CaleyD

Can we try and get away from the who's better than who, and who earned/earns what and whether they deserved more than anyone else arguments? It costs X amount of money to run a club at whatever level, and whilst we all might have an opinion on whether or not that money is being best spent, having a go at individuals....some who have been great servants to this club....is getting dangerously close to the stage of intruding into people's personal lives. If you don't like the way the club are spending money, then that's fair comment IMO, even a passing comment/observation on an individual may be acceptable, but this one seems to have become nothing but a points scoring exercise between a few people on who can dish the most dirt on someone to prove their point....and that's not acceptable. On the subject of Head Coach/Manager...it is nothing more than a different title for the same job. As far as I am aware we have not had anyone who's actual title has been "Manager" since Pele left, so suggestions that one or other people who have filled the role since then have had different titles for any reason other than it being fashionable to use different terminology is, as far as I can ascertain, nonsense.

Don't think his brothers have the same surname.

Fans bitch and moan about this that and the next thing, but don't have the balls to back it up when it really matters. It's the same at most clubs in Scotland...including ours...and is the reason clubs find themselves in such deep sh*t in the first place. One day fans will learn that sitting on their hands and leaving it up to everyone else to fight their battles for them is not the way to go. In fact, I hope that they learn that allowing a situation to develop that far in the first place and relying too much on Private Business Models, controlled by so called "rich" individuals, to sustain and run their clubs does more harm than good in the vast majority of cases. I'm no fan of Livingston, and you can argue that they are getting their comeuppance for the manner in which they bought their way through the leagues....but I would caution mocking them because you don't know what's round the corner at any club.....again, including ours.

I think Zadi has 2 brothers who are also professional players...an older one and a younger one.

This is the kind of thing that happens at clubs where fans are given no recognition or representation.

Ok, that's a bit more sensible in the pricing. Guzz, I'm happy for you to go with what you think is best once you know what's what and how much you have.

You have to wonder who makes these decisions!!! Have they (the club) not done the maths and worked out that it is better for someone to go with the cheaper option and then buy a shirt and have it signed....which is not difficult to get done....than they are to pay the inflated sponsorship price. However, since the whole point of this is to give everyone a chance at a signed shirt in the draw, then I guess we're forced down the road of guaranteeing that we have such an item at the end of the season, so it'll have to be the more expensive option.

B)

It's this constant "wait and see" approach that really gets up my nose, Birdog. Not just with the club, but with the fans as well. If you spend your whole time being reactive as opposed to proactive then it's very difficult to drive things forward...that goes for anything, not just football. The reactive approach to relegation is what we're witnessing now.... Wait till we're relegated and then make a plan Wait till that plan is made then do a budget Wait till the budget is done and decide on redundancies Wait till fans complain before communicating Aside from having to cram very important decisions into short timescales (a recipe for disaster) were now a month down the line and still playing the "Let's wait and see" game. The proactive approach would have been.... Have a plan in place at Christmas every year for what to do if relegated. Know what your budget is going to be for that plan Know exactly where job cuts are going to be needed Be ready to communicate the plan almost immediately Had we done that then instead of being a month down the line with fans shouting for information, we would have been a week down the line, fans would have been encouraged by the quick actions of the club and we might actually have an idea of which direction we should all be pulling. IMO, the club have got this wrong and it adds to what have been some rather large errors over the years. No single error in the past has brought us to where we are now, but when you take them all together I strongly believe our position was inevitable as things caught up with us. I also don't accept the "hindsight is a wonderful thing" argument because there's people who have been highlighting the fundamental issues with this club for years.....and you know what answer they've been getting from fans time after time?...."Let's wait and see".

The "plan" should have been in place long before the season ended so that staff could (and should) have been told almost immediately what the situation was going to be. They (the club) should have known exactly who was going to have to be let go and which positions would have to be re-evaluated. Our Chairman and DFS were on the news telling the world that their were going to be redundancies long before staff were put on redundancy notice, so "Laws of Employment" doesn't seem to have been forefront in anyone's thoughts at the time. The statement from the club is a welcome step in the right direction, but let's not try and turn it into something it is not, or justify the time we've had to wait for it with what is, to be frank, BS excuses. It is what it is, and we just have to hope that as we move forward the club can become more pro-active in giving us news. It's not the solution to all our problems and there's still many things which, IMO, need to change. We've seen glimpses of possible changes for the better in the past which have come to nothing, so I'm not holding my breath, but I am willing to give the club the chance to prove they can start doing things better.

Get a reprint of them both, maybe in a double volume as opposed to individual books and perhaps even have someone write a new section on our 5 years in the SPL. I seriously think there's a "new" market out there for it with the post-merger generation starting to come through and learning to read....we could even have a novelty version printed in text speak

I think it's about time we had a re-print of Charlie Bannermans book so as the younger fans can read up a bit on how the club came to exist and the problems they faced along the way.

I said above that I welcomed the statement.

He was receiving an Emolument, which is basically compensation/payment for services and is intended to offset loss of income from elsewhere as a result of time spent on Director Duties. It's very likely to be a combination of salary and expenses.

Well, Sir, if this was already in the public domain, I for one did not know this nor did the above posters! If this knowledge had been shared, by you, earlier, a lot of negative posting could have been avoided as the lack of info from within was fueling comment. Now there is substance, posters will get their heads round it! No doubt Monday could also offer further info. All the information in the statement appears on this site. It might not be dressed up in the same manner, but it is there. Totally agree with your point on sharing information sooner rather than later to avoid negative posting....but I fail to see how you can say that it is my position to be doing that...I'm not a club representative!!! Glad you finally agree with us about the importance of the club sharing information and having been tardy in that department though.

Welcome the statement from the club, even if it doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know. Yeah, why dont we just tell him where to go and that he should take the support of his company with him. Get real. What company is that then Alex?

Must have brought back some great memories of the days when we believed ICT were capable of going out there and scoring a good few goals, Scotty. Although admittedly we tended to concede a few in the process

Oh Please, the fans are THE biggest financial contributor the club and ironically they have the least amount of representation. Your statement is exactly what I've come to expect from the club where it's always everyone else's fault. Just how much money would we (the fans) have to put in to get some kind of recognition? How much money would it have taken to have sacked Brewster earlier (or not taken him back in the first place)? How much money would it have taken to stop the club doing deals with our best players which saw them able to leave for nothing, or next to nothing? How much money would it have taken to keep us out of the courts with the whole Marius Niculae thing? How much money will it take for them to admit they got some things wrong? Money is not the answer to everything, and sometimes it's actually better to use your head and not get yourself into situations that are going to cost you a packet in the first place. If money is needed, then the club need to convince people that whatever they give is not just going to be good money after bad and they also need to stop shafting those who are willing to make an investment. Individually, the vast majority of fans don't have the kind of cash available that would make any kind of difference, but collectively they could come up with a few quid, not to mention the potential for them to raise funds in any one of 1001 ways. Why is it that the club don't realise that and instead choose to attack the very groups who are trying to bring the fans together in order to achieve some of these objectives?

I don't think people are negative just for the sake of it...not most people anyway, and I also don't think that just because I (or anyone) might choose to be critical of the way certain things are being done (or not being done) that it reflects on the support we give to the team. As you quite rightly point out, the game has changed...what I can't agree with though is that it has changed for the better, and I certainly don't buy into the idea that it has changed forever and the implication that we just have to lump it. If you haven't read this whole thread then it's possibly worth doing so. Among what some people call "negativity" (I think it's realism) the fans are just crying out for a bit of recognition and representation. Give us something to support, give us something to get positive about and the chance to buy in to whatever the plan is. Seriously, what's to be singing about at the moment? What is being offered up to the fans to allow them to play their part? Who's listening and taking on board what is being said? That's where the bulk of the criticism is being focused. As for merging the threads, I don't think you can so easily separate all the issues and I don't think it's healthy (or necessary) for opposing threads for those labelled "positive" or "negative" (I hate those terms) to post in separately. Sitting in our own little groups blowing smoke up each others butts saying we're doing the right thing is not the answer....that's what's happening at the club and it's what's got us where we are now. I don't do politics, and I don't like the BS that comes with it. If there's an issue (whether you agree with it or not), you get it out on the table and you deal with it....only then can you move forward.

Yeah, we can all just ignore the reasons we've be so inconsistent over the last 5 or so seasons, why we can't hold a manager and why we're losing the best of our players for nothing (or worse). None of that matters, and so what if it continues to happen, we can all just sit here again at the end of next season and decide that we can ignore the problems all over again and look forward to life in the 2nd Division, or worse!!!

Despite Kingsmills warning I have had to remove some posts which breach the sites policy on these matters. Any further posts which assume/imply guilt will also be removed and the user will find themselves banned from posting on the subject.

He was obviously expressing the clubs value as a fraction of a million....some people just don't get decimal!!!

Was definitely one in the Highland Snooze, and I imagine the Courier will also have one tomorrow. Failing that, the club usually do a pocket planner type thing....or you can wait till tomorrow when I get round to doing the ones on here and take a print of that.

How long are fans willing to play the "let's wait and see" or "give them time" card before they realise that the reactive approach to life is what leads to the problems in the first place? I'm not asking for public lashings or that anyone fall on their sword.....but is it really too much to expect them to admit that mistakes were made? It seems to me that for the last 4 or 5 years the only time we've ever had the club addressing the fans directly in anything is when they're having a pop at us for not being vocal enough, or not turning up in suitable numbers....or indeed when they're trying to get us to turn up in large numbers because the situation is so dire they start clutching at straws. The closest I've seen to an apology came from Terry Butcher on the night of the Red and Blue Ball, and he was basically apologising for not managing to pull off the miracle we needed. If he can manage that, then why can't the real decision makers? As I've said many times, we need to be pulling together and in the same direction, but how can the club expect the fans to pull in any direction when they don't know what that direction is and when there's no space being made on the rope for them to get a hand on and take some of the strain? Am I disillusioned? If I'm honest, I've probably been a bit disillusioned by the way the club seems to have been run for the last few seasons, but I'm not ready to give up fighting for the things that I feel are right and the things I feel will make this club as strong as it can be. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do know that things aren't right the way they are just now....if they were then we wouldn't have so many people making the same criticisms....even those in the "all is rosy" camp have to accept that.

The ICT Board is made up of a maximum of 6 Directors, 3 of which are appointed by Tullochs for as long as they maintain a 25% or larger shareholding. Tulloch also have the power to appoint the Club Chairman. Beyond that there is no longer any qualifying criteria....other than not being a bankrupt or having some other charge hanging over you that prevents you holding such a position. As there's only 6 board members and Tullochs have 3 then nothing can be carried without their say-so, and as Tulloch also control the Chair, they have the casting vote and can carry any decision they wish. The only Director that gets paid is the Director of Football.