RiG

You might be thinking of Ali Dia who Souness signed at Southampton because Dia told him he was the cousin of George Weah

The Harry Gow Dream Ring Stadium

Facts that he will have been well aware of when he was being offered the job. @bdu98196 details his failings so far pretty well. I'm not calling for his resignation but I think folk need to take the blinkers off and realise that despite the fact we were in a bad nick before the performance of Robbo as manager so far has hardly been encouraging. I'm struggling to think of anything positive he has brought so far.

I think that was the point that davidg was making

He will have known the financial constraints when he got invited along for a chat and he will also have been well aware of the time pressures to assemble a squad.

A good point. The North Stand was sparse to say the least and the Main Stand - wow. I can't recall a time it was so empty as this picture shows (Taken from an ICT fan on Instagram). It really is depressing stuff. What happened to the 15,000 fans at the Cup Final? I know a lot will have been day trippers and others can't make it every week but it's quite incredible that we never saw any bounce in attendances after that incredible success. A damning indictment of how little the people of Inverness care about their local team and also how little effort seems to have been made by the club to try and lure folk along on a Saturday.

I'm sure the poster(s) dishing out red dots will be along in a second to explain how ICT could magic up some extra cash from nowhere so support Hughes and his, admittedly admirable, aims. FWIW I obviously don't blame Hughes entirely but the downward spiral started under his tenure and accelerated with Foran, entered complete free-fall when Cameron bottled sacking Foran and pretty much crashed and burned with the appointment of Robbo and the utterly amateur operations over the summer coupled with shocking player recruitment. It's not one persons fault but a cumulative effect.

Agree with Renegade. I thought Calder, along with Mulraney, looked uninterested for the most part. I know these guys don't get long to impress but Robertson is hardly being given much reason to start them when they turn in half arsed efforts.

What additional money was there to give Hughes? He'd already spunked shed loads of cash on a raft of unimpressive players, especially countless central midfielders, even if we did have cash to give him I'd have been pretty reticent about giving him any extra money given his spectacular failures in the transfer market during his tenure.

Not sure the following really belongs in here but it almost falls under the same topic so I'll lob it in anyway... We have a board that tells drivers on the A9 when the next home game is but is this not in the wrong place? Currently only traffic coming off the bridge will see it (maybe going on as well I can't remember) and I was wondering yesterday if a similar board on the A82 approach would be a better location? More likely to hit Inverness folk that way and therefore potential ICT fans. Those coming over the bridge probably already have a team you'd imagine.

Erm, he signed most of the players that make up the squad.

I won't be benefitting but I've no problem with it. If a charity has been told to GTF then obviously that's not good but there is nothing to suggest that this is the case. Surely it's a good thing that any collections will help cover the cost of travel for fans going to an away game? Especially if it makes it cheaper for some of our younger fans to get along.

Yeah that's the only one I can think of. We had a couple of folk sent off as well I think. Tansey and Watkins?

What Dundee United game was that out of interest? Replacing players is part and parcel of a managers job. In fact it's a massive part of their job. Hughes wasn't the first ICT manager to lose some of his best players. Unfortunately for us, unlike his incumbents, he utterly failed in replacing some of the key players in the team. The season after losing Shinnie and Watkins the only reason we finished in a respectable position was a purple patch after the split where we won 4 games out of 5. We had been playing some brutal stuff for most of that season, especially in the run up to the split. Utterly toothless, tippy tappy guff that saw us passing the ball around for little other reason than simply keeping possession that bored fans silly. I remember that game at Ibrox as well. I also remember a game the previous year at Ibrox where the balance of possession was much more equal but we won 3 - 0. Possession is only good if you actually do something with it and at times under Hughes it seemed like we were simply playing a possession style football simply for the sake of retaining possession and not much more. Your staunch defence of everything Hughes is admirable however I can't help but feel it's misguided romanticism of some of the less favourable parts of his tenure at ICT. That said I don't disagree that currently there is no system but then I'm not overly surprised given the players we've signed and the manager we appointed.

It's playing at left back this Saturday instead of Chalmers.

Under Hughes we frequently cocked up at the back and gifted the opposition the ball to create chances / score goals even after the initial teething problems. Furthermore, under Hughes we tended to not have as many shots on goal than we did under Butcher previously instead preferring to knock the ball around the edge of the penalty area waiting for an opening which often didn't come as teams had dropped back to defend, challenging us to break them down, which we couldn't at times given our slow pedestrian style of play under Hughes. There's no doubt some of what Hughes instilled into the team was fantastic. After all he brought us success that we will unlikely ever see again albeit having been dealt a fantastic hand with the squad he inherited. However, I thought we were at our best under Hughes when he adapted his style somewhat to include some more direct play as we often saw in games against Ross County when we went for the jugular instead of knocking the ball around the defence.

Didn't realise that @TopSixand @ictchris were up in Inverness just now.

In the exact same way fans of other teams were surprised when we canned Hughes but weren't aware of the other goings on at ICT the sacking of MacIntyre at RC has shown just how little attention some of the country's "top" sports reporters pay to non OF teams. This is an excellent piece on the sacking and one of the few sports writers in Scotland who have actually bothered their backsides to go and research MacIntyre and his time at County. As Renegade says they've largely been garbage for several months now despite excellent financial backing. MacIntyre has signed a phenomenal number of players but still can't find a good setup to play them and often has his team playing brutal football. http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/teams/ross-county/why-jim-mcintyre-s-sacking-from-ross-county-wasn-t-much-of-a-surprise-1-4569378

Bold move after playing poorly in basically every game so far this season and costing us several goals with the errors he made.

Sorry, what? Foran was switching between praising the players then slagging them off several months before the end of the season. I've no issue with the manager criticising the players but I think it's always better if it's done behind closed doors. Sometimes it gets into the public domain. Fine, fair enough. But for the manager to have already slated the team publicly at least 3 times this early in the season is something I don't think we've ever had before. Robbo is as much to blame for the teams form as the players are so maybe he should fire some criticism his way. It is Robertson who has signed these players some of whom are known to not be good enough at this level. It is Robertson that plays them out of position or when they are out of form. It is Robertson who has been pig headed and refused to drop under performing players which has been detrimental to our current situation. When does he start taking some of the blame himself?

I see Falkirk are twisting already. Houston canned.

Meekings turned down a deal in November or around then saying he wanted to concentrate on his football or something like that which is typically code for I'm leaving and waiting to see who comes in for me. He then got injured and didn't play any games in the first half of 2017 for ICT. Then, after relegation, instead of offering the guy a deal based on the best we could offer, just in case he might have hung around, we, erm, released him and Meekings found out via Twitter, through an Inverness Courier journalist. This obviously went down like a lead balloon with Meekings who wasn't aware that he was getting released and he subsequently signed for Dundee after training with them for several weeks. Even injured and with one leg he's still better than every single defender we have. Combined.

Our defending for the equaliser was absolutely shite. Mckay starts running towards your left midfielder then backs away then goes back over with Bell and between them they still allow him to get a cross in. Then Chalmers and Tremarco are both ball watching and Froxylias steals in between the two of them to get to the ball and hit a shot. Wonderful finish but from an ICT perspective utterly shambolic defensive play. There is also a video on YouTube side on for the Dumbarton free kick and Polworth gets a wee shove from the player he is marking who scores the second goal which is why he isn't following him in.

If anyone can face it here are the highlights:

Sheerin and Lennon were the two that were allegedly interviewed then Savage was hanging around with the possibility of extra money coming to help the club out but he wanted Robbo. The rest is history. Anyway, Robbo has had another rant about the players -> http://www.inverness-courier.co.uk/Sport/Football/Caley-Thistle-boss-John-Robertson-Im-prepared-to-sacrifice-myself-for-the-club-are-the-players-23092017.htm