Scotty

so give the job to Charlie Bannerman !!! ps - welcome back GJ

I think this thread is the most ridiculous I have ever seen on this site.

Think Caley D was going to print of a "few" copies of the current front page story ! :004:

did you actually read the thread, or more particularly the reason for the meeting ? I think it highly unlikely that they will announce the decision of who the new manager will be at a meeting where fans are supposed to be able to say who they would like the club to consider !

Hidden is an option available to Admin / Mods - just means they dont appear on the userlist for the topic. no real function other than that. prefer Action Man's response though :015:

:clapping03: :clapping03: :clapping03: Since Grassa is - in so many people's eyes - just pissing around doing very little, I would challenge those who want him out to back up their desire with some viable alternative names to replace him ? Its all very well and good slagging off the man anonymously from behind the sofa but c'mon, lets see some suggestions. Would a replacement scope out a foreign training base ? would a replacement fly to eastern Europe to try and organise the betterment of our club, would a replacement go with other club officials to club organised trips - be they 'jollies' or otherwise ? Of course they would, the biggest difference is that it would probably cost us 5 times as much ! Lets also not forget that the 40K line item in the accounts is not listed as "expenses for G Bennett" it is listed as Directors Emolument - so unless someone asks and receives an answer at the AGM about this particular line item it is wrong to assume that Grassa got any or all of it. If those "worthy contributors" are also shareholders, I am sure they are welcome to ask the question.

Sorry Alex, I disagree. As a fellow shareholder in Inverness Caledonian Thistle, I do NOT believe I have the right to know what any individual player earns. I do however have the right to know what the overall staff costs are as displayed in the audited accounts. As for the Grassa question .... no, I dont believe he should go

just to remove any doubt - its not me nor the site that is dishing out any warnings about postings as there is nothing (so far) to warn anyone about ....

OK - this might get a little technical but stick with me for a bit .... We are always conscious of trying to make the site as quick as possible and do everything we can on our side to make sure it is. we optimise the database regularly (nightly), we check error logs and try to make sure that nothing we control is causing errors and therefore slowness, and we also try to hack or optimise code on various pages so that we can enable as many features as we can without going overboard and affecting performance (a tricky balancing act). However, we dont control the web server itself, our hosting company does. Like most hosting companies the majority of their servers have hundreds if not thousands of websites contained on them. this is "shared hosting" which is designed to keep everything cost effective. The downside is that because you share a machine with these other sites, if they dont optimise their stuff or they get massive traffic on a daily basis it can affect performance on all sites who share that server. The other end of the spectrum is "dedicated hosting" which basically means you have a whole machine to yourself and the whole site should run like **** off a shovel !!!! However, this is phenomenally expensive - $400, $500, $600 or even more PER MONTH depending on what you require. A site like you described with as many hits, posts and members probably uses dedicated hosting of some form because they will either have regular advertisers or make decent cash from ads or other affiliate schemes .... unfortunately, we only manage to cover our current costs with our advertising !! In the middle of this there is a growing market for medium cost servers and this is something we are definitely interested in looking at as and when we can pay for it via advertising or sponsorship. Our existing host has recently introduced such a service which they have called "Private Servers". This will allow sites to have their own 'virtual machine' on a server that only has a finite number of customers assigned to it. We can choose how much memory and cpu is reserved for us and the higher we go, the faster the site should get as no-one else is chewing up resources. Our monthly cost for what appears to be the optimal setup for our needs would be somewhere between $75 and $100 per month. so there you have it in a nutshell ......

Kitchener's recent claim to fame is that its where the Blackberry device hails from as thats where RIM are based. Funny you should mention Kitchener as that is where we were for the BBQ as one of our friends is a corporate lawyer for them. If you want serious blandness then another hour or two west of Kitchener is Windsor ! it borders Detroit and is a small town in every respect - shudder at the thought of the place.

Guests are anonymous, even to us. We can see their IP addresses so could track them that way, but its not worth the bother ..... Around 10K for the forum plus another 3k for the main site (stories etc). I figure we have had nearly 3 times our normal traffic. You can all see the forum stats by going to the front page of the forum and scrolling to the bottom to the 'info centre'. click on the little pie chart next to the forum stats heading and a new window opens up showing the stats. each month can be expanded to show daily stats.

if thats true ... it worked ...... 32 new members, numerous old faces returning (who may hopefully stick around for a while) and 50,000 hits in just the forum all in the last two days. Also 900 new posts and nearly 150 people on the site at any one time - I cant feckin keep up !

We didnt sack Baltacha - it was one of those 'mutual consent' deals was it not ?

Interesting to see "a club of our size" get commented on as a bigger club !! "There was speculation that Robertson, who’s helped turn Derry’s fortunes around in the past seven weeks, has a get-out clause in his contract allowing him to leave for a bigger club."

I'm with the badger on this one ...... Warnock would be my first choice - for many of the reasons previously mentioned - and he has all but issued a "come and get me" statement by saying he is interested and that location/wages would not be a huge stumbling block. He has experience, contacts and as many have said passion. If he came and it failed, then we could not blame the board as many of us are also relishing the idea. My second choice would be Pressley. I would be a little nervous about going down the untested player/manager route again but when Brewster was our player/manager we were for the most part, reasonably happy with him. It was only when he left that we sat back and thought that maybe his tactics etc werent that good. Pressley would also be a commanding presence at the heart of defence where we desparately need someone of quality to replace Dods and a man who has captained both club(s) and country is more than capable of that Brewster / Robbo / Pele would be the next group and I am a little unsure of any of them. We know they can do it to a greater or lesser extent depending on our opinions of each, but each one of them fecked off for greener pastures only to discover that the smell of nature was a different substance altogether. I would initially be indifferent to any of them. I would also add Coyle to this list as I acknowledge what he has done so far but am also indifferent to him too. Malpas is the only one named so far who I have strong negative feelings about. two years ago I thought he was a good candidate but luckily we didnt get him and after seeing what he did at Motherwell, I am glad.

DP was offered the managers position before and turned it down ..... he may not want the limelight or feel suited to the role, but he was offered the chance to be in control of his own destiny. Having said that, I would like to think that whoever came in might find a role for him. Of the names mentioned, it doesnt seem that many (if any) would have a backroom team they would take with them so maybe DP could offer continuity and local as well as team knowledge for the new gaffer.

I have never been to the West Coast but I am told it is very beautiful. very wet, but very beautiful. A Scottish style climate and the backdrop of beautiful mountains amidst lush greenery. I am sure Pimple will elaborate. The 'bit in the middle' is largely forgettable - hundreds if not thousands of miles of prairies and flat land with only Calgary and Edmonton worthy of a mention. Alberta is a booming oil province right now so everything is really expensive, and I read somewhere that the 'average age' in the major cities was something like 27 !! In fact, jobs are so plentiful that even menial jobs are paying high wages compared to the rest of Canada but the cost of living is supposedly very high too. I have also been told I should get myself further east to Nova Scotia but have never been yet. Some say it is more Scottish than Scotland and the scenery both there and in Newfoundland and Labrador is stunning. Was speaking to someone at a Barbecue at the weekend who was telling us about boat trips round Icebergs, Whale watching and such like so if you like nature and scenery, thats a good shout. Canada Bob is probably the resident expert on that part of the country. Which leaves me with the Toronto - Ottawa - Quebec 'corridor'. Whatever you do, dont fly into Ottawa, they are fascists in that airport. last time I landed there 1/2 the plane was taken in for full luggage searches (no rubber gloves luckily) and many of us missed our connection to Toronto. Ottawa and Montreal are fairly historic with plenty of old buildings, architecture and traditions you can see. Ottawa of course also contains the houses of parliament. Montreal is a bit of a party town but it would help to know at least some rudimentary French so they will like you a little better ! great food supposedly. That leaves Toronto - which is huge, sprawling, and financially broke ! It is a good place to base yourself but if you do, then think a little laterally and stay away from downtown hotels as they will cost you a fortune. There is a decent transit system so for about $9 each per day you can have unlimited access to buses, streetcars and the subway (tube) and from the edge of the subway system to downtown is only about 20-30 minutes max. If you cant find a decent priced normal hotel, "apartment hotels" are a good option - you rent them by the week (usually 2 or 3 week minimum rental) and its just like having your own place but in most you will have some of the amenities of a hotel (security, room cleaning, clean towels/sheets every few days etc). As for sights - obviously there are places like the CN Tower, SkyDome (now called Rogers Centre), Toronto FC, Eaton Centre (for the wife), as well as various eclectic neighbourhoods and districts like Chinatown (7 of them), Greektown, Queen St, Little Italy, Little Portugal etc. Further afield you have Niagara Falls of course or Niagara-on-the-lake which is famous for all its vineyards - Ontario IceWine is world renowned. Apart from the 7 or 8 major cities in Canada, the rest of the country is vast expanses of countryside and small towns ... I cant speak for other parts of Canada but in Ontario there are thousands of little getaway places if all you want to do is get back to nature and go fishing, camping, shooting etc .... I guess the first thing you need to decide is what you want to do ...... that will pretty much point you in the direction of one location over another.

On the whole, I would agree with you SMEE but if 100 fans were to turn up and tell the DoF and Chairman that one of the candidates was not going to be welcomed with open arms or that one of the others emerges as an overwhelming choice then it might have some effect

just like the rest of us (IHE excepted ;))

That wouldnt be a disguise, it would be a feckin miracle :rotflmao: (i know, pot, kettle and all that :016:)

Seems we are getting loads of names thrown about in various threads so thought I would bring it all into one where we can list the 'serious' candidates for the job and discuss the pros and cons ..... so far I would say that the following have emerged as potential candidates for the job Craig Brewster: Pros - been here before, could hit the ground running. We were fitter under him. Cons - left us in the lurch to go elsewhere. track record at ICT was ok but at DUFC was bad. significant fan resentment John Robertson: Pros - As with Brewster, been here before. proven record of winning at ICT. donald Park as assistant (?) Cons - left us in the lurch to go elsewhere. good record at ICT but not so good at Hearts, County and Livi. compensation to current club. Neil Warnock: Pros - Big name might attract players. seems to be interested. Cons - may be easily tempted back south. unknown quantity in SPL. Maurice Malpas: Pros - cant think of any Cons - look up Motherwell in dictionary. Steven Pressley: Pros - Would solve both the managerial and defensive vacancy. High profile international player. known as a leader Cons - never been a manager, might be no good. might be tempted by other offers. Owen Coyle: Pros - Seems to have done well at all clubs he has managed. might like challenge of managing at higher level. Cons - St Johnstone didnt get promoted even though Gretna were rank at end of season. Compensation.

knew I did it the wrong way round !!! :rotflmao:

Yes, you are correct, my mistake, it was indeed Peter - knew it was one of the team he took with him to DUFC and Malky's name magically appeared on screen for some reason !!!

Brewster without Malky would be folly as it was Malky who was the fitness coach ! Caleyboy - RE: Bobby Wilson .... I said it wasnt the stupidest idea on here .... I have always rated Bobby as a manager, and thought he was harshly bundled out the door at County. But honestly, I dont know if he would want or could handle life in the SPL It will be interesting to see who actually wants the job .... cos right now we are doing exactly what the media is doing and trotting out names of people who are either not interested, not available, not within our price range or in some cases not good enough !

average goals for and against per game under each of our managers Baltacha: 1.30 for - 1.67 against Paterson: 1.88 - 1.33 Robertson: 1.78 - 1.12 Brewster: 1.22 - 1.00 Christie: 1.24 - 1.41