CaleyD

What's that got to do with the fact that he was an ICT player and we made money from selling him?

Your telling me, I think Les must have had a word with the guy in revenge for Paul and I blowing his money in Tesco :018:

And in the same vein....if Marius hadn't agreed to a reduced wage and a split of the fee instead then he wouldn't have been playing for the club and we would have made feck all.

I am of the opinion that we are in desperate need of changes at the top and that some people should be resigning in shame at some of the things that have happened (or not happened) in the last couple of years to drag the club down to the level whereby some people are calling for heads. My opinions are not based directly on what is happening on the pitch, and even if we were to win the SPL this coming season it would do little to change my opinion that we need fresh, more qualified, rational thinking people making the big decisions. There's always the thought that it's "better the devil you know", but I've become so scunnered by the way our board have handled some things in the last couple of years that I'd be more than happy to risk it. However, as has been pointed out, it would take a lot of money to oust the current incumbents...or the collective might of every other shareholder at the club backed by the voice of the fans. David Sutherland wouldn't walk away without a fight even if the money could be found and, IMO, we've already seen that he is willing to forego what's best for the club in order to try and prove that he's the man that calls the shots so the club could very likely suffer, at least for a bit, as a result. However, that doesn't mean it couldn't or shouldn't be attempted if enough people feel that strongly about it.

So if the reason the club don't want to pay him his money is because he is supposedly in breach of contract for doing a deal out with the regulations in place, then why were they citing a "verbal agreement" as the reason to begin with? It appears to me that they realised they couldn't win that case so have decided to try another angle, and to be honest I still think their setting themselves up to lose that one as well. Surely it would have been easier for them to have proven a case of "breach of contract" if, as they claim, Marius had done all this behind their backs than to try and argue a "verbal agreement". And again I ask...Why, if they weren't happy with the deal, did they agree to it? As I've said already, ICT were the ones who decided to sell the player, they couldn't have been any more obvious about it even if they had sent him off to the Euros with a "For Sale" sign around his neck. Their was even a story doing the rounds at the time that Dinamo had already approached ICT with a view to buying. Whether it's a power struggle or not...I'm not sure. Whilst it may have come about as a result of a disagreement/fallout between Sutherland and Savage it looks to me now like they (the club) have screwed up and are desperately trying to save face. The more they change their story, the more they come across as greedy and desperate. If it wasn't for the fact that it involved my club I'd be sitting back p!ssing myself laughing at ICT for getting themselves into this situation. Whilst every club around us is out looking for those last minute signings to strengthen for the season, ICT are running around like headless chickens trying to fight a battle they can't, IMO, win. Even if they get a court to say they don't have to pay the money, we're still losers because we've made ourselves look like a laughing stock and even though you might be the most positive thinking person in the world when it comes to ICT....not everyone is like that and if even one player/club out there fails to do business with us as a result, then who knows what we might have missed out on???

Last one of these I went to I just about bankrupt myself :015: Have added it to the Upcoming Events List which is stickied at the top of the page for ya.

And I still will argue that his wages were nowhere in the region of ?4000 a week.....it's not possible for it to have been that based on what we know about the cost of Marius to the club for the 2 year period which he signed up for. ?4000 * 104 = ?416,000 Doesn't quite fit into the 2 year cost of ?270,000....does it? I've never once stated that I knew for fact that Marius was receiving X amount per week, and if you look through ANY post I've made analysing it you will see that I've always based my guess around the figure of ?270,000 invested by Orion to cover his 2 year contract, a figure acknowledged by the club after Alan Savage resigned and re-enforced by the statement they made saying that his wages were in the budget for 2008/09. Unless the club are going to come out with yet another story on how much he was actually costing and throwing that whole argument up in the air again (and nothing would surprise me right now) then I fail to see where your coming from.

Whichever way you slice it up, the club have still made a profit....a profit they would not have made if they hadn't signed the player and a profit they could yet find themselves p!ssing away on lawyers. No, they never really mentioned that at all directly. What they said was that they had agreed to the signing of the release papers....what I take from that is that they have been advised or have come to the conclusion themselves that the "verbal agreement" which may or may not exist, was not cause enough for them to hold on to his registration. A statement was also made suggesting that perhaps the correct procedures hadn't been followed....it seemed to be out of context to everything else that was said and just made me think that perhaps they might now try and come at their defence for not paying from that angle....who knows, it's just my feelings on what was said and how it came across. Totally...and as much as I want to see ICT come out as well off as possible in any deal, that doesn't come at "any cost" and it certainly doesn't mean that we should use any underhand methods to achieve it or we could find ourselves far worse off than we might be at the moment....not only financially, but in terms of damage done to the name of the club and the knock on effects of that. Right now I get the feeling that certain people in the background really don't give a toss about the money or the name of the club and that satisfying their ego takes precedence over all of that.....it really is the only rational I can come up with which explains why this has turned in to such a mess and continues to get worse.

Birdog....my Guestimate was based on a simple division of what came out when Alan Savage resigned as the costs for Marius for the 2 years divided by 104 weeks which also included a punt at what he might have received as a signing fee. From what Alan Savage said in his statement and from the statements that followed from ICT we could conclude that the ?270,000 covered the costs of bringing Marius here for 2 years. The amount is the same, it just appears that it's divided up differently than what I took a punt at....ie. a higher lumps sum and a lower weekly wage.

What would you do if you believed your ex-employer owed you that amount of money? The fact is...we couldn't afford and weren't prepared to pay the initial asking wage of Marius Niculae and a contract was negotiated to bring that wage cost down and in order to do that it would seem that certain "sweeteners" were added to make it an acceptable proposition for him to come to ICT. The fact that such a condition exists is not in doubt and is backed up by ICT themselves by way of the quote in the press from Grassa saying that the Marius "is entitled to a percentage of it". Why did that all of a sudden change? ICT have also been claiming in the last few days that the Transfer was not complete and would not be complete until they had all the necessary documents in place and that they were still waiting on Niculae to sign and return the waiver....yet out of the blue last night it's suddenly a "done deal" and the release papers are signed....yet we know that ICT have not received the Waiver they were seeking!!! Is it possible that it was pointed out to them that they were on shaky ground by not releasing the player and were, in fact, in breach of laws/regulations by taking the stance they were? Then we have a press conference today where it appears that ICT are repositioning themselves to defend their right to refuse payment to Niculae from a different angle. Why the need? Surely if they had the cast iron case they were leading us all to believe they had then they would not need to jostle around looking for a new angle.? The story from Dinamo and Niculaes representative has been the same from day 1....I've lost count of which re-write ICT are on. Simple as this....if ICT didn't want to hand over 30% of the transfer fee then they should never have agreed to it in the contract to begin with. If they weren't willing to pay the player the second instalment of his signing fee, they should never have agreed to it in the first place. When the contracts were signed 12 months ago I'm sure the opinion was that 70% of something is better than 100% of feck all....so what's changed? If this 100,000 Euros is second part payment of his signing fee then I assume it would have been due regardless of whether he had moved on or not...so why now refuse to pay it? And finally....let's not forget that it was ICT who made the choice to put the player on the market...something we were all aware of before he went off to the Euros....so any suggestions that the player has gone out and brokered a deal then forced the club to sell him are, IMO, ill founded nonsense and desperate spin on the part of ICT to cover up the real reasons for the sale of Niculae and the fact that they've made one screw up after the another in the handling of it.

Asking for what he is due is taking us for a ride how?

I don't think they have completely broken ranks as they will be selling some of the tickets themselves and giving Celtic a reduced allocation based on what they don't shift (as I understand it)....It's probably more of an erse covering exercise than anything else, and whilst I don't agree, you do have to cut them some slack for trying to do what they feel was best by their club if they honestly don't believe they can't shift the entire allocation themselves.

In danger of going wildly off-topic here, but I'll tell you the story all the same. When I worked for the RBS in Edinburgh we had a football team that used to play against the other companies at South Gyle. I played at right back and in this one game against Standard Life (I think) they had a guy on the left wing who was pretty fast. He was really struggling to get past me the entire game and at one point one of his team mates shouted to him something like "Your 10 times faster than the fat boy (me), WTF are you doing?"....to which he replied....."Have you tried running around something that fecking size?". It was one of those moments that everyone found so funny that they just collapsed all over the place in laughter.....but the point is, you don't have to be fast to be a good defender...I'm far from fast and I'm far from being a good defender, but you get the point. BTW, in case you've never seen me, I'm 6'2" tall and just about the same width :015:

Thanks George....how about you tell us something we didn't know? Far from being concluded it sounded like nothing more than ICT re-positioning themselves to argue their case for not paying Marius what he claims they are due on a whole different argument.

The elusive Chairman, Mr George Fraser, will be giving his tuppence worth on MFR at 5pm

Could you imagine the fear that a back 4 of Rossco, Dods, Mann and Teasdale would strike into the hearts of any opposing forward.

I wish I was 16 again...the world seemed such a happier and less complicated place back then :003:

Which is what I and others have been saying since day one of this whole sorry mess. Alan Savage was in the chair when a deal was brokered to bring Marius to the club and not only did he pull off a transaction which made the player affordable, he invested money to offset that cost....ok, so some might not have agreed with giving a player such a large percentage of any fee from his sale, but the truth of the matter is, without that then we would not have got the player and we would not have been in a position to sell him and make a single penny for the club. We didn't have all the facts at the time and even though we were lead to believe his wages were far higher than they were, most fans accepted what looked like a risky piece of business because it showed some welcome ambition. Everything was going fine then until Alan Savage resigned as Chairman. Initially he stepped down quietly citing pressure of work, but for whatever reason Sutherland couldn't let it lie and started having a go at Alan Savages integrity suggesting that he'd ran out on us leaving a ?500,000 hole in the accounts caused by the signing of Marius Niculae. It was only then that Alan Savage decided to speak up in his own defence to set the record straight and give his real reasons for resigning. IMO. Sutherland wanted to "get at" Alan Savage, and the best way he could see of doing that was if he could make the whole Niculae deal look like a huge mistake from the start....and, in the minds of a good few people he has achieved just that and it can be seen by those who post things like "this was just a sorry mess from the start and glad it's over"....well, not only did it not have to be the mess it has, it did not have to be over. Marius was happy in Inverness playing for ICT and it is my strong belief that he would have happily signed an extension to extend his stay here and ensure the club didn't lose out as a result. As for it being over....I don't believe for a second that it's anything like over. Aside from the fact that their still seems to be a few money issues to be resolved, there's still the issue of accountability and the fact that those making decisions at ICT have once again, IMO, been incompetent and need to be brought to task over it. I will not accept the "it's over now, let's just forget it and move on"...that's happened too often in the past and so long as it remains unchecked we run the risk that the next situation might just be the one that mortally wounds OUR club.

Only if you can make it as far as the gate whilst still in possession of your wallet. :tic01:

Now the club can get on with what they are good at.....brushing their incompetence under the carpet.

I think the worst has already happened....we have gone from a situation where everyone could have been a winner to a situation where everyone will be a loser.

Grassa never said on MFR that we were due cash...from what I heard he said that we were still awaiting the waiver forms. ICT have the cash...the argument seems to be whether or not they have to pass on some of that to Marius....and it would now seem that they are due him a % of the transfer fee AND money outstanding from his signing fee. I've been more vocal on this than anyone, but I actually think that the best thing everyone involved can do right now is say no more to anyone and appoint a mediator as it's getting to the stage where people are getting angry and are just looking for ways to score points over each other. We've already had Grassa resort to having a pop at the integrity of individuals on the radio and that doesn't help the situation any. It's obviously gone beyond the realms of reasonable negotiation and unfortunately the decision on what is what and who is right and who is wrong looks like it will be made by the relevant regulating bodies/courts.

Also said on STV that ICT were due Marius 100,000 Euros which was the second instalment of his signing fee which was due in July 2008....which ends at midnight...and that they would be pursuing payment through legal channels.

No way would I trust anyone with a name like "Stainrod"

That's 3pm....wonder if ICT have sent the money back?