ictchris

Live feed of the board meeting here

It's also not as though relegation came as a huge surprise. Not having something prepared is pathetic. It makes me think that we are going to go into administration to be honest.

Are we going to get an all-timer of a seething statement announcing Gardiner's resignation?

The mystery board meeting is absolutely key. We need to have someone in place to build a team for next season now, literally today. Our rivals in League One are already ahead of us - Arborath signed Callum Gallagher, who has an excellent record at that level.

When does the smoke come out the chimney?

So we are 2-1 down after the first leg of the play off. We have only won a handful of games by more than two goals this season. There is a good chance we are going to be relegated into League One. What will the consequences be of this happening? I've heard people say that we will go into administration if we get relegated, I've heard people say that we will go part-time. People even speculate that we might go out of business entirely if this happens. I think at one of the fan Q&A events the chairman said they hadn't been planning for relegation but I'm sure they've also said in other communications that they are planning for this. While we all know the people running the club are generally incompetent I cannot believe that they haven't considered what to do if this happens - we would likely close down our Youth Academy operations, make staff redundant and possibly go part-time, to a degree. Perhaps we could keep a core of full-time players and supplement the rest with part-timers and youth products. As I understand it, companies go into administration if they are insolvent. Given our regular massive losses we probably fit that category but I don't know if it would be in the interest of the people who are writing the cheques to put us into adminstration. Maybe it could be done to reduce costs (ie make everyone redundant) and then start from a new base. I'm not sure our position with regards to creditors - do we owe money to the bank or the taxman? If so, they might put us in admin and sell our assets for payment. Assuming the club continues, how do thing develop on the field? I can't see Duncan Ferguson continuing if we go down - he has said many times he was here to keep us up, he failed and does he really want to compete in the third tier of Scottish football? I don't think so. I can only see us appointing someone from within - Scott Kellacher? Ryan Esson? Charlie Christie? In terms of players, we have, I think, five players under contract. I can see us offering some of the young players coming to the end of their deals one year contracts and trying to build that way. The banter outcome is that we get relegated, win our Scottish Government appeal and get a £3m cash injection mid season.

Game of two halves but we really needed to capitalise on our good play with an equaliser. The first half was just appalling from us, Accies absolutely tan rings round us. Considering we’ve been playing the same formation since Ferguson took over it’s amazing that we all seem so uncomfortable in it. Defensive slips and mix ups, disorganised and wasteful midfield and attackers who essentially aren’t there. Dire. Second half improved, particularly Lawal and Pepple. Lawal is a great link player and Pepple finished his goal well and didn’t put a foot wrong the whole time he was in the pitch. If they don’t both start then I don’t even know what to say. If we *have* to play the 3-5-2 then we should line up as follows for the game at the weekend -----------------Ridgers--------------- ----Carragher------Devine------Boyes------- Kerr-------------------------------Harper-- -------MacGregor--Anderson--Lawal------- ----------Mckay------Pepple------------- Carragher was an improvement when he came on. Devine seemed to get an injury late in teh game so maybe sub him out for Ujdur or Savage. Anderson wasn't great, his distribution and use of the ball were poor but Gilmour is not fit and Longstaff was just lost. Anderson at least pushed forward from midfield a bit, maybe encourage him to do that. I feel a bit sorry for Longstaff, he's not a central midfielder but he's been picked there and doesn't have the positional awareness to play there. Lawal was the only player who linked the midfield and the attack and looked capable of doing anything to make a difference. Samuel worked hard and is an honest player but Pepple came on and every time the ball came to him he used it well. He even fell over the ball and retained possession at one point. His finish was good as well, adding the one he scored against Dunfermline and he knows where the net is. Even with these changes I have zero confidence in this team to get a win, let alone by two goals. I think the game will go as follows - we push forward early but Accies score on the break. We then pass from side to side and do nothing until equalising in the last twenty minutes but can't break down Accies, the game finishes 1-1 and we go down.

Someone once told me that we were trying to sign Paddy Flannery but ended up signing Glancy due to a communication mix up.

They did some things very well resulting in the success but they didn't put in place anything to make it more sustainable or to deal with future setbacks, to make the club resilient. People are multi-faceted, they can be successful in some ways and unsuccessful in others. Another factor that feeds into all the complaints that I see on this thread and elsewhere when discussions on the state of the club are the fact that we don't have a real plan, a leader, a philosophy around the whole club. The only thing is "we need to get back into the top flight because we can't afford to be in this league". No-one is taking a long term view, about what sort of club we want to be off the pitch or what sort of team we want to be on it. I'm currently watching the Partick v Airdrie play-off game and I think about Airdrie. They got promoted last year, finished fourth this year. They have an identity, they have a style of play, a mix of young players released by other clubs or from their own youth team added to some more experienced players - it's reminiscent of the sides we had that got promoted. They aren't perfect and I think Partick will probably win this game but Airdrie have something that we just don't. Airdrie built this under Ian Murray, when he left for a bigger job, they had a plan in place that continued but also developed. What do we have? The signing and managerial strategy is clearly made pretty much day-to-day. We apparently used to have a Director of Football, who I would assume had to plan these things. I would also almost guarantee that Airdrie's wage bill is far lower than ours, their overall budget will be lower too.

I don't think you can pinpoint an exact moment where it all went wrong but I think it's somewhere around 2012. We got relegated in 2009, maybe slightly unfortunately with a record points total at that time, and then we gave Butcher leeway to rebuild and he did a great job. He then built more and created the cup winning squad that Yogi inherited, the zenith of the club up to this point. However, during those years when we had regular SPL football, a manageable financial situation (easily recoverable losses, external investment, cup runs, Europe money, transfer fees, money for managers etc) what investments did we make off the park? What improvements were made to the infrastructure of the club, both in terms of facilities for the fans and players? None. We still train at Fort George as far as I can see, the ground hasn't been touched or improved in years, and is now starting to fall apart. We don't have any facilities at our ground like a proper bar or decent food or excellent hospitality. You can extend this to off the pitch too and this is one reason why I don't entirely blame Morrison and Gardiner for what's happened to the club. We generally operated OK in the top flight, the losses were coverable when they happened and some years we made money. However, we didn't do anything to generate off the pitch revenue, something that coudl safeguard the clubs future. Gardiner and Morrison have taken a lot of stick for the concerts and the battery farm but they've had to do this because there was nothing there before. We didn't even control the land that the stadium is on, IIRC, and were paying money to another company for it. Eventually every club of our size gets relegated and we completely failed to plan for that in any sense - on the pitch, financially, from a business standpoint. If people remember the summer after we went down it was chaos, we had three different Chairmen, we were releasing players via social media, putting our press releases every day (Twitter account liked porn - statement, Duncan Shearer released by text - statement). It was clear no-one know what to do and really no-one has known what to do since. Everything that's happened to the club since stems from that failure. The Chairman and the CEO are trying to do positive things but failing because they are hamstrung by issues out of their control as well as their own incompetence. In the meantime the club throws huge money on players and managers, makes massive losses but is at the same time massively penny pinching. Watching the Montrose game via their stream I recall the Covid season where we had one of the worst streaming offerings in the entire league. other clubs have kept streaming and probably make a trickle of cash from it but we huffily insisted ours was fine and now don't do it at all. The only way I can see this improving is if an outside party buys the club and is willing to invest proper money in it, which I can't see happening or the current backers underwrite another few million quid and we finally manage to claw our way out of the situation we are in, we flukily get a managerial appointment spot on. I can't see either happening to be honest - I fully expect to be relegated and to spend a few years in League One.

The Inverness Caledonian Thistle Trust Limited shares - who controls that? I assume it is the Trust that was set up when Sutherland was chairman in the early 2000s, do they have a board? As for the old Caledonian and Inverness Thistle shareholdings, again, who controls that? My memory is that these shares reflected the membership of the pre-merger clubs. Companies house listing for the Trust Ltd - https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/SC211723/officers

One question I have is who owns our club? Scott Gardiner is the CEO, Ross Morrison is the chairman but who controls the club? Basically, we are able to carry on operating as a full time club because directors and benefactors write off debt or loan us money on favourable terms. Who are the directors who are doing this, have they said they'll stop doing it? Since we've been relegated David Sutherland and Tulloch's seem to have stepped back from the day-to-day running of the club but they still own the club. Sutherland is involved in the battery farm deal from what I understand.

We can appeal to the Scottish government and we might well have a case. That will take a lot longer and cost money though. In the short run, I think we are highly likely to go into administration. We make massive losses every year that are written off by directors. Reading between the lines, it's obvious that these benefactors have said they won't continue doing that so we've pinned our hopes on this project, which was risky due to the potential rejection by the council. One thing that I'm a bit puzzled about is that this money was earmarked for other projects to make the club sustainable - I'm not sure if it was ever made clear what these projects are and why they are so dependent on the battery farm. Do we just need a revenue source? Is the battery farm somehow linked to the other projects? Are we confident in our useless board and adminisrators to invest millions of pounds in a sustainable way?

Surely enough time for a few more centre backs?

He's got the same agent as Remi Savage and Alex Samuel.

We've signed Alex Samuel on loan from County until the end of the season.

Last round we changed the team to play Cowdenbeath and needed late interventions from Mckay and Wotherspoon to take us through. We need to play a full strength team or we could easily lose.

I don't think the podcast has ever been overly critical of the club or the team. If anything they've been reluctant to criticise as stridently as some of our fans have.

He's confirmed as having been released https://ictfc.com/sean-welsh-leaves-ictfc/

I think he's much like the signings we made in the summer of 2017 (Ellsdon, Zschuschan et al), just signed to fill a spot in the squad. Our recruitment this summer was rushed, probably because our budgets weren't set until very late and there was uncertainty around the manager. It's obvious that if we hadn't made the cup final then Dodds wouldn't have been given a new deal and even though he was he was on a shoogly peg. The recruitment in the last few years has been really poor, espeically permanent signings. Since 2021 here are all the players we've signed permanently: Anthony MacDonald, Michael Gardyne, Tom Walsh, Manny Duku, Billy Mckay, Kirk Broadfoot, Austin Samuels, Max Ram, Steven Boyd, Nathan Shaw, George Oakley, Zak Delaney, Ryan Barrett, Jake Davidson, Charlie Gilmour, Adam Brooks, Luis Longstaff, David Wotherspoon, Harry Lodovica, Cillian Sheridan. Of those how many have been our best players? How many have even been regular starters? Billy Mckay and Nathan Shaw are probably the only two who fit both criteria. Wotherspoon as well but he's on a very short term deal and will be away soon. I think Gilmour looks pretty good but none of the others we've signed who are still at the club look like the sort of guys who are first on the team sheet. We have had some success in the loan market - Max Anderson and Morgan Boyes seem like good additions this year and Jay Henderson, Daniel Mckay, Logan Chalmers and Sam pearson were all decent. Overall we need a complete reset in how we bring in players.

I spoke to someone at the game on Saturday who knows about council planning applications in general, no special knowledge of this one specifically, and their opinion was that this will 100% be rejected. It fails it on noise grounds alone due to being too close to houses.

People talking about him being appointed for 'staunchness' are being silly. The guy played about ten games for Rangers thirty years ago. I don't think he's particularly renowned as a Rangers guy at all, Everton are the club he's identified with. He was really considered a big disappointment by Rangers fans

Positives and negatives about appointing Ferguson. POSITIVES He has coaching and assistant manager experience at the highest level. He was a first team coach at Everton from 2014 to 2022, caretaker manager a couple of times. He worked with Roberto Martinez, Ronald Koeman, Sam Allardyce, Marco Silva, Carlo Ancelloti, Rafa Benetiz. That has to be worth something. He seems to have been highly regarded by those he worked with. He has a reputation as a motivator, a positive guy who is passionate as a coach, not someone who is more analytical and measured. NEGATIVES He hasn't been involved in Scottish football for decades, he's never coached here at all. You can be certain he'll have zero knowledge of players at this level. He was interviewed by Tony Bellew for a podcast earlier this year and he said that he hasn't really paid much attention to Scottish football for years - which is understandable as he was coaching a Premier league club so knowledge of lower leagues in Scotland isn't required. He had a poor record as manager of Forest Green Rovers, who were in a similar position to us when he took over - bottom of their league. There are obviously reasons behind every failure (and success) and from what I've read about it there were underlying things wrong at the club that meant he wasn't in a position to succeed.

This is my understanding also. I might be wrong but I would expect him to take over as manager until the end of the season and, unless we get relegated, permanently after that.