Scotty

not banned, but he did request to be removed from the forum and we complied with that request.

THE MATCHDAY THREAD Discuss ICT & other games in this thread as they happen Inverness CT -V- Dunfermline PREVIEW 30th October @ 7:45pm, Caledonian Stadium Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Facebook Go to the Chatroom Media Coverage AUDIO COVERAGE BBC Sportsound BBC Sportsound [UK Only] LIVE TEXT (ONLINE) Sporting Life BBC VIDEO SPFL YouTube Channel ICT Official YouTube Channel TEAM LINEUPS TO FOLLOW Tweets by @ICTFC Tweets by @ICTFC

this wasnt a relegation payment it was a European bonus based on the performance of Celtic. Dont think we got anything last year as Celtic had not done that well the season before ... but yes we have had it in the past. Its basically free money, and if the numbers mentioned in here are right, almost double what we might get for a whole season in the championship.

On the whole I agree ... but if it looks like we have a chance then maybe its time to take a slightly bigger risk. Not outlandish administration causing risks, but calculated ones !

Whilst I do like the good governance approach of taking minimal risks and living within our means, which is what the club has run with for most of our existence (outside the first few years), there does come a time when you need to take a slightly riskier approach. There was an article this week that County and other Premier sides from last year just got a bonus of £371,000 plopped into their accounts for Celtic's European adventures. How huge would that be for Robbo's budget right about now !!! I take it from the article that Championship teams get nothing? If that's the case then the gulf will widen unless we do everything we can to get back to the top league and survive there.

THE MATCHDAY THREAD Discuss ICT & other games in this thread as they happen Alloa Athletic -V- Inverness CT PREVIEW 27th October 2018 @ 3PM, Recreation Park, Alloa Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Facebook Go to the Chatroom Media Coverage AUDIO COVERAGE BBC Sportsound BBC Sportsound [UK Only] LIVE TEXT (ONLINE) Sporting Life BBC VIDEO SPFL YouTube Channel ICT Official YouTube Channel TEAM LINEUPS TO FOLLOW Tweets by @ICTFC Tweets by @ICTFC

Yes we have ..... not in terms of collaboration or related to this topic (which we are always open to), but more in terms of wrapping up business dealings associated with our previous services of website hosting, maintenance & security as well as the provision of stats, league tables, squad and fixture lists which are no longer required by them. We have also confirmed and paid our player sponsorship this week after receiving the invoice.

Obviously I cannot be there, but If anyone from this forum is going there then please convey our willingness to be part of the process. All it takes is a little communication

I would agree with RiG, the smaller the club (or league) then the greater the reliance on income directly from fans. Once a club gets to a certain size - thinking English Premiership here or other similar leagues - then income from fans is but one of many revenue streams, and not the biggest one. I remember seeing something about Man Utd at some point about transfer dealings, and the sale of merchandise with a new player name on it for example offsets a huge portion of that player's transfer fee ... the numbers were mind boggling. For ICT and teams like us though, the fans still are (or should be) important ... personally I think a Friday night is better than any other time that has been dreamed up outside of the traditional Saturday 3pm, but I am sure you could ask a hundred others and come up with quite a few different responses. Do the club even have a say in this ? Not sure they do.

My guess - much like Owain Fon Williams - is that he is hoping to get into some team's MLS training camp in January. Both MLS and the lower level USL leagues are wrapping up for the winter about now and things don't really start up again until March, but most teams do have training camps in Florida or other southern parts of the USA in early January. The Canadian Premier League is also scheduled to launch in early 2019 too so he may also be hoping for tryouts with one of the original teams. There are 7 sets of open tryouts in various cities across Canada. 4 of the 7 already took place but there is still Winnipeg, Calgary and Victoria to take place between now and early November. At worst, if he goes on trial in January he might get a holiday in Florida ! At best, he may actually get a spot on some team to prove his worth. Good luck to him !

apparently he already has an offer on the table for a 2 year deal with an un-named European side on the back of his 2 goal trial.

Have put a block on the sidebar on front page of forums and unread content pages ... just links to the Amazon page. If you and/or Yompa want to write an accompanying article we would be happy to put int in articles and promote it to our social media feeds too.

Happy to promote this wherever needed. happy to add a link to his book purchase URL on the sidebar too. just let us know.

no-one is ridiculing it ... perhaps you can discuss with Carl Tremarco

nobody is saying we dont like it ... but as CT points out in the article, it is a bit of a false statistic .... a 19 game unbeaten run is PR gold but the 5 draws so far this season means its still 10 points dropped in the first 8 games which - compared to the great run at the end of last season - is not championship form. If the strikers can start bagging winning goals then we will all be happy ?

Tremarco sick of unbeaten run talk https://www.inverness-courier.co.uk/Sport/Football/Tremarco-sick-of-unbeaten-run-talk-11102018.htm Whilst its great that we are unbeaten in the league so far this season, I agree with CT. Last season we ended with 8 wins and 3 draws out of the last 11 games to start this run. That is championship winning form. If we had done it and maintained it from the start we may have finished on 80+ pts instead of 57 ... So far this season with 3 wins and 5 draws out of 8 games you are looking at a pace to end on a little over 60pts. Its great we are unbeaten but need to start turning those draws into wins and turn it into a real unbeaten run !

Depends on what they negotiate with the other club. Anywhere from 0% to 100% !! If he is going to stay in the US then he would have to shoot for a spot in MLS rather than USL as the money is simply not there in USL. He seems to have performed pretty well in USL so if his agent is any good and sends out his CV and video highlights reel he may get a few invites to MLS training camps for January and the rest would be up to him. Cincinnati might be a good shout as they will only be entering MLS this year and the draft process allows them to pick one player from each of the other teams for their initial squad but that will leave 10+ spots left over and getting a decent keeper from the free agent list would allow them to not be forced to pick another keeper in the draft. Biggest stumbling block could be that any team picking him will have to use an "international" roster spot (ie. non-domestic) and those are coveted positions which even have trade value in MLS. Nashville FC and Miami FC are scheduled to enter MLS in 2020 so the same would apply there too and next year will also be the inaugural season for the Canadian Premier League with 8 new teams so options for staying this side of the pond are certainly increasing.

I did get your message IHE and will respond to you. It was polite, I will give you that, but it was also addressed to you, not to CTO.

No, you have a sense but not the full picture as I have only posted a small part of my frustration as it relates specifically to this website. Next time I get over we can have a voddie/coke session and put the world to rights and you'll maybe pry more out of me ! As i noted at the top of my post there are certain parts of the narrative that I touched on but have left compartmentalised and have not elaborated on. That would be the business aspect, and if I were to air that particular subject in open forum then I truly believe there would be absolutely no way to repair things and no desire to do so on either side. It is because I am still open to working with the club that I have held back on doing that and I have noted my willingness to draw a line and move on with things in several emails, all of which remain unanswered.

Club representatives have recently indicated (to others) that they have no confidence in dealing with any group, organisation or body that has any association with or involvement from Don (@CaleyD ) ... whether that is CTO (where he has not held any role for many years other than being a member like most users), whether that is the Trust (where he is the democratically elected Chairperson), or it would seem with InTorNet Design, our jointly owned hosting and website design service, where the club will not reply to our emails (but will make factually incorrect statements about us to un-associated third parties). I will leave the Trust and Donald to address the issues involving them as they are not my concern, but I will defend both this site and perhaps more importantly my business by any means necessary from both scurrilous rumour and downright defamation. However, I will not go into further detail on that subject for now. Based on the above I would say not to hold your breath for any answer on here. To get an answer would require dialogue and as much as I personally reached out to both the chairman and the CEO in an attempt to maintain the cordial and mutually beneficial dialogue we have had with every single board of ICTFC since the club and this website were formed in 1994 - regardless of sometimes fraught interpersonal relationships with those involved - it seems impossible to continue to attempt to do so in such a one-sided fashion and be completely ignored by those who have been put in place by our shareholders to bring good stewardship and responsible governance to our club. The crux of the issue, in my opinion, seems to be power and control. It would seem that the current incumbents think that ceding any responsibility or involvement to others outside their tight circle erodes their power (the reluctance to put a named person in the SLO position is a prime example) or that groups like the Trust or CTO seek power and/or influence over them. This is not new, other people in those roles viewed the Members' Club, Supporters Club, CJT, CTO and others suspiciously in the past. However, it has been shown time after time that these relationships are intended to be symbiotic and collaborative in nature and can (and have) actually help(ed) them in many ways. I cannot and will not talk for the Trust as I am not involved, but I can say that CTO has no interest in having any power or influence at the club. What I do, and have done for the last 25 years is simply to provide a platform for supporters of the club to talk about issues, good or bad, surrounding the club. I did this initially as a hobby because there was no other platform available, and although other platforms now exist and all are equally valid, I continue to do it from 3500+ miles away as it keeps me in touch with Inverness, ICT, friends and others. We still get between 500-600 unique users per day, nearly 2000 unique users per week and upwards of 25,000 page views on an average week so although this is less traffic than our heyday as some prefer the other platforms or social media, and there has been a drop now we are in the championship too, its still not insignificant viewing numbers. Sometimes what is posted on the site are good things that draw praise, other times those are negative things that draw criticism, but through it all I think CTO has been shaped over the last 25 years by the users and we have, by and large, set our own standards where users more or less self-police the system and dont let things go too much in either direction. Look at some other football fora or indeed the various social media platforms to see discussions that spiral dangerously into territory our users do not allow. If the club choose to read the views of individual supporters and reach out to them or to change things at the stadium based on suggestions posted here - or indeed sent to them by any other means - then more power to their elbow, if they choose to ignore requests sent via any format then that is their right, but also their risk. As a supporter I will call them out when I think they get it wrong, but I will have no hesitation in praising them when I think they get it right .... and despite what is posted above, I do think there are many things they have got right and are getting right and which I hope to see them continue to improve and get right as they move forward. (the e-Programmes and the recent stadium commentary initiative to name but two) As the club appear to have made a conscious decision not to acknowledge or respond to my emails, I will once again make this clear in a public forum ..... I remain open to working with the club, and having CTO be one of those avenues they (continue to) use to help communicate with the fans as they have stated on the website, in the matchday program, as part of their recent email blast, and on social media .... but I will do it in the same manner as I have done for the last 25 years. I don't do bullshit, I don't do politics, and I don't accept bullying behaviour be it overt in nature or passive aggressive. I am also not going to sugar coat my responses to anyone in email or on here. I have the ability to separate the personal, professional, and leisure aspects of my life and will happily work with others who share that ability and don't let personal grievances bleed over into other areas. I am more than happy to enter into public/private dialogue with the club, be it the chairman, CEO, a named SLO, or anyone else ... can they say the same ?

Yes we did. Short answer is that I dropped the ball. Longer answer in your personal message box.

no-one

Supporters Liaison Officer

Microscopes ? ?

still in the pipeline but unless you want to front up the cash for this we all have mortgages to pay and families to feed. Edit - you react as 'confused' dougal .... let me try to explain in with as few syllables as possible : it takes time to set up, it takes time to get the data, it takes time to enter that data. A LOT of time. As we all have real lives to live and real obligations outside of this bubble then it will get done as and when/where time permits unless someone wants to pay us to take a sabbatical from our real jobs to speed things up .... therefore its still in our plans but no timeline is set.