without the deflection of Devine's leg. Just a bit unfortunate but overall we didn't deserve anything from that game. Too few chances created and, more importantly, we didn't take them whilst Killie did. Overall a very subdued and somewhat lethargic performance compared to recent weeks. What happened to Vincent? I didn't see any news about him being injured. And were are players like Sho Silva?

She resigned to apply for the Dundee United job.

Expect a flurry of resignations from the ICT admin team if he was ever appointed.

Chris Harvey has just tweeted saying that Mixu has only talked to United. Hughes apparently has permission to speak with them as well. Perhaps the Record have jumped the gun a wee bit here. The plot thickens...

Absolute scenes.

If Shinnie had played it would have been 26 - 0.

I'll be there with ICTChris. Looking forward to Foran's first game in charge.

Heard rumours she is taking over from Hughes after he leaves for United.

ICT will do exactly as they did with Butcher. Refuse the initial approach, speak to the manager and talk about offering them a new deal but are told that the manager wants to talk to the club who has made the approach, ICT 'reluctantly' accept, manager agrees terms with approaching club who then agree compensation with ICT to release manager from contract. When you look back at these articles on the BBC website ever get the feeling we've seen this all before? http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/24809195 http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/24827043

Tommy Wright has signed a new deal at Saint Johnstone. I think we all know where this is going...

What on earth is the point calling up players in exceptional form like Shinnie, being four or five up against Gibraltar in a meaningless game then throwing on the likes of Naismith? This was a perfect chance to see how players like Shinnie were shaping up to break onto the international scene but no. Strachan yet again goes with the players we've all seen a million times before and know what they can do so we don't get to learn anything ahead of the next campaign.

Can't be long now until we hear the immortal line "After John indicated his desire to speak with Dundee United the club reluctantly gave permission for John to travel to meet with Dundee United to discuss terms."

Paterson / United I remembered but I had clean forgotten about Butcher / Barnsley. Good call.

When has an ICT manager turned down the chance to move on when another team has come calling? Why are people so confident that Hughes will be any different?