Scotty

FlyBe - 8.29 each way if booked well enough in advance !!! (+ tax !!!)

Agree with this although its not just an Inverness trait - it happens everywhere. When I lived in Inverness, anytime I used to travel whether for university or for holidays etc. I used to get goosebumps once you passed Daviot, came up the hill, over the top, and then started seeing Inverness in the distance (or not so distant these days). It is still the same for me now although I now tend to see it and experience those feelings from the air as its easier to get there from Toronto via one of the London airports. I could rhyme off many reasons why I think Inverness is better or worse than some places for differing things but at the end of the day it will always be where I was born and where I have roots so I am biased and perhaps both overly critical and overly protective when people slag the area off. Any time I speak to people over here I always find it easy to put a positive slant on the area but on a forum like this talking with other Invernessians or others with an affinity for the area, then it is easy to ***** and moan because deep down we all know we love the area so we are not really meaning to be disrespectful. I think a few of the posts have hit the nail on the head. The problem is pre-conceived perceptions. Inverness is perceived by some in the central belt and beyond as being somewhere north of the Arctic circle where all the natives still only get a couple of TV channels, have whisky on their porridge and the biggest controversy is that "one man and his dog" is no longer on TV. Once people actually get there, their perception changes, but you have to get them there first. I would like to see the club maybe think out of the box a little and look to some of the clubs in the London area for players and sort something out with our sponsors FlyBe. Could FlyBe be persuaded to offer some incentives we could add to player contracts so that they could have cheap flights back down to London every so often. Its a doddle at just over an hour from Gatwick compared to driving up the A9. It could also be extended to other areas that have direct links to Inverness airport. As far as the A9 is concerned, I was serious when I said that we will still be looked upon as being in the backwoods until such time as it is dualled north of Perth. Any time I made trips to away games south of Perth I always thought "ahh real roads" once you hit the M90 and something different on the way back when you left the "real roads".

It shouldnt be an issue but unfortunately it is and YngWie is pretty spot on I think. I blame the A9 :015: :015: :015: :015: - Dual carriageway it all the way to Perth and it would remove the perception that you are now entering the backwoods :004:

Bottom line - he is here for a trial, not to walk into the team. If he can convince Brewster he has got something to offer then that will be good for both. If he is "pub standard" as CCATWEAZEL suggests then he wont get a contract. end of story.

I fear that the Dundee bandwagon will lose its wheels in Dumfries. Palmerston is one **** of a tough place to go when you need the points !

notice County have been allowed to sign Brent Sancho http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/t...nty/7337032.stm

I am getting sick of this whole saga Brewster is the manager right now. Some of us like that, some of us dont but at the end of the day, he is the manager until he or someone else decides he is not and we just need to get on with it. If he stays then it would seem that he has a lot of work to do to prove himself to a sizeable proportion of fans. Over the last few weeks it has been one story after another and whether or not he is responsible in part or in full for any of the 'problems' that have been highlighted it has certainly dented many people's confidence in his ability when layer after layer of doom and gloom is heaped upon an already skeptical fanbase. The treatment of Wyness, Wilson, Black and Rankin have all left a sour taste in the mouth but as information trickles out here and there, perhaps at least some of what he did on this front had merit. I don't think we will ever know the full story in most of these cases but in every case there seems to have been two sides to each story and some of them date back to before Brewster. Going from Manager of the Month to the worst run of SPL defeats this season in the space of a matter of weeks also highlighted his tactical deficiencies. No manager sets out to lose as ultimately it will cost him his job but I dont think anyone can argue that there have been some bizarre tactics used. However, if he sends out a team that we all think is capable of winning then players also have to shoulder some blame for not performing. How many times over the last few months have fans come on here and moaned about this player or that player not being very good on any particular day .... loads !!! As for Robbo - it could be a case of frying pan/fire .... As likeable a chap as he is, and as ambitious as he has shown to be (I recall his demands to our officials via the media that he got ICT to the SPL and now it was the boards turn to make sure we got in), he is an unknown quantity at SPL level really as he didnt have enough time at ICT (his choice), had one hand tied behind his back at Hearts, and inherited the football equivalent of the Titanic at Livi. Sure he did well for us in Div1 but that doesnt necessarily mean he would be an SPL success.

In our 4 SPL seasons we have had 20, 18, 19 and this year will also be 19 home games so exactly 50% - as it should be !

holy **** ... with some of these suggestions, I would rather keep Brew :001:

not bad if I say so myself ..... some common sense in our fixtures from the SPL .... I need to go lie down.

I am thinking his sights might be set higher .... He did his UEFA pro license in 2007 and this will be required by all managers in the English Premiership by 2010 : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Pro_Licence_in_England

You'd rather listen to the **** after-match interview :symbol_question: :015: :015:

I actually have more bad feeling about Paterson moving to Aberdeen than I have about Brewster or Robbo moving to DUFC or Hearts. At least in Brewster and Robbo's cases, they were moving to clubs where they were regarded as legends and to jobs they could quite legitimately call their "dream" jobs. Its a shame that in both cases the dreams were bad ones !

Steve Nicol (good record over here in MLS), supported by chairman Warren Buffet

Robbo had a good managerial record for us in the 1st division but his SPL record was worse than CC or Brewster. Having said that, I think any current or former ICT manager would have struggled at that time ... promotion to a higher league, close season wrangles with Partick disrupting preparations, playing at pittodrie, players getting used to the SPL etc etc etc. I have no knowledge of his training methods or his relationship with players but 'awayupingorgie' has a point. He did bring a number of good players to the club and they did seem to perform for him. Although it is also true to say that when Brewster arrived the fitness levels increased dramatically to the point where commentators were making reference to it regularly. I interacted with him personally on 2 or 3 occasions. Once I remember was at the stadium where he was ripping the **** out of Parkie. I was introduced as the "internet guy" and he spent the next while talking about training and stuff and making the point that Parkie was the computer geek in their relationship and had everything from the games/training fired into his computer for comprehensive analysis. One of the other times was at the end of season supporters club do where he turned up at the Corriegarth and got the craic with a lot of fans. He lost his club blazer to 'The Fly' that night. As a manager, I dont know - I dont think he had enough time in the SPL with ICT to show what he was capable of so he would be just as much of an unknown quantity as Brewster. If he could recreate his Div1 record then yes he would be good but if he carried on the way he started in 2004 then not so much !!!! There is no point in comparing his ICT record with his record at Hearts, Livi, County or anywhere else because each place had its own 'problems' to deal with that were not necessarily of his own making (a bit like Brewster if you give him at least some benefit of the doubt). As DoF I believe he could bring players to ICT that we might not get otherwise purely because of his contacts and record as a player - Scottish International, Hearts legend etc, and I also believe that he might bring some much needed PR to the club as he seems to know how to handle fans and the media. The red flag for me - and I am maybe doing him a disservice - is wondering whether he could/would be his own man given the well publicised orion connection. I dont think Grassa is doing a bad job, and if you speak to him personally he will usually shoot from the hip ... none of this carefully prepared statement malarkey. If he does have a weakness, then maybe that is the lack of contacts that someone higher profile might have .....

Announcement is at 10PM tonight. No game this weekend, first game on 19th April. Believe it or not there is a formula (the "fixturing golden rules") for working all this out !!!! it just defies explanation. The only thing I can remember reading is that "where possible" each team should play an equal amount of home and away games but if that is not possible then over the course of TWO seasons each team should play 38 at home and 38 away. This is because - depending on how the table finishes - it is not always possible to give each team an even split of 19/19 (as we saw in our first two seasons). Looking at the last 4 seasons it should mean a home game to finish with and maybe even a home game immediately following the split ... although I think there is also another part of the formula that says if your last game (of the season) is at home, your first game (post-split) cannot also be at home ...... all very confusing and nonsensical because of the split. Remaining Games Gretna - A-H-A : post split should be H (giving 2H/2A over season) St Mirren - A-H-A : post split should be H (giving 2H/2A over season) Kilmarnock - A-H-A : post split should be H (giving 2H/2A over season) Hearts - H-A-H : post split should be A (giving 2H/2A over season) Aberdeen or Falkirk - H-A-H : post split should be A (giving 2H/2A over season) Previous seasons 2007/8 pre split - 16H / 17A, post split should be 3H/2A = 19H/19A 2006/7 pre split - 17H / 16A, post split - 2H/3A [h,a,a,h,a] = 19H/19A 2005/6 pre split - 16H / 17A, post split - 2H/3A [a,h,a,h,a] = 18H/20A 2004/5 pre split - 17H / 16A, post split - 3H/2A [a,h,h,a,h] = 20H/18A If I was guessing, I would say this seems logical for us - but whoever said the SPL was logical :004: h - Gretna a - Hearts h - Kilmarnock a - Aberdeen / Falkirk h - St Mirren

and soccerbase and wiki are both totally reliable of course !!!! Keogh came to us as a striker but when he couldnt score goals he was tried out as an attacking midfielder and was more successful in that position .... If it wasnt for injury, I think he would have had a decent career with us.

care to explain this ? I dont think many of us have ever not 'believed in the team' even when they make it difficult .... and CB didnt exactly 'keep by our side' when he went to Tannadice .....

The fact of the matter is that - like almost every workplace - there is a lot more going on in the background than we the fan/customer ever see and football is a funny workplace because it has fans as well as customers clamouring for every little scrap of info they can lay their hands on. You dont see many message boards dedicated to the goings on at your favourite DIY or Electronics shop and then dissecting whether this worker or that worker had a good day or not !!! In the case of ICT, some rumours come out, some dont, and usually the rumours that do come, come from one side so are somewhat skewed (or spun) in the direction the person releasing it wants us to see. As much as I am still extremely skeptical of the abilities of the current manager (and no, I dont believe I could do any better - but then again, I did not apply for the job !!!), I can believe that the above comment is true - or at least has the possibility of being true. If it is then it may vindicate Brewster's handling of that particular incident. There have also been other incidents that merit some explanation ... Wyness, Rankin, etc - and there are suggestions that there maybe more to both of these stories than meets the eye. At the end of the day, I doubt we will ever hear the full story of each individual incident, but with them seeming to come one after the other and being added to the perceived problem of poor tactics and team selections, you end up with the situation we are in now - with many fans having no confidence in the manager despite some factors which may not be his fault. The manager has to try and regain that confidence and hopefully he will see that surrounding everything in a veil of secrecy (which has lifted somewhat in the last week or two) is not the way to do it.

Happy for Motherwell, in fact happy when any team gives one or other of the forces of darkness a doing . The only downside is knowing that this means Traynor's show will be half full of bleating ****holes from one side and half full of condescending p****s from the other side ... but thats no change to most weeks !!!!!

Yes, well done to County today but it was humorous to hear Charles Bannerman talking of the fans going wild in what has to have been the most silent match report I heard all day ... were you behind glass Charles ?

He certainly did himself no favours today ....

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The 2 goals make the result somewhat respectable, but they dont make things alright ... the previous 71 minutes have been embarrassing to listen to

and when it comes ... its McBain :001: 0-1