RiG

My mistake, with Goodwin laid flat out after the goal I thought it was him. Quite frankly skinning Tesselar just doesn't seen quite as fun. From the highlights clip it appears it is actually McLean who Raven skins. But frankly, who cares who it was! It was a great goal and worth the admission money on its own. Watched Sportscene yesterday and you're right it is McLean.

Lots of interest in this one(!) Aside from a thorough pumping of Ross County we have laboured in recent games. Hopefully we will have Watkins back in the starting XI along with Draper to partner Tansey in midfield. I would expect to see us / like to see us line up as follows: Brill Raven Warren Meekings Shinnie Draper Tansey Watkins Christie Doran Mckay That's pretty much our strongest XI although Hughes may want to minimise changes to the side given they have won their last two games so I wouldn't be overly surprised to see Tremarco continue at LB and Shinnie maintain his place in midfield. Watkins apparently has had a dead leg which kept him out of the game against Saint Mirren.

Juanjo. That is all.

Exactly. Players may not always feature in the firxt XI but they will be learning new things all the time and, as you mention, might end up coming back a better player because of it.

Cheers Renegade - that's what I was reading earlier. There is no direct quote from Raven saying he hasn't been offered a deal (hence the reportedly comment earlier) but that seems to be the angle put on the story by the BBC. However, what he has been quoted as saying is encouraging.

Raven is reportedly saying that he hasn't been offered a deal yet.

If his agent engineers a move to another club where Watkins gets paid more than he would do at ICT then I would say he has done a decent job. That's what they are there for - to get the best deals for their clients.

:laugh:

Hope a good crowd comes along to this one. Looks like I'll be missing the game sadly so someone will have to shout at whoever the referee might be.

Nikcy Low is average at best though I am mindful I said something similar about Flood and he turned into a great player for Aberdeen albeit slightly off form this season. Higgenbotham would be a superb addition to the team. I think he's a smashing player although perhaps not always on good form. I wouldn't say no if we had the chance to sign him up.

Pretty sure it was Tesselaar. Certainly wasn't Goodwin. He came across to block the cross from Raven. Incidentally, gave Goodwin a bit of banter in the second half and he turned round, laughed and gave a wee thumbs up. Took it well. I almost find myself liking the guy after that

Whilst I don't expect to see Shinnie at ICT beyond January, though I would love to be wrong, I think the line up today is more a reflection on Hughes not wanting to change a team that's just come off a thoroughly convincing victory the week before. We've seen it before with Hughes that he won't tinker unless it is really required hence why Shinnie persevered for so long at RB last season before we started to stumble and then the set up was amended. Today was much the same.

A game that was very low on quality and when some good play broke out it led to the only goal of the game. Saints seemed content to sit quite deep and hit us on the counter. Nothing wrong with that of course but from an ICT perspective it was somewhat disappointing how difficult we found the Buddies to break down. We really struggled to get anything clicking in the final third of the pitch. Nick Ross was in for the injured Watkins and he didn't really display much today to suggest that he should be starting in this side any time soon. Saints had more opportunities to grab the opener with a number of long range efforts. I think it was McLean who had every single shot from distance as well His best effort from distance beat Brill but not the crossbar and the ball bounced over. Mckay however had the best chance of the first half for both sides when he collected a short pass back and scurried towards goal. Instead of quickly dispatching a shot he dallied and Ridgers rushed out to block his tame effort. The second half was more of the same until the only goal arrived about 10 minutes from the end. Tansey picked out Raven advancing down the right flank and floated a ball in his direction. Raven controlled the pass and moved beyond his man in one quick movement which left Tesselaar on his backside before he drilled a low ball across the box and Mckay expertly flicked the ball in with a clever back heel. After that ICT nearly added a second when Tansey rifled in a free kick which Ridgers pushed over. I don't think I can really say it was a deserved win because I thought we were very poor. Aside from the County match we've limped through this festive programme with some unimpressive performances. Perhaps our small squad is starting to burn out a wee bit. The January transfer window will be interesting with players likely to decide their futures one way or another in the next few weeks. Shinnie may not even be here by the Killie game. We shall see.

Spotted a number of ICT players at Clach today - Mckay, Devine, Doran and Tansey amongst them. Wee bit worried that the likes of Mckay and Tansey might be signing deals with the Lilywhites

Indeed. The ticket prices will have changed but the one thing that will have remained consistent is that Ewan Murray will always remain a complete melt.

Oddly enough I'm kind of pleased. I just don't want him to go to Aberdeen!

Some Twitter chat about Birmingham having a bid accepted for Shinnie and he is likely to be away soonish. Source seems to be Ewan Murray. Think of that what you will.

Lazy cut and paste from a similar topic of your five favourite footballing moments of 2014. Two aren't strictly ICT but there are (tenuous) links to us so they can stay in for all I care! 1) ICT 2 - 2 Hearts (ICT win 4 - 2 on penalties) League Cup Semi Final Down to nine men, going into injury time and trailing 2 - 1. Up steps Nick Ross to fire home the equaliser and send the game into extra time. A great Dean Brill save from Hamillin the penalty spot and ICT eventually, against all the odds, win the shoot out and are off to their first major final ever. Let's ignore the final though :( http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/25900500 2) Ross County 0 - 3 ICT An absolute pumping of Ross County at a venue where we hadn't won in 10 years (although mos of those years we were in separate divisions). I like the Staggies fan at around 4:50 who makes to throw a bottle at Watkins but thinks better of it and backs down. 3) Terry Butcher joining Hibs I was disappointed to see him go to Hibs but in a fabulous bout of schadenfreude ICT fans were able to see Butcher fail spectacularly and take Hibs into the SFL1 after a laughable run of results. I suspect he won't regret the move but sometimes I do wonder what we might have achieved that season had he stayed with us. Still 4) My favourite ICT goal of 2014 this Aaron Doran strike v Ross County in another derby win in Dingwall 5) Jamie Hamill v Derek Adams. Nothing more needs to be said here

I was going to say the same albeit the numbers I found said both pitches were 75 yards wide...

Hughes seems to be expecting Shinnie and Mckay to move on and is (allegedly) looking for replacements: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/30638895?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

Here is a table from @SPLStats on Twitter https://twitter.com/SPLstats/status/549301715288481792

Why is it a terrible idea to have a central midfielder play in a central midfield role? Wait, Vincent's position is playing in behind the striker, not centre mid. Hughes sometimes plays him on the right and it doesn't work. The only place that he is effective is in the hole. He has never played in where Tansey and draper normally play because he simply does not have the bite off the ball to be in there, it would be like having Daniel Stratford in there again, hence why it's a terrible idea He's played in the middle two of a 4-2-3-1 before and done well. You don't need to have 'bite' to play there and it's completely unfair to say that he is only effective in one position.

Why is it a terrible idea to have a central midfielder play in a central midfield role?

Rumour mill in full swing. From the most suspect looking website ever: Hearts, Peterbrough and Bradford after Mckay Hearts after Watkins http://www.sportsmole.co.uk/football/bradford-city/transfer-talk/news/bradford-enter-mckay-chase_196064.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Massively disappointed with that. I don't think there is much between us and Aberdeen to be honest and I felt that showed again today much like the earlier game at Pittodrie. Sadly, just like that earlier game at Pittodrie, we decided to help Aberdeen out and set up a goal for them. No idea what Tremarco was thinking. He had no chance getting to that ball which Meekings was going to clear. Good play from Aberdeen to quickly take advantage of the error and a great finish from Pawlett. The goal aside I wasn't overly impressed with Aberdeen in an attacking sense. I didn't feel they created much and I felt we created significantly more chances to grab goals than they did but, crucially, we never looked like scoring most of our chances which is somewhat important in this game. Mckay crashing the ball off the bar and Brown with what looked like an excellent save from Tansey were perhaps the best chances for us. I thought Tremarco was lucky not to be sent off for a wild lunge on Pawlett (I think) in the first half. Plenty of shouts for a handball against Warren but from my view I didn't think it was deliberate although that was from the other end of the pitch so that opinion may change on viewing the highlights. As I said, I didn't think much of Aberdeen in an attacking sense but defensively they were pretty sound. Murray at right back had a good game and Considine kept Watkins relatively quiet. Jack was superb in CM for the opening 20 minutes as Aberdeen dominated the midfield whilst we struggled to get going. Some really poor performances from key players. Shinnie and Doran need to do better than they did today. I think we would have been better with Shinnie at LB and then Williams in CM alongside Tansey. Very strange for Hughes to wait so long to make changes and when he did I was very puzzled when he did. As Yngwie has posted elsewhere in the last five years, over the festive period, we have won just twice in 19 games. No idea what happens but we seem to fall apart over Christmas and New Year. We need to right this quickly and we have two very winnable games coming up (in theory!) against Ross County and Saint Mirren. Fail to up our performance in either of these matches and I can see Saint Johnstone overhauling us in the very near future.