CaleyD

One of my big fears at the moment is that come January I'm not confident we have the resources to identify and bring in what is needed whereas others might and if we're in the relegation dogfight at that time then we could easily find ourselves left behind.

Formation and tactics against Hearts were better, but not without fault IMO. It's a glimpse of possible progress, but it's been a long time in the making and I don't know if we can afford to wait another year for the next improvement.

What's not to like about the guy? Aside from the things I've already mention....... I like his style, he had ICT playing good football and although he was no stranger to sitting back an using the counter attack stuff or hoofing it, these weren't the only tactics he knew and deployed them only when he felt it necessary. His contacts in the game alone would be worth having him here and he's been around long enough to know how to deal with contracts etc which would allow us to ditch the DoF giving us an extra ?50k a year to play with. He's without a doubt a fan of ICT. He actually has a pair of balls, evidenced by the way he stood up to Sutherland and the Board in regards to our promotion to the SPL....to paraphrase, he basically told them they had better do whatever was in their power to get us into the SPL or find a new manager. He was/is well liked by both players and fans. I don't remember any other manager who came close to Robbo when it came to doing/promoting contact and communication between the team and the fans....and thanks to that you could actually understand what he was doing, even if you didn't always agree. And as an added bonus, he's local and I believe he's available.

He also got ICT out of the 1st Div, and not too many would argue with the fact that this is the toughest league to gain promotion from, and he did it on a shoe string budget by getting the best from the players he had available to him.

It would be fairly impossible to say one way or another with regards to wages of non-playing staff, however, what I do see is people receiving substantial salaries who are, from what I can see, failing to justify them. It's one thing to say that having x, y or z person brings in a certain amount, but if your paying them twice that amount then it's not the ideal situation. Is a DoF a luxury we can afford?, especially if it's detracting from the money we might have available for players? It's not as if we have a large squad of players or large numbers of players coming and going in each of the transfer windows.....perhaps taking in a consultant to deal with contracts etc for a couple of months a year to deal with these things would be cheaper, or perhaps a manager with enough experience in the game to be able to deal with them himself, or god forbid a Chief Exec who knows somethng about the game who can see to it.

Barry has never said that he finds it a struggle to last the pace. What he's said is that he has to work harder to keep fit these days. Some might read the two as being one and the same, and I don't think anyone expects him to be as spritely and quick off the mark as he once was...but some of that will be made up for when it comes to intelligence and experience, not to mention the fact he's much respected and can help lift the rest of the players and guide/assist younger guys during the game. These are some of the things we are lacking on a week to week basis.

I'd say that Robertsons 2 Cup Semis, a decent showing in Europe and 5th in the League with Hearts showed him in a slightly better light than what Brewster (didn't) achieve at Dundee Utd.

Pitch dimensions have to be registered with the SFA/SPL before the start of each season and can't be changed part way through unfortunately. The subject of our pitch dimensions has come up on here a few times in the past with the suggestion being that since we can't, and don't, use it to our advantage and other teams coming here do that it should be changed. As someone said above, we've had nobody able to make use of the width since Barry Robson, and I really don't see anyone within the current squad that's coming through that will utilise it so perhaps a rethink is needed.

I can say without any doubt that Robbo would have been cheering on ICT.

It all depends on what area of Scottish Football they are being charged with coming up with improvement ideas for.

Perhaps he bit his tongue whilst telling Brewster to F Off on Wednesday and will be out until it's healed sufficiently for him to apologise? Or perhaps it is just the twisted knee from Wednesday

Listening on the radio and it sounded like Barry was doing more going forward than anyone else on the park, a couple of times mention was made of the fact he was getting balls in to the area but we weren't making best use of them. Was it not Wilson who set up the peach of a chance for Barrowman in the first half?

But we're not talking about him taking out someone's eye, and I'm not going to be drawn into and ifs and buts scenario. As I said, it was stupid, but hardly incomprehensible.

I bet there's more people sitting tight lipped thinking "Good on him" than their are people who will come out to have a go at the guy. What he did was extremely stupid as the fan on the receiving end of the coin was unlikely to be the one who lobbed it in the first place....but hind sight is a great thing, and if it was me on the receiving end of the coin in the first place I would probably be tempted to do the same as Drogba did. It doesn't make it right, but it does make it understandable. The only unfortunate thing in all of this is that the scumbag who threw the coin in the first place will likely go unpunished because attention is being deflected onto the players reaction.

Eh? How can netting a 6 figure sum for a player who was all but paid for during his time here by additional investment put in by Savage possibly be the reason we had no money to bring anyone in?

The petition is aimed at the club so I'm guessing they are facing internal resistance as opposed to any legal or legislative problem.

Waiting to here from those at the game, but it didn't sound like the worst of games. Unfortunately we seemed to lose control of the midfield without Black in there and I don't understand the decision to put McBain in his place when we had Vigurs available on the bench who is far more creative going forward. Up front, it sounded like we suffered from having strikers who aren't "match sharp" and/or inexperienced, but this was always going to be the case this season and until the window opens there's little can be done about it other than to give the partnership a run of games in the hope they start to click. Didn't here too much about Imrie during the game, nor McBain when he came on and everything seemed to be coming down the other side via Wilson who sounded like he was having a decent game and getting balls in. I was a little confused when he was replaced, especially when Duncan sounded like he was being largely ineffective. Not ideal by any means, but sounded like an improvement on some of our recent performances. Whilst I would agree that the performance sounded ok, who would you blame for the fact that we have 4 inexperienced strikers at the club if not the manager?

Picked up a bit when you left Marty.....did you forget your deodorant this morning

Cheering one minute for the Rugby and screaming at Radio the next for the football!!!!

Black for Vigurs might be ok....if Brew opts for McBain we could be in trouble.

I still wouldn't have Black and Duncan together in the middle and would have had Vigurs in there. However, it is the "safe" option if we do find ourselves on the back foot, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see how it pans out. Hopefully lesson learned on Wednesday and players will start on their natural sides so we can utilise the width and Barry can get some balls whipped in to the box for Rooney and Barrowman.

Your understanding of the Wyness situation is slightly different to mine Alex....although it is the same up to and including the bit about the agent increasing the money at the last moment. However, at this point I believe the club just pulled the plug on any offer, despite Wyness wanting to get it sorted out so he could stay. As to the rest of the stuff and the situation at other teams....I'm an ICT fan, I really don't give a hoot what goes on at other clubs, all I want to see is ICT performing to their potential and I don't think anyone can see we've being doing that with any sort of consistency this season.

For me, the points on the board have very little to do with it, what I'm fed up of is the fact that what we have is a team who are constantly failing to produce their best and I place blame for that at the feet of the manager because his formations and tactics are hindering them. If you have a team playing to their potential, then there's little room for criticism as you can't ask anything more of them. That's what I want to be witnessing at ICT. There's no way of knowing if things might have been any different had we played games differently, but at least we would be able to say that we gave it our best shot....right now, I don't think we can say that and until we can, then all the statistical analysis in the world counts for diddly squat IMO.

The SPL spent a small fortune bringing in another company to do the fixtures this season and there's been a lot of jigging things about to try and prevent teams having extended runs of home and/or away games such as we've seen in previous seasons.

All we need to do now is start serving it up before the game instead of half-time.