Scotty

Gretna will (eventually) stand or fall on their own merits just like Livingston. They currently have a small fanbase and a chairman with deep pockets who can do whatever he likes with his cash. He will realise his dream of seeing them in the SPL but its a very good question to ask what will happen next if he succumbs to illness or if he loses interest once they are actually in the SPL. Both scenarios are possible and Gretna may well tumble to division 1 or 2 ... in the end, they will find their level and compete at that. The same applies to Livingston, with a small fanbase, who spent wads of their chairman's cash to get where they were. It will be some time, if ever before they get back, but if they do it, this time it might just be on merit. Dundee Utd might be accused of a similar thing with Eddie Thompson throwing cash around to secure McCall, then Brewster as well as players, the difference is that they are a big club with a decent fanbase and he is trying to get them back to where they were. His best signing in the debacle of the last few years is undoubtedly Craig Levein who is an excellent manager. Caley Thistle are also seen as similar by a few - a chairman with loadsa money who built two stands to get us back to our ground to play SPL football. They might be right in some ways but we are fortunate that David Sutherland didnt just throw pots of money at us, he educated the staff / management of the club to work within a fiscal plan so that we could try and live within our means while still progressing and only came forward with cash where absolutely necessary. Hopefully Alan Savage - who is also not short of a bob or two - will take us forward in a sensible manner so we are in the SPL for years to come. anyway ... to answer the question I would prefer St Mirren to go down. I know more Pars fans and used to spend a bit of time in Dunfermline on courses a few years ago so prefer that team and town as opposed to Paisley.

If IHE took you on a pub crawl, then somewhere in there was probably the Tarry Ile ....... glad to hear you survived your expedition with the tattoed one, not many do :015: :015: Clacher - you are on ..... there shall be no more promoting of Johnny Foxes to non-natives as soon as we receive the cheque .... 5 grand should cover it. But instead of a ban, we shall impose the penalty of a pub crawl with IHE and the offender has to buy all the drinks :015: :015:

Agree 100%. Not only do the players have to be dedicated, but so do the coaches. There are minimum certification requirements for all coaches at SPL clubs from head coach down to youth coaches. All have to be certified to certain (different) levels and as 'D' says, this doesnt come cheap so why should they put up with someone who 'cant be ersed'. Whats the player going to be like 10 years down the line if they cant be bothered at that age ? Many people on this site do or have had some affiliation to local 'amateur' football in Inverness .... ask yourself how frustrated you felt when some of the players signed to your amateur team didnt turn up because they couldnt be bothered ......... it used to drive me nuts !!!! Take that to a professional level and you have to tell people 'these are the rules, and if you dont follow them, there's the door ........' I am sure there are plenty of other youngsters chomping at the bit to get the chance.

Yeah the route has you swimming quite nicely along the English Channel heading for Weymouth or maybe Southampton before getting you to make a sharp right turn and heading for Le Havre ..... also, no matter where you are in North America, it has you diving into the water in Boston !

Gringo sent me a nice little Google Map quirk .... I wondered whether anyone else has had any 'beauties' when searching Google Maps ? Here's the one Gringo sent me. Step 26 is very cool (bloody freezing if you tried it){LINK}

:015: :015: not fear .... just being realistic. DUFC are a different beast under CL than they ever were with previous managers

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8 in 23 games is a decent strike rate although it is lower than last season for him. However, lets not forget he was out injured for a fair bit of time. league goals this season from strikers ..... Bayne - 5 in 33 McAllister - 1 in 17 Wyness - 1 in 19 McSwegan 0 in 9 I think those numbers speaks for themselves, unless of course we want to score all our goals from midfield/defence Rankin 6 in 31 Wilson 4 in 31 Dods 4 in 31 Munro 2 in 31 Paatelainen 2 in 7 Tokely 2 in 32 McBain 1 in 29 Answer - yes we will miss him if he goes !!

Falkirk have confirmed that the game on 5th May will be ‘pay at the gate’ and the prices are as follows: Adults - £19.00 Concessions - £13.00 Concessions are those over 60 and under 18. Falkirk do not participate in the Under 12 passport scheme.

Dundee United have confirmed that the game on 28th April will be ‘pay at the gate’ and prices will be as follows: Upper Tier £21.00 – Adults £11.00 – Concessions (under 18 and over 60’s) Lower Tier £19.00 – Adults £9.00 – Concessions (full time students, under 18 and over 60’s) Voucher no 13 can be used when child is accompanied by a full paying adult

ok - instead of getting all off-topic about the original question. here is the ruling. This can stay in the ICT section as it is a question about whether a player currently playing for another team could do the business FOR ICT. This makes it ICT related so its in the correct forum. Any further posts discussing whether it is in the right/wrong forum will be deleted as they have nothing to do with the subject being discussed.

Whether true or not, the possibility is certainly 'credible' ... I just hope our board havent forgotten how much of a slap in the face his sudden departure was the last time, made even worse by his TV appearance the night before he was in the press conference from Pittodrie. If the board have forgotten the pain of that 'slap', the fans certainly havent and although Steve Paterson seems to have been forgiven by most fans for his departure, Shearer has not, primarily because of that TV appearance. If the offer of the manager's job wasnt enough to tempt him to stay when Pele left, then it would be short sighted in the extreme to offer the turncoat a coaching position.

Well, Toronto played its first game in MLS over the weekend .... a 2-0 defeat away to Deportivo Chivas in California. The match was live on TV at 10:30pm (7:30pm in California) and to be honest, wasnt that good. A few phrases to describe the game .... and they seem eerily similar to things that have been said elsewhere about ICT !! "I felt in the first 10-15 minutes we were nervous but we settled down and created a bunch of chances but couldn't score," said Toronto FC coach Mo Johnston. "At times we played well, we moved the ball well and we created problems for them," said Toronto FC captain Jim Brennan. "We had five chances in the first half, they had two chances and two goals." "In the second half, we didn't get anything going and the momentum was flipped over to Chivas," said Johnston. "We sat back too deep and went to the long ball too much, which I didn't want ... and we gave the ball away too much in the midfield and normally that's our strength." "We're still growing as a team and we have a few players out but when they get back we'll be better," said Johnston. "Obviously getting off to a good start, we'd have liked it to have been better but tonight it wasn't to be." Article {LINK} This week Mo Johnston will pit his wits against another Scot when they travel to Boston to face New England Revolution . The manager of the revolution is former Liverpool player, Stevie Nicol. The first home game is on 28th April against Kansas City Wizards and I am looking forward to it.

Got to admit the 'Well rumours are stronger than the others that have been around .... hope he stays, but if he goes, then good luck to him, he did a job for us and scored plenty of good goals.

Wasnt saying your sources were wrong SMEE so let me re-phrase what I said .... Original If true (and I doubt it to be honest) re-phrased If true (and I hope like **** it is not)

not sure who moved it, but moving it back as I agree with Alex. The post doesnt say we are signing him, but merely asks could he do a job for us.

already a thread about this. closed.

If true (and I doubt it to be honest), I would APPLAUD Charlie for having the bust up. Regardless of whether you think Charlie Christie is the right man for the job or not - and we do seem to have a wide spectrum of views in that area - no-one can argue that he is anything other than ICT through and through. shearer on the other hand, gloated his way through a TV program in Aberdeen and smirked about moving to the Dons just days after 'signing a contract' and pledging his future to ICT. At least Paterson had the grace to bodyswerve the program.

Look at Soccerbase.com ..... In amongst the correct data we also have some interesting information such as John Docherty is manager along with Christie, Debbie Ross is commercial manager, Ken Mackie is still chairman, Golly was sold to Livi and Ally Ridgers was loaned out to Ross County for 30 days in August (when he wasnt even an ICT player !!)

W-D-W-W-D ..... 11 points

Intertoto rules state "Only clubs which finish the domestic championship in the four positions directly below the UEFA Cup places will be eligible to take part in the competition." so with 2 CL and 2 UEFA slots available, it means we have always needed to finish no worse than eighth ... I wouldnt get too worked up about it however as Hearts will probably end up in the competition .... thats probably why Charlie has already started looking at Denmark, Italy and other options for pre-season.

not on a forum any more, its now a 'poll' ...... you can access it from the right side of the page on the 'main site' or from within the match report or from the main menu on the left of the screen when in the main site

Hows this for an idea ......... bear with me as its a work in progress :015: 3 x leagues of 16 with a pyramid system to allow non-league teams a route to senior leagues. You play each team twice (1xH, 1xA) for a total of 30 games. (15 home games). In the SPL this means you are guaranteed one game against each of the OF at home. (1 game less than the current guarantee of 3 games in total V OF if you are in bottom six) Divisional Cup (for each league) seeded in 4 groups of 4 based on final league positions of the previous season. You play each team twice in round robin format. meaning at least two more home games against teams from the top 8 of the previous year. Total games 6. (3 home games) (based on 05/06 season) Seed1 - Celtic, Hearts, Rangers, Hibs Seed2 - Kilmarnock, Aberdeen, ICT, Motherwell Seed3 - Dundee Utd, Falkirk, Dunfermline, Livingston Seed4 - Team 13, Team 14, Team 15, Team 16, Two qualify from each group and play it out on a straight knock-out basis. A UEFA Cup slot is awarded to the winning team. The law of averages says that Rangers / Celtic might be likely to make the last eight so you have a good chance of getting yet another home game against them if you draw them. As its a cup game, you may even prefer to draw them away from home as the revenue would be split. Scottish Cup - no change League Cup - replaced by the divisional league cup (above) Thats 18 home games guaranteed every season with at least two league games at home Vs OF and the potential for a few more depending on the cup draws (keep the club accountants as well as the fans happy hopefully). Come the end of the season the bottom two teams in each division are relegated and the top two in the division below are promoted. If a team doesnt have the stadium criteria for their new division they are given 12 months to complete this or are automatically relegated the following season. the third bottom team in each division plays off against the team in third place in the division below - home and away - winner takes (or keeps) the spot in the higher division.

have added a poll with some of the suggestions I have heard and have also given users the opportunity to change their vote. This will allow users to suggest other options which can be added to the poll if they are sensible. Users could then change their vote if they decided the new option was better than their original choice !!!

According to the P&J, ICT are to vote to block the move towards a 10 team SPL ....... {LINK} Graham Bennett has backed the current 12 team setup saying that a league of 10 would not be good (which is understandable to all teams who usually find themselves mid table or at the lower end), but he also said he was against a league of 16 which seems to be the fans' favourite option. He is against 16 because of the lost revenue for games against Celtic and Rangers ...... Seems quite strange when it was former Caley Thistle chairman David Sutherland who tabled the proposal for a 10 team SPL and 12 team SPL2 ..... Under that proposal, SPL2 would start with 10 teams, and the SPL with 12. For the first two seasons, there would be no promotion from SPL2 but there would be one relegation meaning year 1 would be 12-10, year two 11-11 and year three and thereafter would be 10-12. Cant say I like the 12 team setup as it is at the moment, and I would agree with Grassa that 10 is also not a good number as there is a significantly higher risk of relegation which would probably lead to a far lower quality of football as teams would be content to try and grind out 1-0 wins etc. From my point of view, the whole system needs a shakeup from the ground up but I dont think anyone has the bottle (or the support) to make that happen .... I favour 3 leagues of 16 with a pyramid system below that but clearly (and understandably) clubs will probably never vote for that as it means they lose precious games against the OF ...... so whats the solution ??? discuss ....