CaleyD

Fair assessment given by Cowie, although I have to say that our back line looked far more confident on Saturday. Hard to tell if that was a result of poor opposition or an improvement on the part of the team, but the signs were good. As I said in the Match Report, I don't think we let Gretna within 25/30 yards of our goal in the final 10/15 minutes of the game. We also did a pretty good job of neutralising Yantorno who seemed like the only one capable of giving us any problems the entire 90 minutes.

Back of 4 at the Innes for a 4.30 Departure at the latest.

I'm with Caley100. Apart from creating 3 or 4 chances from nothing for himself against Gretna he couldn't have done much more for the one that was cleared off the line as he was already at full stretch. A couple of times he picked the ball up on the half way line only to find himself crowded out with no support and having to opt for a shot from 25+ yards out. He reminds me a lot of Bayne and puts in a fair amount of leg work and seems to get very little reward in terms of goals, yet you don't see Bayne coming in for the same stick this season. Niculae has one big plus point over Bayne though, and that is his high level of ball control....not to mention the fact he can jump more than 6 inches off the ground. It seems that some people have dug themselves into such a deep hole when it comes to slating Niculae that it's become an obsession and they go looking for excuses to play down his performance on the pitch. What annoys me even more are those who listen on the radio every week or catch the 2/3 minute highlights and base opinion on that.

I may be tempted to start Wilson ahead of McBain. The only reason I say that is because I think Wilson offers a better link when attacking down the flanks. I don't think Black will be a huge loss at present as I don't think he's been himself the last couple of games. I don't know if that's because he's looking to be more of an attacking midfielder, but he seems to have lost that urge to breakdown and stop things in the middle they way we are used to seeing him do. I might even be half tempted to drop Niculae back into his slot and start with Bayne and Wyness up front.

Fact is he's not getting any younger and regardless of fitness he's going to take longer to recover from the knocks.

Great day out. Too knackered to get off sofa to make a full post, but not as knackered as TM4TJ...lol. Been a long time since i enjoyed craic like that at a game. Some top songs..."relegation to you" was a beezer!!

Also meant to say that we should have a CD player on the bus tomorrow for those who want to bring along some music.

I see we've had a Gretna infiltrator on the vote :015:

Carpark will never be tarred as I believe it would result in an increase in rates...not to mention the cost of tarring an area that size which would be 10's of thousands. You then have to take drainage into consideration and the fact it would be like an ice rink in the winter.

Or wear it on your head!!!

Peter did send us a selection of pics which can be found in our gallery along with the ones from Gordon (NorthSport) and Trevor Martin. http://www.caleythistleonline.com/gallery/index.php?cat=18

u dont need one :rotflmao: :rotflmao: :rotflmao: :rotflmao: :rotflmao: :rotflmao: :rotflmao: :rotflmao: And your walking home from Motherwell :023:

If my costume arrives on time :001:

Put out an incentive for fans to become self promoting. Thinking outside the box a bit here..... - The club puts a discount voucher in the season ticket books. - They set a base level at whatever the current sales are for this year...lets say 3500 for sake of argument. - Lets say 100 season ticket holders brings in an extra ?20,000 (averaging for the full range of adult and kids tickets). - So for every 100 additional season tickets sold, the club gives the season ticket holders ?20,000 back by way of value on the voucher. 3600 = ?20,000 = approx ?5 each 3700 = ?40,000 = approx ?10 each 3800 = ?60,000 = Approx ?15 each etc etc etc On the surface it looks like a waste of time as the club are giving back all the additional income...but they aren't really!!! 1. Many people may never claim their discount 2. If the club have an average 100% mark-up on stuff in the shop (and many items will be far more than that) then in reality it only actually costs them half. 3. Most folk will spend far more than the value of the voucher. 4. You have more people buying programs, food, merchandise etc on a regular basis. Everyone is a winner and fans feel like they are sharing in the success as they are getting something back. To top it all off it's a doddle to administer, would take no additional resources and there's no financial risk for the club.

The whole financial infrastructure of clubs abroad (Europe) is different and makes it very difficult to do a "like for like" comparison. If you were to look at the accounts for many (if not all) European clubs you would see they are losing millions every year, but due to the way they are financed it rarely has any major impact on the teams. Because most of them are owned by large corporations/banks or whatever this isn't really an issue for them. The concept of borrowing money is alien to European clubs, they simply survive on handouts. That is my broad understanding, although I would be happy to bow to anyone who knows better or can be more specific.

Caley4life...like it or not, ALL clubs need the corporate support and would not survive on gate money alone in the current financial climate. I also think it's way out of order to say that these "big business people" don't support the club and are not real fans as you could not be further from the truth in many instances. However, I do think the club are guilty of allowing the relationship between themselves and your average punter to deteriorate and they no longer have a finger on the pulse of what fans want/need. At the end of the day a club needs both, and as important as the money generated via the corporates is, the fans are equally, if not more important in the long term. It only becomes an "us and them" situation if the club allow it to, and that kind of mentality does nobody any favours.

Yeah, your confirmed as having a seat on the minibus.

As has been said already, the club aren't filling the hospitality spaces they have available now...why increase it? Also, don't forget the fact that we are extremely limited in the size of the footprint for any West Stand, so all these dreams of state of the art conference and banqueting facilities on the far side of the park are never likely to be a reality....even if we were set to remain at the current location. The club has far more important issues it needs to deal with in order to help promote atmosphere at the stadium and it's problems that will only be further hindered by throwing millions of pounds at pointless extensions. The club have a necessity to extend certain facilities, but none of these would be met by building a monster West Stand. We do not need more empty seats. We do not need more empty hospitality We do need to improve/expand medical facilities and changing rooms. We do need to improve/expand office space. We do need to get rid of that monstrosity they call a shop and replace it with something proper. A bar is a nice to have (and it will allow all the power hungry stewards to clock you having a pint before the game then throw you out for it when you get inside the stadium :tic01: ) An argument exists for training facilities at the stadium for players. The only worthwhile development I could see for the West side of the ground at present would be some kind of structure which would allow all media activity to be moved out of the Main Stand. You wouldn't believe the space these guys take up on a match day, and just how much they get in the way of normal operations. Lets just say the club wanted to spend ?1 Million and write it off over the next 5 years. I'd rather see the club cut it's income by 200,000 a year by offering cheaper tickets than increase it's outgoings 200,000 a year by building unneeded seats. If you want to improve the atmosphere and get more bums on seats then spend the money on initiatives which will do just that. Run more buses from other parts of the city and outwith, run a lucky programme/seat and draw a ?1000 winner every week....if the seat/programme is not sold then roll it over and watch the stadium fill as it reaches big figures. Give away free hats, scarfs, rattles, noisemakers etc. Do a survey of the city, find out why some people don't come to the football and work on removing those barriers. Work with Tulloch and put vouchers for 4 free tickets inside the welcome pack for every new house that gets built in the area. Some of that may all seem a bit pie in the sky, but it's the kind of stuff they need to be doing to increase crowds and improve atmosphere. It's certainly far more sensible than this "Build it and they will come" mentality.

Wyness - 16 Appearances for ICT when he first arrived before scoring Bayne - 12 Appearances for ICT when he first arrived before scoring McAllister - 11 Appearances for ICT when he first arrived before scoring Dargo - 11 Appearances for ICT when he first arrived before scoring Niculae - 3 Appearances for ICT when he first arrived before scoring Hope that clears up that one for you macgint71

Earlier in the season many of the goals we were losing were coming down that side of the pitch, but yesterday all our troubles were coming on the other side. Time and again Rossco was being drawn forward and in to the middle opening up the gap which Aberdeen used to great effect. It's one thing for a Defender to push forward with the ball and have someone else slot in behind, but when the oposition are on the attack and nobody has time to get back and cover for him it is suicide. Aberdeen got their first goal as a result of doing that, McGuire having to go wide to cover for Rossco led to the foul which resulted in the second and I can only recall one shot for Aberdeen coming from the other side of the goal. Constantly giving 50/50's against a team is one thing, but their were a couple of blatant decisions which should have gone for us that he gave the other way. One decision I recall was when we played a long ball forward, one of the aberdeen layers came right over the top of Blackie and flattened him and he gave Aberdeen the decision. Then an almost identical event happened in reverse at the other end and he gave the decision against us as well!!! Not to mention missing the penalty when he was standing about 5 yards from it :029:

Oh please....the constant shifting of the nitpickers on to different aspects of Niculaes game every week is getting rather tedious. Even the best strikers in the World had/have areas of their game that are weaker than others and Niculae is no different. The important thing is that what he lacks in one area he makes up for in others, and to date I think he's doing a decent job.

Same things were said about Dods, Dargo, Wyness, Cowie, Hastings (on his return) and probably others I forget and all turned out to be solid players for us. More recently, certain people were slating the decision to sign Cowie based on what they had seen at C*unty and he's now being tipped as the next big thing. Also, young Zander Sutherland has been constantly hyped as a star of the future who should be replacing Wilson....His first run on to the pitch for ICT and he concedes a penalty...one mistake...yet that is quickly forgiven - why? Because it suits the agenda of those doing all the ranting about how good he is, many of these are the same people who are doing the ranting about how bad Zibi is, so his one mistake is used to beat him with because...again...it suits the agenda. All this hysteria about about Zibi is nothing more than those who were slating him before he'd even stepped on the park searching desperately for a chance to say "I told you so" It's all rather pathetic IMO.

8:30 Departure No Problem.

Then you think wrong :016:

I don't think we are actually making that many "unforced errors", I just think we fail to play to our biggest strength at home and that is the width of the pitch. There's no doubt in my mind that at home we should be playing 5 across the middle so as we don't have to rely on forwards dropping back or defenders moving forward to give us control in the centre of the pitch. If we're going to adopt a tactic whereby Hastings and Rossco are pushing forward almost constantly then we'd be as well going 3 at the back from the start and having the extra midfielder.