RiG

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

Signing a bunch of utter jobbers managed by a guy who didn't even apply for the job and hasn't had a managers gig in years was never going to end well. An utter disgrace of a performance. The players and manager should hang their head in shame at what we saw this afternoon.

Get rid of Chalmers, pop Trafford into midfield with Vigurs, swap Raven and Mckay around and that would probably be a reasonable line up.

When Rangers, Hibs and Hearts etc were in the league Dumbarton whacked up their prices to milk their stay for all its worth. They've remained largely the same even after those sides had left the league.

Don't really disagree with this but Mulraney has played in plenty of games against teams that don't pack their defence like Livi did on Saturday and he has seldom showed much to get excited about. As recently as the Dunfermline match he never got into the game and barely threatened. And they definitely weren't sitting in! But even against teams that do defend a bit deeper he needs to find a way to impact on games. Hayes did when he was with us though granted he was playing in a better team. For me though his all round game doesn't seem to have come on at all. As mentioned above he often looks quite disinterested when he comes on. His passing is slack, he spends more time falling over on his backside trying to win a free kick than actually doing anything meaningful to the benefit of the team. I'm hoping he'll come good but he really needs to improve rapidly. Whilst he's still quite young at 21 a lot of players are really hitting their stride at this age and Mulraney seems as far away from kicking on as a player as he was when he first signed for us though perhaps he didn't receive the best of coaching last season...

Fully support those comments from Robertson regarding the lack of impact from the subs (excusing Tremarco obviously). Whilst he is still only 21 I am stunned at how easy a ride Mulraney seems to get from our support. For such a potentially exciting talent with bags of pace and a decent bit of skill he has zero end product. I can't recall a time when he has either scored or set up a goal for us. He could be a game changing player for us yet he seems to just let games pass him by.

Another typical ICT performance from this season showcasing perfectly why we will continue to struggle - a porous, error strewn defence and an utterly toothless attack. We're currently conceding about 2 goals per game on average and our attack simply isn't good enough to get three goals. We're not in the Paterson days any more. Whilst not really knowing much about Livi or their players individually I was really impressed with (cliche alert) how well organised they were. Whilst we had a lot of the ball we seldom seemed to trouble Livi who looked really comfortable sitting back a wee bit, inviting us on to them and trying to get us to break them down. We did create a couple of excellent chances to score but this tended to be the exception rather than the norm. For the majority of the game Livi defended well and easily kept us at bay. In the first few moments Vigurs played in Baird who shot right at the keeper and in the second half Polworth cut in from the flank and drove a ball across goal evading Bell and Baird. These were perhaps the best chances we created during the course of the game. Even the goal by Bell was somewhat fortunate as, looking at the highlights, it seems to be more of a cross than anything else. The three Livi goals had all the classic hallmarks of ICT defending this season. Got a set piece to take? We don't defend it. Fancy whipping a cross into the box? We won't clear it properly. The opener was actually quite well worked by the Livi players in the box who pulled their markers (Warren and Trafford) all over the place and they ended up running into each other freeing up Todorov to side foot in the first. The second, as mentioned above, comes from us failing to deal with a cross and Warren being asleep and standing much further back than the rest of his defence playing the Livi guy onside. Whilst the third, although another fantastic strike, is the result of even more atrocious defending from a set piece. There were few bright spots for ICT yesterday. The midfield trio of Polworth, Vigurs and Trafford were reasonable enough but Vigurs and Trafford faded badly late into the second half. Bell, despite an energetic start, also dropped off as the game went on with very little going right for him when he tried to beat his man. Cooper was non existent, the defence all over the place again whilst up front Baird certainly works hard but seldom seems to be in the right place at the right time to put the ball in the net or fluffs a great chance. He reminds me of Mckay when he first signed for us. Sadly for ICT, Baird is not in his early twenties and we need him to be much more clinical now rather than after a season as we had with Mckay. With each passing week the faint hope I had for us sneaking into the playoffs in 4th diminishes a little bit more and its clear that supporters are largely starting to drift away already. A shade over 2,000 fans yesterday should set bells ringing at the club. Last season our average attendance was something like 3,800 and whilst we won't enjoy the large away crowds this season as had in previous years its clear that several hundred home fans have deserted ICT since the summer. It really doesn't bode well for the future.

Is this the same John Hughes that got Raith relegated last season?

Those players have collectively had about one good game between them and one has only played in a single friendly match.

I thought today we... ...actually, f'ck it. I'm not going to waste my time.

St Mirren have also had a manager in there now for several months with a long term plan. Something we haven't really had for a couple of seasons now. Their signings have been with long term progression in mind compared to our sticky plaster approach to new players.

http://www.inverness-courier.co.uk/Sport/Football/Mark-Ridgers-praises-incredibly-talented-Owain-Fon-Williams-and-empathises-with-his-Caley-Thistle-situation-11092017.htm Really is a ridiculous situation here. Either OFW or Robertson are lying. I noted that Meekings favourited OFW reply that he wasn't injured which, to me, indicates some kind of support from a (former) team mate of his side of the story. Of course we've seen the recent saga with Draper during his move from the club as well as the shabby treatment handed out to other players and coaches. When did we become a club that treats it's players so poorly and in public as well?

If only our fans got as worked up about other things going on at the club as they do about the players having some slices of pizza after a game. Jesus wept.