Scotty

forget him I say. he will clearly only come to the club if nothing better comes along. :sillywave: :sillywave:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?...=Touching+Cloth

Fingers crossed he has. Really really poor player! based on ? Dont think any of us can really say how good or bad he actually is considering the amount of chances he has (not) had. He seemed to have a decent pre-season and did ok in the reserves but a handful of 5 minute first-team appearances tell you nothing ..... as Rory McAllister's fans will tell you :004:

yes but contracts work both ways .... he may have been told he can go for free if he can find another club but if he doesnt find one and no agreement has been reached to buy out or terminate his existing contract then he is still an ICT player whether ICT like it or not. according to the official site, still an ICT player [attach=1]

:clapping03: :clapping03: Hope the club eventually see it that way too !!!

Alex - depends on what was agreed ... he is/was under contract for at least another season and unless ICT came to an agreement to pay out the rest of it and release him by mutual consent then he is still an ICT player. ICT may have told him he is free to find another club but if he cant then Gordon may be right and he will be at pre-season. Who knows ... with all the departures, he may even get a look-in and we may be surprised !

I keep thinking back to a conversation I had with someone outside the stadium in April ........ It basically went along the lines that the team for 08/09 would be filled with youngsters and that no-one knew how we would fare next season ..... The courier suggestion that we are also trawling the lower leagues does not fill me with inspiration although I suppose it is possible we could unearth another Rankin, Cowie or Imrie ..... think we may be 'touching cloth' for a lot of the coming season although I would love to be proved utterly and completely wrong.

I think what Roscoe23 was saying is that getting a doing from the Dutch shocked the Italians .... and that shock could carry over into the Romania game and give Romania a better chance of taking something from it. two scenarios are in my mind .... 1. The Italians will be in disarray and Romania will win by the odd goal in 3. 2. The Italians will be angry about the defeat and will come out fighting and do to Romania what the Dutch did to them. I hope #1 is the right one :004: Also, France may be wary of the Dutch too and that could also work in Romania's favour .... If France set out to make sure they dont let the Dutch score another 3 then it could end up at 0-0 again.

deadline related i suspect ! Sunday is the deadline for Tuesday's paper and even if you can squeeze something in on Monday morning or even early afternoon for Tuesday's edition, its unlikely that they could have "held the presses" to give the reporter enough time to write and submit a Euro story on Monday night ..... However, even if you give them the benefit of the doubt about the printed newspaper, you have to say that it is disappointing that they didnt perhaps print a little box on the back page directing people to their website for the latest on Marius' Euro adventure. Perhaps they could have avoided any deadline issues by simply stating "At the time of going to press, Romania were due to play France at Euro 2008, for the latest news on Caley Thistle striker Marius Niculae's involvement, please see inverness-courier.co.uk" ... and then print an online story to go with it. Making your website a 'real-time' extension of a static and instantly out of date medium like a newspaper is what news organisations around the world do these days ... or should do !!! I used to see and be involved in breaking news stories getting added to the Globe and Mail website all the time when I worked for them. They routinely had little boxes in the newspaper directing readers to relevant sections of their website where a (separate) team of journalists worked non-stop to either add more in-depth coverage or background info to a story that space constraints would not allow in print, to add interactivity that wasnt possible in print, or to make sure that any breaking news in Toronto or Canada was added to the site within minutes of it coming down the wire.

Its a FIFA sanctioned tournament under the control of CONCACAF which covers North America, Central America and the Carribean so you could argue thats its similar in stature .... however, you could equally argue that the member nations are not of the same quality as CONMEBOL (South America) or UEFA (Europe). Mexico and USA are highest ranked teams at 14 and 21 in FIFA rankings, Honduras is next at 37 and then Canada and Panama at 60 ! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CONCACAF_Gold_Cup http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CONCACAF

Hope you had 0-0 on at the bookies as well as the overall bet with qualification

Yes, but I think it was not whilst he was at ICT? Richard and Davide were both in the squad for the Gold Cup in February 2000 - Richard flew out almost immediately after THAT game at Parkhead and something tells me that Xausa actually went before it but I could be wrong. Xausa played 4 games and Richard played 5 including the one where he scored the "golden goal" against Mexico in the quarter final to take Canada through. Canada eventually won the cup beating Colombia 2-0 in the final and Richard was named "Rookie of the Tournament" He also played in the most recent Gold Cup and was named to the best 11 of the tournament after a very solid display throughout which culminated in a very very dodgy USA win against Canada in the final. That last game was a good one for Richard and he showed some true leadership in trying to encourage his team-mates to get back into the game after some shocking calls by the ref (a ref Canada had complained about before) ..... he was almost "Roy Aitken-like" in his "encouragement" of players. Edit: Xausa played 4 games: 13/02 V Costa Rica, 15/02 V Korea, 20/02 QF V Mexico, 24/02 SF V Trinidad/Tobago Hastings played 5 games: 13/02 V Costa Rica, 15/02 V Korea, 20/02 QF V Mexico, 24/02 SF V Trinidad/Tobago, 27/02 Final V colombia

I dont say this often, but ........ Birdog, I think you are right :015:

yes - looking at both BBC and sporting life websites (cant get sky sports ticker at work) it seems that the whole squad is on the bench (other than the starting 11 of course) Reedee - thats because DANIEL Niculae is on the park !

Wasnt that impressed with Portugal to be honest .... I will say that Pepe's goal was well worked but it came from an extremely bad Turkish pass rather than inspired play and the second at 90+3 was a result of Turkey pushing forward to try and get something from the game ........

think this was mentioned in another thread (which you cant find cos we turned off the search function) but i suspect the 3K a day is AFTER the group stages .....

Niculae & one of Wood/Barrowman/Bayne/McAllister or even Imrie !

Good article and good to see Marius giving Inverness some credit. As I said in another thread, Marius could actually be a great bit of PR for the club if he does the business at the Euros and we keep him at the club. Our own PR machine blunders from one mishap to the next yet Marius has managed to get us mentioned at the second biggest football tournament in the world, and comments like "I had a good feeling about Inverness" certainly read better than recent headlines about contracts being withdrawn or players wanting to leave for "family reasons". :021:

The joy of auto-responders :004: Marius asked that we add an auto-responder so that each email message that came into the mailbox was - at the very least - acknowledged. He will respond personally to some of the messages as time permits .... I am sure we all understand that he has to concentrate on the championships for now and it is to his credit that he actually asked us to set this up for him .... how many players from any of the teams playing in Euro2008 have done this !!!

http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.a...73472?UserKey=0 Seems Barry's agent may have got his clients fingers burned !!!!! Norwich manager Glenn Roeder said: ?I have no intention of signing Barry Nicholson and I'm unhappy with agents who talk up their players supposedly going to clubs regardless of whether or not any bid has actually been made." Dons director Miller has ruled out a new deal for the player. Miller said: ?The situation was left many weeks ago with Barry deciding he was not staying. Whether someone is trying to resurrect talks with the club or use us in the hope of getting more money for the player I don?t know, but as far as I?m concerned nothing has changed.?

Think we all want Romania to do well but lets face it they are facing the #1 ranked team in Europe (Italy), the #5 ranked team (France) and the #8 team (Netherlands) .... Romania are ranked #10 in Europe (12th overall). 3 Cup finals is definitely the way to do it and as Scotland proved in the qualifiers, the ranking means nothing if you have the will to win like we did twice against the French (no doubt contributing to their drop to 5th best team in europe !!!). Romania's group makes scary reading ... where all 4 teams are in the top 10 in Europe whereas other groups only have 1 or at most 2 teams in the top 10 teams !!!! Group A: Switzerland (World rank #44/ Europe Rank #26), Czech Rep (#6/#4), Portugal (#11/#9), Turkey (#20/#14) Group B: Austria (#92/#43), Croatia (#15/#11), Germany (#5/#3), Poland (#28/#18) Group C: Netherlands (#10/#8), Italy (#3/#1), Romania (#12/#10), France (#7/#5) Group D: Greece (#8/#6), Sweden (#30/#19), Spain (#4/#2), Russia (#24/#16)

too much Palinca perhaps CaleyD :023: [attach=1]

Not so sure about that ..... most of these teams have quietly being preparing a bid for several months ... just hope the football authorities look closely at what they have put together and choose the team that they think will be best able to sustain themselves. On the face of it, these 4 teams seem to be reasonably organised ... Spartans and Annan are both regular Scottish Cup teams, Cove as we know came into the HFL and have done pretty well, only Preston are an unknown entity (to me at least).

I just hope that whoever gets in presents a viable and seemingly realistic vision of how they will do and has the infrastructure to back it up without going bust ..... and that the SFL/SFA scrutinise each bid carefully In articles over the last few days one mentions that there would need to be ground improvements for one of the teams to even get into the league, Spartans I think are in the process of building one, and Cove would need to do what ICT did and move from their existing ground to a new stadium .....

Raving or Raging :004: