RiG

Personally I don't think they are. They aren't doing a bad job but everything seems a bit late in the day to drum up some interest. Harry Gows were given tickets last night to give away today and even they made a comment about the late notice given to them. I know there was a bit of a delay in getting the tickets to the clubs from the SPFL but that shouldn't have stopped ICT from drumming up some interest right from the word go. Most folk these days get their news from social media but until recently Facebook and Twitter were pretty quiet about this game. It doesn't take much to set up automated Tweets to ping out info about how to get tickets for the game. It was good to see that the team were going round schools in the area to get younger fans interested. However I would have liked to have seen more things like "The person who buys the 100th, 500th, 1000th ticket wins a special prize" and it could have been things at minimal cost to the club like signed strips, be a mascot at a home game (or even the final itself), do some more ties in with local shops to win tickets basically do anything to try and incentivize (is that a word?) folk to buy a ticket for this game.

I completely and utterly disagree with this "punching above our weight" stuff that people come out with. We've spent the majority of our existence at the top tier of Scottish football and comfortably so for the most part (albeit in the bottom half of the division). Saying that we were punching is pandering to the central belt consensus that only the historical biggest teams should be in the top division. I'm absolutely buzzing for tomorrows game. Initially I was slightly apathetic but the closer it's come to game day the more excited I am getting. Bring. It. On.

Eh? We've been playing like we did in the first half pretty much all season and look where it's got us. Far too often we pass the ball about well enough but have absolutely zero creativity in the final third and don't finish the few chances we create when they come our way. That's not how a team that will be "comfortably safe" performs.

I think it started around the 12/13 season when we were facing each other in the top flight for the first time. We also had El Kessecko around that time as well which I thought was decent but Cold Firm? Nah.

Caley Stan sums it up well. We dominated the first half without ever really threatening to score the goals needed to put us into a comfortable lead. Oakley was incredibly wasteful. Staggering that he gets a free ride from our fans when Baird was crucified any time he missed a good chance. We simply cannot afford to pass up the kinds of chances he did yesterday if we want to get a few more wins on the board. United were posted completely missing in the first half but the introduction of McDonald at half time and later on McMullan brought them a lot more joy and they had the measure of us for most of the second 45. I don't really know what their goal was like. They had a throw in about 30 yards from goal and I looked away for a couple of seconds only to turn round when I heard the home fans cheering Mulraney and Doran coming on helped us stem the tide a wee bit and get us back on the front foot on a few occasions towards the end of the game but again we didn't create too many clear cut chances to get a winner. And that is us in a nutshell really, plenty of the ball but very poor in the final third. Stan mentions Polworth being wasteful yesterday and whilst i agree I would also say that when he gets into those positions there is precious little movement ahead of him to seek out. There's no Billy Mckay type player hanging on the shoulder of the last defender looking to be played in on goal. Our crossing from wide areas is pretty poor and hold up play by the main striker isn't good enough and we turn the ball over before they get support up to assist. Defensively however I thought we were pretty decent yesterday, certainly less mistakes compared to Tuesday night and some other games recently. Even without Donaldson I thought we coped quite well with United for the most part despite being under the cosh in the second half. Warren mopped up a lot of attacks but Seedorf defensively was poor. Apart from Warren I thought Bell and Tremarco were probably our standouts. Bell brings a real energy to our attack buzzing all over the place to try and support Oakley whilst Tremarco is much more solid at LB than Calder. If we want to win the Challenge Cup next weekend we will need to up our performance again but I'm not too sure if some of these players have much more to give.

Encouraging...

United fans don't seem to think this will be on. Lots of water on the pitch that hasn't drained away.

Andrew Dallas is the referee. *insert angry gif here*

Who cares who was responsible. The fact is that Butcher had a system that worked well with a limited budget and signed some cracking players for us. Even when they moved on we still got some excellent replacements which were supplemented with cheap loan or short term signings. Hughes, with a bigger budget, completely failed to replace the good players when they left, signed about ten central midfielders and didn't address our shortcomings up front for the vast majority of his tenure. Your never ending romanticism with Hughes is, to a point, merited. I don't disagree that we will probably never hit those highs again. That said, you are also pretty deluded regarding other parts of his tenure, namely player recruitment, that, whilst an obstacle for previous managers, had still previously been accomplished with much greater success, and with less money to boot, than what Hughes had at his disposal. That failure to recruit well was the start of a slippery slope. Foran though was the catalyst for the resultant downfall.

The way wythank15 talks about Hughes you'd think he was the only ICT manager that had ever lost good players from his side and had budgetary constraints. Also worth remembering that our good form earlier in the season came with a front two of Baird and Bell who not only buzzed about the front line to create and take chances (less so in Bairds case!) but both did a power of work defending from the front which made us a lot more difficult to beat.

They had won about 3 games since the end of October. They were in complete and utter freefall.

Rearranged for 24th April

Well that didn't take long ETA: I honestly can't believe we're having this discussion again but regardless, HtG nails it for me. Hughes alone is not to blame for our situation but things went into a downward spiral at the end of his tenure before going into a full on nose dive under Foran / Cameron and this season we've totally stalled.

A truly shambolic performance from ICT that should really be leaving fans very worried at the prospect of a second successive relegation. With Dumbarton playing Brechin again on Saturday there's a real chance they will be just 3 points behind us. Forget about possible Highland Derbies next season and focus on staying in this league. Harper last about 3 minutes before going off injured as he collided with Vigurs and a Dunfermline player which led to the free kick which saw the home side open the scoring. Nice curling effort from the right hand side into the net. That was all there was between the teams in the first half with both sides giving the few fans in attendance absolutely nothing to get excited about. Second half was a bit more lively although we didn't really threaten apart from the odd cross or a timid burst into the box before we fluffed a chance. Dunfermline had the best chances and should have ended up winning by more than just the one goal. Thankfully the post and Ridgers denied them. A thunderous Higginbotham effort was the pick of the chances for the Pars but Ridgers made a fine save. Even though the score line makes it look like a close game I'd say we were as bad as when we were thumped 5-1 there earlier in the season. At the back we floated between competent and clueless. Most of the time we coped easily with the Pars attacks. Other times we flapped at crosses and passed the ball out of defence straight to the home side. Polworth and Vigurs certainly tried but mainly succeeded in giving the ball away. Chalmers was anonymous, Mulraney kept running the ball out of play instead of crossing it and Oakley spent most of the game falling over after wrestling with his opponent. We were an utter shambles. Aimless punts up the park and truly woeful attacking play in the final third. There were very few plus points. Ridgers made some good saves and it was great to see Tremarco and Bell back in the side. But apart from that it was a night to forget for ICT.

The SPFL want the game re-arranged for a week today which isn't sitting well with the club: https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/sport/football/inverness-caledonian-thistle/1433248/summer-football-not-guaranteed-winner-caley-thistle-boss-john-robertson/

The Pars have scored 6 goals in their last 9 games so they are pretty shot shy.

Original game postponed by hopefully we will have a game at long last on Tuesday. Nice short trip for those central belt based ICT fans but hopefully we'll get a few more folk down from the north for the game. Pars are on a rotten run of form with only one win since the end of December. Three points would be massive for us and maybe, just maybe, give us a faint hope of sneaking into the playoffs after Morton were gubbed yesterday.

But if it wasn't and it was called off after ICT fans and players had started travelling they'd get dogs abuse for not calling it off earlier. Regardless, it seems that Livi haven't made much of an effort to get the pitch ready anyway. Snow was only cleared off it the other day and they don't use their USH anymore either. They could have had this game go ahead but they, like ICT, don't make the same effort as they would have done if they were in the top tier.

Looks a bit more promising...

Yup. We only have two free midweeks between now and the end of the season. Last thing we need is another midweek game.

Pitch inspection at 08:00 tomorrow. Livi fans on P & B seem to think that this has little chance of going ahead.

Dumbarton have made an excellent wee promo video for the game.

Perth is a howling away day but the chance of some silverware in a pretty forgettable season can't be turned down surely? ETA: Dumbarton now have 9 full buses heading to this!

"Weather delays" It's been almost three weeks since the semi finals were played.