Scotty

Ross Morrison was a fan before he was chairman and when we were discussing the potential involvement of a third-party, he told me he would sell his stake for peanuts if the right offer came in for the club. This was with his fan hat on rather than chairman's hat, so I believe him. He truly wanted/wants what's best for the club. Hopefully, he has written a portion off and (quite rightly) taken some in equity. History wont be overly kind to him as he will forever be mentioned in the same breath as our former CEO, but the reality - IMHO - is we would have gone under quite some time ago if he did not do his own version of an Uncle Roy impersonation and throw money at the club. Shame that the person he threw it at did not seem to use it well. The reality is that any of our creditors could have made life difficult and trigger an "insolvency event" so with Alan Savage now gaining broad agreement with them, then hopefully we can move forward cautiously. I think we are in good hands now, and engagement seems to be key. We are still deep in the forest and far from getting out of the woods but at least Scout Leader Savage seems to have the compass!

the devil will be in the details, and we are yet to see how this plays out with those who agreed to convert debt to equity, (for example, does Ross Morrison now become our biggest shareholder with 2.1m shares?) but on the face of it good news and Mr Savage is to be applauded. "On a hugely significant day for the troubled 30-year-old outfit, Savage revealed that Sir Alex Ferguson was among those offering to help, having got in touch to urge Caley Thistle to stick by manager Duncan Ferguson." If he is encouraging us to stick by DF then that's likely not helping unless he is going to give him a management masterclass, but if he is offering to use his contacts and knowledge to help us out that would be massive!

That always seems to be the way with youngsters more recently unfortunately. For every Ryan Christie, there are 100 Machados who don't quite make it for one reason or another either as academy graduates or as youngsters coming into the team. its not only a Scottish thing either. We see it over here all the time. Toronto FC has what's recognised as one of the best academies in MLS in terms of resources, funding and facilities and within a few years of formation in 2007 started churning out some really good prospects that looked exciting, but a stint in the first team seems to burn them out and they either have to move to restart a career or they just fade away. Just last week, we traded one young prospect (Jahkeele Marshall-Rutty) to Montreal for around US$1m which on the face of it sounds good, but as a prospect breaking into the team at 16, just a few years ago it was expected he would be the next Alphonso Davies and go to Europe for somewhere in the $10-$20m range around now. At least JMR still has a shot, but others take a similar route to Machado, they drop down to the 2nd team at their club, then perhaps to the Canadian Premier League, and maybe either USL or League One which are the US/Canada tiers below that.

Scotty HT: 1-0 FT: 3-1 1st Scorer ICT: Mckay 1st Scorer Opp: Brown Crowd: 1994 CDN Girl HT: 1-1 FT: 2-2 1st Scorer ICT: Brooks 1st Scorer Opp: Lyons Crowd: 2024 SOS HT: 0-0 FT: 1-0 1st Scorer ICT: Bray 1st Scorer Opp: Hester Crowd: 2121

Scotty: ICT @ 2.25 CDN Girl: Arbroath @ 1.90 SOS: Peterhead @ 1.80

Hopefully reality will set in for Dunc as well ... He was a battler as a player now it is time to be the same as a manager (just in a less physical way). You are getting no money, Charlie already told you that, no pie-in-the-sky schemes to bring fans to the stadium on a monorail instead of a bus, no phygital new owners in the foreseeable future, and nothing but scrutiny, penny pinching, and trying to get the best out of your young (and capable) players. Players that need to be nurtured, coached, and supported by you, and by us, even when things don't go right. Big Dunc's new era can start this week ... if he wants to, and if he can swallow his pride and realise he has to get on with it with the lads he has, and with the realisation that he has to use tactics and style of play they can handle. If he can make that change, while everything else at the club is also changing, then perhaps a line can be drawn in the sand where we all move forwards, onwards and upwards for ICTFC, all pulling in the right direction. Or it can all go to shit, and we can be subject to the same dross as before where ultimately Big Dunc will lose all credibility and future career as a manager...

Think this will be deserving of its own thread as details emerge of the sheer state of our finances ... but let me start controversially by saying THANK YOU to Ketan Makwana ! The utter nonsense of your 'takeover' bid, the corporate phygital gobbledygook coming out of your mouth or your linked in page, and your history at companies house woke up some of our giants of the past in Messrs. McGilvray, Sutherland and Savage. You were the straw that broke the camel's back, the final grand scheme that saw all of our CEO's cards collapse, that one domino that started the progression that will surely see more dominoes fall. I want you nowhere near our club, but you can take heart that even without buying the club with imaginary money, you may well have played a part in saving it. Clearly the reality of our situation is far worse than even the most cynical fan expected now that we have had some straight talking from Alan Savage and it all started with the idea that 77Ventures were random new owners overnight just a few weeks ago. But onto the main focus of this thread - the money, or more specifically the lack of it or of any oversight on that front. AS went in just 3 days ago and in that time he has discovered that we are not £300K adrift, that quickly ballooned to £450K then £700K and now closer to £900K. We don't have new strips FOR THE TEAM let alone the fans, because we have not paid the bills, and we apparently have a pre-order for £120K of strips sitting with Puma as part of that £900K. Given that the average cost of a strip is around £50 retail that's 2400 strips, but profits on these are decent so do we really have upwards of 3-4000 new strips waiting to be sold once we pay for them wholesale first? Not having strips for the start of the season is right up there with not having seats for the Tynecastle stands and having twice as many as we get at the stadium on a good crowd day, sitting in a container somewhere is as ludicrous as it sounds. I am sure AS will discover all sorts of 'anomalies', unexplained or lets say 'less than optimal' spending as he goes through the accounts with a fine-tooth comb, but my ire on that one is directed back at the board. How in f*** was there no oversight on this. SG did what SG was there to do. To operate as the CEO of ICTFC. The fact he seemingly did that without a shred of governance is not his fault. His performance and ability to do it correctly and economically should have been something benchmarked on a regular basis by the board. Did he have no performance reviews since 2019? If not, why not? Thats not a failing of SG, that's a failing of the board. Red flags have been around for a while. I recall the comment about Ryan Christie buying footballs for the youth team and I think that's what Charlie is referring to in today's article in the Courier which is well worth a read. The last three days with Alan Savage and now acting CEO Charlie Christie have seen more public communication from the club in 3 days than we have experienced in the last 5 years since the former CEO was put in post. https://www.inverness-courier.co.uk/sport/this-club-for-far-too-long-has-been-losing-too-much-money-358498/ A few great bullets raised by Charlie: He is confident that working alongside Savage, it will lead to the club having a brighter future. The staff get frustrated too and a lot of that has been from resources. He, as academy manager, has had to do without things that were needed. The mood at the club has been great since Alan came in. Some of the staff don’t know him. He is fair, but demanding - and very professional.. He will want a paper trail for everything, as there should be. He will want more corporate governance in his time at the club and I don’t think that's much to ask. It is good for any business to have that. That’s what he’ll bring. We’re all delighted because we feel it is a step in the right direction. Watching the ill-feeling towards individuals at the end of last season, it is not good for Caley Thistle. It is something I’ve never seen. Fans have a go at managers, myself included, after poor performances. That goes with the territory. But not what we witnessed last year at times. Hopefully that’s dead in the water now and we can move on. I like the comments I have heard that some creditors are already paid, and the things Charlie mentions in that article. I especially like the comment that the mood at the club has improved. there are many hard-working and crucial folks down there doing thankless tasks who do not need to be micro managed and for them to finally be able to exhale and maybe show what they are capable of is a relief. We do have to get back to basics, we do have to stop all the pie-in-the-sky bullshit and the loss of money hand-over-fist. We do have to put football first and try to get out of this league and back up to the Championship and hopefully over time, the Premiership. One step at a time, one obstacle at a time, and all in a sustainable or responsible manner. With Charlie and Alan Savage at the helm now, I think this is a good start to the process but let's not stop looking inwards. The CEO was allowed to do what he did for many years, and those who allowed that, or didn't bother to look at what he was doing also need to take accountability for that.

Pledged/Paid List Scotty ICT29 Gringo Mrs Gringo Tree Optimist TheCaleyOne snorbens_caleyman snorbens_caleyman old caley girl arbeem arbeem arbeem arbeem arbeem Hiro Weeman The Mantis The Mantis The Mantis Doofers Dad TM4TJ TM4TJ TM4TJ Jagster CaleyHedgehog IBM IBM IBM Northern_Jaggie ----------------------- Robert Robert Robert L_G Mossie Mossie The Fly The_Sponge The_Sponge The_Sponge Badly_Drawn Roarer High1ander Stu160284 Wanderer CaleyHedgehog Naelifts EvilWhiteStripe CaleyHedgehog Wazzow ICT29 ICT29 snorbens_caleyman IBM IBM IBM Jagster INVTONC INVTONC INVTONC INVTONC --------------------------

Yes, that would be a sensible move. I wonder if this is just temporary, however? Is there anyone better to be the go-to guy at the stadium right now as we rebuild. AS can't be there every minute of the day but few other people can understand ICT the way Charlie does, he has seen it all as a player, as a manager, as a commercial employee, and as the head of youth development. ICT runs through his veins and whether he gets a decision right or wrong, he will make based on his perception of what is good for ICT and IMHO we have not been able to say that for many years.

The reality is that you can't please everyone all the time. I used to try that on here and it was a nightmare that had you tied up in knots and running around in circles. Once I accepted that there are those who like the site (and/or me) or did not like the site (and/or me) for whatever reason and learned to live with it and not give a **** then it all got easier. I do my best, and if you don't like it, or have a fundamental disagreement on the site ethos and views then P&B awaits if you so desire. since we stopped trying to be everything to everybody, we just get on with things. I think the only people we have banned in the last couple of years are bonafide spammers who get through our security from time to time. I have been on the supporters' club committee back in the day as well as others including the local Pool league and the amateur Football league, and know that it doesn't matter the organisation, there are always the same few faces on each who do things year in and year out, and many of the same faces doing the complaining about what you do but not willing to get involved. It is easy to criticise, not so easy to be criticised when you are doing your best. For my part, no-one has been perfect through this. Our (former) CEO is apparently litigious according to sources who warned me early on about saying too much online and I have been very careful to try and state only opinion and fact, not slander or defamation. I keep those particular opinions to myself. I could have said a lot more but I am happy to have been consistently against recent developments from the start as my somewhat dull social media will attest to. Similarly, over the years, I built up relationships with various board members and chairmen, and these relationships were built on trust. Sometimes I could and would say things, more than I should sometimes, and at other times, I had additional info or background that gave me more context but was not for sharing. It takes a long time to get to that trust level with ICT and it should not be taken lightly as it can be of great benefit in getting info to fans. I currently don't have any of that inside track since Rae/Crook/Gardiner et all, so it is somewhat refreshing to be able to shoot from the hip and say what I think rather than what I think I am allowed to say. Might I have worded some of what has been said by the ST differently? Perhaps. However, they do have to walk a fine line based on trying to keep 3 sets of masters mollified. first and foremost are the members and like any organisation you are never going to please all of them so you do your best. Second is their own rules and articles which mean they do things in a certain manner for the good and benefit of the supporters and the club, and that might include watering down statements or being party to privileged info that you can't share so that you don't burn bridges for future revelations from the same source, and finally the club itself. Its a complicated balancing act.

It's time for Player Sponsorship for the 2024/2025 season. For 20+ years we sponsored one or more ICT players each season. We were proud to have been the main shirt sponsor of Grant Munro through his entire ICT career from a youth breaking into the team to his final season with the club, then we moved onto sponsorship of Liam Polworth. We have also sponsored other players over the years for boots, gloves or other items including record appearance holder Ross Tokely and most recently Cameron Harper for four years, until the end of the 2022/23 season. Like many others, we took a hard decision and paused our sponsorship at the end of the 2022/23 season due to a lack of confidence in our (now former) CEO. It was a hard thing to do, as we all love the club, but it had to be done. We remain proud to have sponsored so many players over the years and as Alan Savage appears to be coming in to right the ship, ably assisted by club legend Charlie Christie slotting into the CEO role (for now?), then it is time for us to also re-commit to the club and play our own meagre part in helping with the rebuild of ICTFC so we can once again become the 'Pride of the Highlands'. With our former sponsored player - Cammy Harper - gone, and the other player we were able to sponsor in 2022/23 (Lewis Hyde) also gone, it is time to choose a new player, or hopefully multiple players. I have been in contact with the club yesterday and have been told that many people withheld sponsorship in the way that we did so there are a lot of opportunities. Typically, we have chosen one of the young local lads with a view to maintaining that sponsorship throughout their entire ICT careers, but the field is very open right now. I have my own thoughts on who it should be but want to gauge everyone else's ideas so have added a poll to this thread to get an initial set of opinions and go from there. I will take the names from the club website where the main shirt is not showing a sponsor name. Whoever finishes the 'winner' can be who we look to sponsor and if we raise more than the cost of one sponsorship we will go to the next player on the list. All very democratic and open [UPDATE] After a week of polling we have now settled on our chosen player(s) and will initially sponsor the home top of Matthew Strachan. Should we raise enough money we will then sponsor an item from Ethan Cairns and the others listed below. The format will be the same as previous years - all monies raised will go to the sponsorship. We will focus on getting enough for player home shirts, which will be randomly given to one of our sponsors at the end of the season, and if we raise enough, we will sponsor other player items up to the level of cash received. (INITIAL) PLAYER TO BE SPONSORED: We will try to raise enough to sponsor more than one player in some fashion, but based on the poll results, the order is as shown below. MATTHEW STRACHAN ETHAN CAIRNS ADAM MACKINNON SHAE KEOGH ROBBIE THOMPSON COST Home Shirt - £450 inc vat [to be confirmed]. Other costs as shown below. [We will not be aiming to do any sponsorship on the manager.] HOW TO TAKE PART For now, answer the poll so we can figure out who to sponsor. Feel free to add any additional comments in the thread below, especially if the player you want to include is not listed. I took the names form the ICTFC website and did not add any players who already had a main shirt sponsor. I will delete the comments when we are ready to start accepting memberships to clean up the thread so if your post is a different point for discussion please use a different thread. Join the "Player Sponsor" group. We will use the money received from these memberships (minus PayPal fees) to purchase player sponsorship(s) from the club. We will set all memberships - regardless of when ordered - to end on June 1st of each year. This allows us time each year to gauge the interest in continuing for the following season. The cost to join this group remains the same as before at £16.00 (this amounts to £15.00 joining fee plus £1 to cover the PayPal fees). You may purchase multiple memberships if you wish, just amend the total in your shopping cart and add a note when placing the order if it is to cover family members who may not officially be site members! To join the group simply go to this page http://caleythistleonline.com/store/ or access the CTO Store from the main menu at the top. All our site membership upgrades are handled securely via PayPal's platform which will accept direct payment from most credit/debit cards so it should be easy enough to upgrade your membership whether you live in Sneck or somewhere thousands of miles from there. Unfortunately, we do not accept cash payments. Once we know how many members have joined the group, we will decide on who/what gets sponsored. The first item will be the selected player's Home Kit ... but the more members who upgrade to "Player Sponsor" membership, the more we can sponsor. At the end of the season, members of our sponsor group will be selected at random to receive any gifts we may receive from the club. For any events that occur during the season (like sponsors nights or meet and greets etc.) we will offer first refusal to members of the sponsor group to attend as our representative. If you are interested, please add your name to this thread or go ahead and join the sponsor group. You will be marked as once we confirm payment received via membership upgrade .... (once we have enabled it)

Its all getting a little bit messy. I see some sense in what Charles is saying, perhaps AS had to be a current director to make initial changes - such as binning the former CEO - and now that he has done this, he can revert to a more 'independent consultant' role. If his forensic investigation of things shows board culpability in anything, and given the laundry list of complaints from the last several years my opinion is that this is bound to be the case, and he was a (current) member of the board, then he may have to be hoisted by his own petard, which would be counterproductive. If on the other hand this is yet another hail-mary by either KM/77V or our former CEO then what could they possibly hope to achieve? One is the single most reviled person in the history of ICTFC, and the other has all the history of grand schemes failing that you could ever see (in fact that could also be a description of our former CEO also). To keep myself right, I have this handy guide

Doesnt look like it. Shame, as we tend to take that for granted these days since COVID and like you I thought I would be able to tune in. Doing some googling and the funeral directors have a page here for Johndo: https://johnmackenzie.muchloved.com/ and their main presence seems to be Facebook https://www.facebook.com/bliveseyltd/?checkpoint_src=any which lists a website that appears to be 'under maintenance'. https://bliveseyltd.co.uk/ . Its morning for me so no Voddie and Coke but will raise a cup of coffee with a hint of Espresso to Johndo around 8:30am my time. Not sure I would get away with starting a conga around the office though.

Amen to that please.

Great article in the Courier now: https://www.inverness-courier.co.uk/news/johndo-remembered-caley-thistle-fans-make-poignant-700-mi-358356/

If he did reply to you then I think Karen Dunbar would likely sum it up best ....

I have also reached out to them about our sponsorship this morning. Watch for the thread once I get details ....

Don't you mean his wife's car? Apparently, he had to leave 'his' car behind as it belonged to the club. Dont know if true or not, just something someone else posted.

This has all the hallmarks of a watershed club moment for me. In 2000/2001 we were massively in debt due to lingering costs of building the very infrastructure that now makes the land around us so enticing to 77 78 ventures and no doubt others. DFS came in, squirrelled away the debt and put us on the path to fiscal responsibility that ultimately led us eventually to our greatest achievements of finishing high up in the SPFL as well as winning the cup and getting into Europe. The last 7 years have been brutal, first with Rae/Crook and then with Gardiner. Alan Savage is a successful local businessman, a football person and hopefully the man we can trust in the same way as we did DFS to work on making us successful (or at least sustainable) again. He will be motivated to make sure the club returns to its community roots, as damage to his reputation locally would also damage his local business and I think we can see that he is community focused by the fact that he was willing to plough money into the youth setup regardless of the shitstorm going on around him. He also was not shy in saying publicly he did not want to work with our former CEO (man that feels good to say) in any way. the comment he made early on, that I am still using in my signature line resonated with me and I think it sums up how he feels about ICTFC. You are probably right. There may need to be some hard decisions to be made and some backward steps taken to go around obstacles from a different angle and facilitate further forward movement, but as noted by Lynne in the P&J article, the grown-ups are now in charge and that feels a lot better. I hope AS takes a leaf out of the Kenny Cameron book. Kenny was open and spoke truthfully to the fans whether that news was good, or a harsh reality. We were not treated like mushrooms, and it brought about that camaraderie and siege mentality that players and fans alike have commented on. We didn't get to hear everything that went on behind closed doors, but some things are, and need to be, confidential, and must remain so even now, but back then, absolutely everything was not shrouded in secrecy which is where we got to over the last 7 years. I think if we get anything from this it will be a bonus, but I am sure, or I hope, it will now be subject to more scrutiny than before in terms of the 'forensic' examination of everything mentioned.

You are right, we are not out of the woods, but at least now we have someone with a feckin map of the area! KM couldn't even find us on google

its been a while since we saw that emoji

I look forward to AS and whoever else is involved (if anyone else is involved) looking over our books, trying to make sense of what has occurred over the last few years and trying to create a viable plan for the next few. I will be wary of the current members of the board for some time to come given their apparent complicity in what has happened over the last few years, but for now, based on what he has done before, and his unwavering commitments to our youth setup which he reiterated just recently, I will put my personal trust - which lets face it is the only skin any of us have in the game - in Alan Savage to review people's roles in the debacles of the last few years and encourage them to jump ship where they are not up to scratch! As a supporter, I am not expecting miracles, just forward progress in all our rebuilding efforts ... on the field, off the field, in the town, with fans, staff, players, and other clubs. @IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER is up there looking down, large voddie and coke in hand, knowing that there is a chance that HMS Sneck may not be headed for the rocks after all.

Reading the statement it sounds as though 77 ventures kicked into touch Gardiner (finally) kicked into touch Savage offering to use his business skills to try and sort out the mess - on condition that Gardiner leaves the building immediately No indication he will be chairman, and the wording is "appointed to take charge of" . I guess time will tell, or maybe someone can ask. Forensic review of everything. GOOD. Still looking for "new owners" long term. Looking to rally round community and get back the community feel. Overall, pretty positive but still la few questions to be addressed. I certainly feel happier with Savage at the helm steering the ship than Makwana and Gardiner. Once the dust settles over the next day or two I think we will definitely be more positively minded in renewing our player sponsorship that we lapsed last year because of the CEO.

Press release just came through ..... On behalf of the Board of Directors, Interim Chairman Panos Thomas: After months of uncertainty surrounding the future of Inverness Caledonian Thistle Football Club, the Board of Directors have appointed local businessman Alan Savage to take charge of the struggling Highland Club to put the team in a firm financial position. Working alongside the Club's Board of Directors, Savage has taken the initiative to oversee the organisational restructure of the Club as they seek to remedy their financial issues, with Chief Executive Officer Scot Gardiner leaving his role with immediate effect. The Club have also suspended negotiations with Seventy7 Ventures, who had been seeking to acquire a majority shareholding, with Savage beginning immediate work carrying out an internal forensic review of the Club's financial position to establish plans for the Club's future and setting the team into a viable position for new ownership. Savage and the Board are now looking to rejuvenate the connection between Inverness Caley Thistle and the community which will be integral to the long-term future of the Club and are seeking support from local businesses to address the immediate financial shortfall until further long-term investment can be secured. The Club are now working with Scottish sports marketing agency GRM Marketing to engage with a number of investment leads and commercially drive the club forward. Inverness Caley Thistle is hopeful that the community will once again rally around the team and come together to support the new foundations being established. ends

I just read that ... sounds legit but cant figure out where the statement is from though ... nothing on the club Twitter feed, website or in email (we normally get sent the press releases when they go out)