Huisdean

Everyone has the right to express an opinion and would never try to stop that but I think the point Oddquine was trying to make is the constant carping that goes on here by some posters. We could win the Scottish Cup and I guarantee some posters would be on here moaning about this that or the other and that is what is beginning to sicken me about some of our support. I don't think Butcher is the new messiah and, to be perfectly honest, if no real improvement in the team this season, in terms of results and performance, I do think it will be time for a change but let's give the team a chance first before expressing some of the nonsense spouted on here. I do know IHE, although not seen him for a few years. I know he wholeheartedly supports ICT but some of his posts are so OTT that they border on farce sometimes. I am well aware IHE likes to fish at times but a little less often would be welcome!.

Utter nonsense. It is only the fact that some people continuallybring this up that keeps this as an issue. Of course more local players help maintain local interest but were Duncan or Tokely locals lads, no they were not. You support your local team and I think the club are trying to work through the community to get some support as Caley D mentions in his post but sadly the local population just do not want to respond but please stop this drivel about Butcher changing the makeup of the team being responsible for declining attendances as it is simply not the case. Oh and by the way, the constant droning on about long ball football is also becoming tiresome. If you listen to Butcher at home games, he is urging the ball to be kept on the deck, it is the players, perhaps due to the Scottish mentailty, that resort to the long ball and we are not the only team that does this. Why, even Kilmarnock did this yesterday but that spoils a good moan if that is not mentioned.

I have to say that I am totally hacked off with soem posters on this topis. Renegade's first post baing a classic example. We did not lose the game yesterday and the football played, especially in the first 20 minutes was really good. It didn't match that after that although there were still some examples throughout the game, Nick Ross's chance at the end being a prime example. As for OTJ's red card, it was a definite red but some of the criticsm of him on kere is unbelievable. I think the red mist descended on him after aa bad tackle, and it was a bad tackle, and he reacted. If you have played football, then you know these things sometimes happen. As i have said he deserved to be sent off but it was out of character and up till then had possibly been our best player. incidentally, his sending off did not cost us the game where i can think of a few of Tokely's that did and cannot remember Tokely getting the same flack as OTJ. As soemone said, this was the first home game of the season and the things are looking better after 2 games than they did last season but some fans/posters are still expecting us to start the season as world beaters. Incidentally, not surprised that Butcher sometimes reacts to fans in the main stand especially when after 5 minutes in, ceratin players are getting huge abuse from some home fans. After hearing this for ages at least one other fan and myself challenged them to get behind the team and they looked bemused that someone should challenge them. I think we must have some of the worst supporters ever and I genuinely mean that. As for the attendance, the people of Inverness should be ashamed of themselves after yesterday. I am tired of hearing that we have been crap at home for so long (which isn't alaways true) that they are not going to attend anymore or will pick and choose their games. A lot of the posters who post vitriolic or constantly negative posts to me are simply not worthy of being called supporters. Given yesterdays poor attendance, I again question if Inverness wants or merits an SPL team. Truly truly dejected after reading some of these posts.

Don't believe all you read So what is the amount of sales ? Why do the club behave in such a secretive way over season ticket sales ? I agree, surely if the club gave actual numbers, and they showed sales were well down, it might encourage some more sales?.

Totally disagree with this. I have only seen the TV highlights, and the mobile phone evidence. From the TV highlights, the situation is not captured and it is impossible to say from the mobile phone footage exactly what happened or how serious this was. What i will say is that from the TV highlights, the referee was in a good spot and was clearly looking at the incident so he saw what happened and made his decision. He was also not very far from the incident, ceratinly a lot closer than any of us or the fan using the phone. The sending off was probably harsh but that is down to the referees decision, not our player. If the referee thought our player had simulated this act, he could have booked him and not sent the St Mirren player off. If our player did make the actual incident look worse, and I don't believe it was done to get a player sent off, then shame on him but hopefully he will learn from this. We have suffered, especially last season from horrendous refereeing decisons and this incident, I would suggest says more about the quality of refereeing than anything else, so maybe we are due a bit of luck/justice from referees. It amy also be aprt of becoming more streetwise as a team, possibly because some of the new signings are older and more experienced, which was also badly needed last season. At times we are simply too nice a team.

It's all very well fans not renewing season tickets but then they cannot complain if the quality of players we can sign then decreases due to lack of money. It will be intersting to see the results of the poll but when you see a team like Hibs increasing their season ticket sales and Aberdeen as well, when they were equally as poor as us last season, if not poorer, it does make you question the loyalty of some supporters. As I have said before, Inverness either wants an SPL team or it doesn't, I think too many fans would be happier being in the lower divisions. SMEE - while £12 a game would be great, and I agree that football is overpriced, I don't even think that would get fans back sad to say.

Just a thought, and aimed at those who say they are staying away because of the quality of football last season, I seem to recall that the first time we were in the first division, and playing "attractive" football, our crowds struggled to hit 2000. Going from memory, so may be wrong, but I think we were generally one of the poorest supported teams in the first Division despite playing, allegedly more attractive football. This maybe backs up what Caley D has been saying and deeper analysis is required as to why fans are not attending. People like me, who go to games no matter how the team are performing, are becoming fewer and fewer with fans much more fickle now for whatever reason. However real danger is we may not have a full time team at all if the crowds continue to go down so folks need to decide on what sort of ICT they want. Me, I want ICT playing at the highest level in Scottish football, not part time and moving around teh lower leagues but some fans seem to think that would be better than being in the SPL while stating the board/manager etc lacks ambition.

And do what exactly? They are running a BUSINESS and in any business they need to have a product which encourages people to buy into it. They need to quickly find out WHY our support are not buying as many season tickets. Is it because we can't afford it? Is it because we don't find the product value for money? Are there any othe reasons? There must be reasons why we are always struggling financially and I'm sorry that some of you may not like this but it is the BOARD's responsibility to keep this business viable or we cut our cloth even further and play at a level we can AFFORD. I don't want to be negative but it is a well known fact that a very prominent businessman is willing to make a substantial investment in this company but why has he not done so? Maybe he has no intention to invest under our present guardianship. For whatever reason, our men in charge need to find out if he has genuine intentions, what conditions are attached, make any changes needed and then do their utmost to get the job done. While it is the Board's responibilty to keep the Buisness viable, the football public of Inverness has to respond and to be honest, the majority don't. A lot of people have posted that because games/performance were poor last season they will not renew their season ticket. It then becomes a vicious circle with declining revenue meaning players of lesser quality and so on. A challenge to "supporters" then, if you want the club to succeed and can afford it, renew your season ticket and help the Directors/Board

As ever some good ideas but nothing from the Board to indicate they are doing somethind. i have said before as have others, most notably IHE, that it appears some members of the board, not all, are just their for the position/prestige and do nothing to justify their place on the board. Effectively they are getting free advice from the fans FFS

I really hope we get a good crowd as a payback for the problems the club will face financially and I will be there. The people of Inverness (and beyond) need to put their money where their mouth is now.

Don't know what percentage a 300 drop in season tickets is but I would have expected maybe a 5% drop due to recession/unhappiness of some supporters over how we played last season but if the drop is more than 5%, you seriously have to question whether Inverness wants or indeed deserves an SPL team. Not every team plays like Barcelona week in week out and is the product any worse than 30 odd years ago when the product was so bad, the Premier League was born!. Personally, I blame a lot of the problem on overcoaching, players cannot seem to think for themselves now and be individual as that isn't what the coacg wants. If season ticket sales continue to drop like this, and this isn't recovered from an increase in pay at the gate fans, I do worry for our future.

Totally agree. The Board seriously need to up their game, not sure if they can and I have said this on previous threads before. Too many people on the board for the wrong reasons.

While the original statement was so poorly worded and did not need to be made, I hope a lot of the nonsense spouted by some fans earlier in this topic is treated as what it was, pure vitriolic nonsense in some cases. Some of the content on this topic has made me ashamed to be an ICT fan and we talk about Old Firm bile!.

Although not on the original topic, it is not the games against Celtic we should really be worrying about as we will get a higher attendance anyway. What we need to do is try to get more fans to the "less attractive" games and boost attendances there. I think that can only be achieved by a level of discounting and would need to be very carefully priced to avoid the club losing money. However, you can see with all the sales in the shops just now how hard it is to get people to spend money. What the shops are doing, while slashing prices, is ensuring they have money coming in, ie cashflow, and this is something we also need to consider. This eason will be difficult for the club but I do think they need to trail ideas and see what works, if that means discounting prices for some games, then I personally as a season ticket holder don't mind although others might. I am sure there are other ways season ticket holders could be rewarded/compensated in some way for prices being discounted without costing the club huge amounts ( a prize draw for season ticket holders for example?)

I heard he was for the chop anyway.

Personally, I would not give up my seat in the main stand under any circumstances and especially not to accomodate Celtic fans (I would be affected if the main stand was split in two as some posters have suggested). What i don't get is where are all these extra Celtic fans going to come from. If they get one of the uncovered wings, and the west terracing seats, that is a substantial number of extra seats we can sell wwithout disrupting our own supporters. It is truly disappointing if fans who boldly stated thye would not renew their season ticket if Rangers were readmitted to the SPL have not done so and also some of the fans who are not season ticket holders do not attend more regularly to help the club. It would not take the addition of too many extra fans each week to improve finances at the club and Ross County being promoted as surely lessened the impact of Rangers not being in the SPL as we are guaranteed, hopefully, 2 big crowds to compensate for no Rangers games. And, before anyone asks, I did renew my season ticket even before it became clear how the club would vote.

Have to agree with the previous comments. At a time when the SFA should be doing all it can to restructure Scottish football to move it to a level playing field for all teams, not just the Old Firm, they are trying to influence clubs with dire warnings of financial meltdown of which I have seen no real evidence to back up this claim. For sure, it will cause clubs financial problems, some more than others but to get the chance, which will not come again for many years, to totally restrucure Scottish football and improve it for all clubs/fans and for teh SFA not to grasp that and try to achieve it simply beggars belief. Am I also the only one who thinks that the west coast mafia, sorry media, seem to be trying to exert huge influence on this as without Rangers to write about, they will have half their workload disappear.

Until he tried to read and understand one :lol: !!

Not too sure about being bigger than the club IHE but certainly think that someone at the club, at Board level, has to be preapred to stand up against TB, when required. I don't think, should that need to happen, that there is anyone ruthless enough on the board to do this currently. On a slightly related problem, I think that is a major issue for ICT in that the board need a leader who can give direction/vison to the club to take it forward. That is sadly lacking, in my opinion, at the moment. How do we know that nobody in the board does stand up to him? If you are talking about signings or releasing players the board are correct to let TB be free to make those desisions I don't want a board that gets involved in that, a manager live or dies by these desisions and whether they are right or wrong they have to be his. I for am happy with Kenny Cameron at the helm, can you be more specific as to where we are lacking direction and vision? Where is the vision that says where we will be as a club in 5 years, what we want from our youth policy, how to get more community involvement, what, if any plans for future investment, what plans, again if any for the stadium. I am not having a go at anyone but very little information comes out of the board about this. The flow of information may be marginally better now that Kenny Cameron appears to have the spokespersons role but the majority of the commenst seem to be reactive rather than proactive. The Board needs to set the agenda that they want the manager to follow, as the board will be here when the manager is gone. I have no inside information, but from the outside, it does not appear to be the case. Happy to stand corrected if there is a master plan that I am unaware of.

Totally pointless to do this as circumstances chamge each year and at some point, there will be a greater turnover of players the longer a manager is here.

Although I think the original post was a bit too negative, until we have seen these guys play, I think we have to reserve judgement on their abilities. What is concerning again is that they are all on 1 year deals. No real issues with this if the club moves to sign the players up on longer deals if they prove they are worth it but that doesn't seem to happen or happen quickly enough. Part of that may be down to players not committing themselves but I cannot believe that is true for all the players. I would also say that this is not unique to ICT and no SPL clubs have the majority of their players from their "local area" any more, those days are long gone unfortunately. However, that is what we have to strive to get back to with a good local core of players supplemented with others from wherever. As the previous poster said, a lot of who we perhaps thought were "local" players were not but seemed so because they were here for a long time. I also think too many posters look back to the Pele era and think it can be replicated again but I don't think it can as football constantly moves on. What i do think we need to do however is to try and integrate more into the community, generate more "local" players and be a club where loacl players know they will get a chance. This is not only down to the club but needs to involve the Council and perhaps the SPL/SFA (fat chance of that) but this should be our long term strategy. It pains me to say that the club does not appear to have a long term strategy and exists season to season. New blood is needed in the boardroom and possibly at managerial level if the current signing path for players we appear to have does not produce the results this season. For those who think this may be easy to achieve however, a word of caution. Look at the English Premier league, they all have academies etc but how many of the players produced go to the EPL. Very few as the clubs are more willing to spend money on foreign imports as that buys success quicker. We have to be careful that if we get to a predominantly local/Scottish team that doesn't produce results, that we, the fans and the Board don't then go down the route we appear to be going down at the moment. In other words the fans and board have to determine where they want to be in 5 years and start to make plans to get there. As I have said, this vision is sadly lacking.

Not too sure about being bigger than the club IHE but certainly think that someone at the club, at Board level, has to be preapred to stand up against TB, when required. I don't think, should that need to happen, that there is anyone ruthless enough on the board to do this currently. On a slightly related problem, I think that is a major issue for ICT in that the board need a leader who can give direction/vison to the club to take it forward. That is sadly lacking, in my opinion, at the moment.

I think that one of the reasons behind this move, and I am assuming no Championship sides were interested, is that if Hayes does well at Aberdeen, he will be more noticed than if he was with Inverness and the more chance there will be for a move to a "bigger" club than if he reamined at ICT. Undoubtedly, he will be on more money at Aberdeen and as the previous poster stated, there is currently more potential at Aberdeen than at ICT (for the moment anyway he said hopefully!)

It has already been said, and mentioned by Mr Cameron, but the fans now need to rally around ICT and support the club by buying their season ticket or attending matches on a more regular basis. The club will take a substantial financial hit on this so get behind them. If we can increase the number of season tickets or the average attendance, it all helps offset any revenue lost by the club and hopefully show their is life outwith the Old Firm.

What a load of nonsense some posters againput on this forum. Pre season friendlies are to get up to speed fitness wise first and foremost, then to get the playing system in place. It doesn't matter who we play or what results we get in these as long as we start the season positively.If anyone thinks that a friendly against a "bigger" team/teams will really benefit us in the season ahead, they are sadly deluding themselves. Bigger teams would presumably also want cash guarantees for playing which is money we can ill afford.