ictchris

We are linked with Jack Sanders, Killie centre half on loan. Played the first half of last season on loan at Cove Rangers.

RUmours that we will be signing a defender before the deadline.

It was obvious for more than a year that Robbie Deas would be leaving but we haven't signed a central defender to replace him. Now we are bottom of the league making horrendous defensive errors in every game and are scrambling about trying to sign someone for that position before the deadline. It's appalling management and planning.

Our squad is much weaker this season than last. Of the regulars from last season we've lost Deas, Allardice, Henderson and Mckay and none of them have really been replaced. Deas hasn't been replaced at all, we've just not signed anyone in his position. We have signed Charlie Gilmour in the middle where Allardice played but I'm not sure he is a similar player and isn't someone who is going to dominate in there the way Allardice did. Henderson and MacKay both had pace and the ability to deliver a great ball in and while it's early days I'm not sure Brooks or Longstaff look comparable. We are weaker in ever area and unless we make some excellent signings in the next few days I honestly think 8th is about the limit of our ambitions this season. We've done well on loan in the last few years - Jamieson, McAlear, Chalmers, Pearson and the aforementioned Henderson and MacKay were all good contributors - so maybe we can use that market.

Inverness Cup champions after a 17 season hiatus You'll never sing that.

All three goals came from us giving the ball away in our own half. Really poor. I hope that this is just the pre-season affect.

Glad the feel good factor from the cup final lasted a whole five days.

How many grounds have you seen Caley Thistle play at? Saw this discussed on P&B, thought it was an interesting question. I have seen us play at 40 different grounds. Premiership - PIttodrie, Celtic Park, Dens Park, Tynecastle, Easter Road, Rugby Park, Almondvale, Fir Park, Ibrox, Victoria Park, McDairmid Park, St Mirren Park. Championship - Excelsior, Somerset Park, Tannadice, East End, Cappielow, Caledonian Stadium, Firhill, Stark's Park League One - Recreation Park, Falkikr Stadium, New Douglas Park, Palmerston Park, Forthbank League Two - New Bayview, Borough Briggs, Ochilview. Non-league - Station Park (Nairn County), Christie Park (Huntly), Mosset Park (Forres Mechanics), Grant Street Park (Clach), Princess Royal Park (deveronvale), Grant Park (Lossiemouth), New Victoria Park (Newtongrange Star) and Cliftonhill (Albion Rovers). Neutral - Hampden Park (cup semis and finals) Grounds that no longer exist - Telford Street, Brockville and Love Street. I've also seen us play as the home team at five different grounds - Telford Street and Caledonian Stadium, as well as Pittodrie (2004/05 ground share), Tannadice (1996 cup tie v Rangers) and Victoria Park (January 2005 cup tie v St Johnstone).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Inverness_Caledonian_Thistle_F.C._players Scott Allan Andre Blackman Mark Brown (footballer, born 1981) Joe Chalmers Ryan Christie Jonny Hayes Jamie McCart Barry Robson Lewis Toshney Not including players who never started for Celtic - that rules out Gardyne, Deas, Prunty, Charlie Christie

Are the prices agreed between all the clubs or are they imposed? The sections we've got seem a bit odd, I'm sure there's a reason for it.

Charles is right, that statement is just waffle. It doesn't explain why our losses have increased so markedly.

I think success on the field covered up a multitude of issues. This goes back more than 20 years. In 2002 Tullochs proposed a share issue which meant the club recieved an investment of £500,000. We had a good team at that point anyway and the further investment meant we could build a team that eventually got promoted. We also had two consecutive runs to the Scottish cup semi-final and the package we got from our manager leaving to go to Aberdeen. We then had five seasons in the top flight where revenues are much higher, our crowds were higher, we got TV money, we had big away supports. We also managed to sell a few players and managers and stay on an even keel. We then got relegated in 2009 and the board took a gamble at the time. They trusted Butcher with coming back up and took a big loss on that season - I thinkwe lost well over £500k that year but it worked and we were promoted again. The Butcher model then established us in the top flight and built a new team that was our most successful ever - top six finishes, cup finals, cup wins etc. That was dismantled remarkably quickly by appointing a manager who wasn't up to it and then firing him too late. We've essentially now been set adrift, making massive losses, not being able to build a team good enough to challange for promotion (last season was the closest we've got to going back up). That statement kind of sums it all up - we are relying on increasing off the field revenues, mention made of vague plans - doesn't fill me with hope. All clubs are looking to do this stuff and is there any evidence that our board are going to be able to produce revenue streams that wipe out the regular six figure losses we make? Nope. Freeports are a political thing as well - it's likely we will have a change of government in the next couple of years, what if the new administration shelve them? Where does that leave us?

An absolutely brilliant performance from the team and great tactics from Dodds. We pressed Livi in the right areas, played deepwhen we needed to and let them play in front of us. Didn't create much in the first half but showed some fantastic direct counter attacking for the first and second goals and then pressed the ball, won possession and scored the third at the death. Defensively we were solid - Devine probably the best of the back four but Carson was good as well. Welsh and Allardice worked really hard in the middle and didn't let Livi get a grip of the game at all. Henderson's pass for the first was a great ball, very clever early hit to outdo the Livi defence. I thought Danny MacKay was off it a bit but never hid and worked hard. Shaw was our best non-Billy Mckay player, he played more centrally and used the ball well, caused problems with movement and workrate and bagged two assists - the cross for Welsh's header was pinpoint. Billy was probably our man of the match though, two outstandign finishes for the goals and hard work, classy touches and great movement throughout.

I wasn't at the game but looking at the goals both are utterly appalling to concede. The first goal, Delaney hits an inexplicable pass to nobody that is intercepted, run back by Miller who then finishes well. Delaney is under no pressure, he has both centre backs available for a simple offload, but he looks like he's got caught in two minds between switching it to Carson and playing it square to Devine. He does neither and we end up conceding a really poor goal. The second goal is just awful - standard long ball down the line for the striker to chase, Duffy gets there first but just falls over, Muirhead runs the ball in and finishes well. Duffy outpaced Muirhead and got back, it looks to me like he's trying to get his feet set to recycle possession either by knocking it back to Ridgers or turning towards the line. He should have probably just launched it into the stand or even if he was feeling strong, the Moray Firth. Delaney is young and doesn't have a great deal of experience, Duffy has a bit more. Hopefully the coaches are reinforcing the need to keep things tight against Livingston, who will annihiliate us if we make mistakes like this against them

I rewatched the goals and you have to look at the central midfield for both of Raith's goals. The first, a fairly simple long ball through the middle is headed clear by Devine. Maybe you could argue that he should have sent it clear but given the nature of the ball and his body position I think knocking it back into that area is a fair enough clearence, it's reasonable to expect our midfield '2' in a 4-2-3-1 to cover there. However, both Hyde and Welsh are out of position, leaving a gap for Vaughan to pick the ball up. It's exactly the sort of position that a player like Vaughan loves, the half space between the midfield and defence and he punished us with a clever hit, early before anyone could pressure him. You can see the back four looking to cover the forward runs of Raith's other attackers, a very hard position for them to defend. Hyde is a few yards back, Welsh is miles behind out of the screen when you watch on YouTube. Poor from them. For the second goal, Hyde has possession in the centre circle and tries a very ambitious pass, looking to hit Henderson to feet. It's trying to slide it past two Raith players but the fullback intercepts it and immediate transitions into attack, feeding his midfielder. Hyde then has to put pressure on the ball but completely fails to block or slow down play, he slips. This then causes Welsh to have to come across and defend, which pulls him out of position giving space to Vaughan. Again, our back four are faced with Raith's most dangerous player on the ball in space, in front of them with multiple players making runs at the defence. This time Vaughan turns provider to Connolly, who takes advantage of the space for a good finish. Mistakes in the middle from us were very costly - we were outplayed in that area the whole game really. Allardice coming back is a huge boost.

I see that Ross Tokely has made a comeback as a player, signing for Nairn County. I remember him playing for us at Telford Street in 1996, it made me think - are there any other active players in senior football who played at Telford Street?

Saw this on Twitter.

Someone told me at the game last night that Sutherland could be out for nine months.

Third placed Championship teams have qualifed for the finals on two previous occasions. 2014/15 - Rangers lost to Motherwell after beating Queen of the South and Hibs 2016/17 - Dundee Utd lost to Hamilton Accies after beating Morton and Falkirk When we finished third in 2018/19 we lost to Dundee Utd in the semi-finals, after beating Ayr.

We've had playoffs in every division since 2013/14. 2013/14 Accies promoted to Premiership Hibs go down, Cowdenbeath stay in Championship, Stirling Albion promoted to League 1 2014/15 Motherwell stay in Premiership Rangers stay down (lol), Alloa stay in Championship, Stenhousemuir stay in League One 2015/16 Killie stay in Premiership Falkirk stay down, Ayr promoted to Championship, Queens Park promoted to League 1. 2016/17 Hamilton stay in Premiership Dundee Utd stay down, Brechin promoted to Championship, Forfar promoted to league 1 2017/18 Livingston promoted to Premiership Partick down, Alloa promoted to Championship, Stenny promoted to League 1 2018/19 St Mirren stay in the Premiership Dundee UTd stay down, Queens stay in Championship, Clyde promoted to League 1 2019/20 No play-offs due to Covid 2020/21 Dundee promoted to Premiership Kille down, Morton stay in Championship, Dumbarton stay in League 1. So it happened in 2018. I don't think many people fancied Livi during that play off, although they had finished second so had one less play off tie to get through.

If we want to get into the promotion play offs then we need to really push on in these last six games. All the teams currently above us have played fewer games so we need to overhaul them. I'd suggest we need to win all of our home games, especially the game against Dundee. Of the three away games we have left we probably need to 'break even' so to speak, four points are a minimum from those. Queens and Morton are normally the games we'd target while viewing Hearts away as a 'bonus' but Hearts will very likely have wrapped up the title by the time we play them and we shoudl definitely look at them as a potential three points. I think it's too much to ask for a relatively small squad with injury worries and a brand new coaching team to be honest. This league is very hard to predict as the teams are all so evenly matched and I think it's just a bridge too far for us to be looking up the way at this point. We do have momentum, which is really important and we also seem to have stumbled, almost by accident, onto a defensive formation that's working for us but fundamentally I don't think we've got the firepower up front to go on the sort of run that's needed. If you look at season 2017/18 where we went on a run to almost hit the play off spots, we won seven and drew one of our last eight games and in those Nathan Austin and George Oakley scored six and four goals between in those games. Do we think a couple of our forwards are going to score three or four goals in the last six games? Maybe the momentum will get them there but I think it's unlikely. ETA - we also had the fortune of having two very poor sides in the league that year, Dumbarton and Brechin, both of whom we played in the run-in. There's no such easy meat in the division at the moment.

Oakley has returned from Bulgaria and signed for Killie. I assume we don't plan to make any signings today?

STOP THE COUNT(y)

Good point made on P&B, we pressed Hearts well from the front and might not have had that if we'd had Doran and Keatings playing. Certainly MacGregor's energy and pressure is one of his main assets and I thought he had a good game. Another point made on teh P&B thread is that we've played three best teams in the league in our first four games, hopefully we can pick up some more points in games to come.

I thought we did OK but never looked like we were going to win the game or seriously threaten Hearts. It's frustrsting to concede a goal so quickly after the break, we did the same in the cup semi-final a season or so ago against Hearts. Defensively we were fairly solid but were still stretched, we didn't clear our lines as well as you'd want and that put a bit of pressure back onto us. Goign forward I thought the '3' looked good considering they are all teenagers, esepcially Kennedy who looks like he could be a really useful player in this division. I felt Todorov didn't manage to keep the ball well enough, but it's a difficult shift on your own up front away to probably the best centre halves in the league. While it's great to have three young players like Kennedy, MacGregor and Mackay I think that for all their endevour and good play they didn't create many clear chances. Doran and Keatings both carry more goal threat I think and obviously both were involved in the goal that we did score. Doran obviously isn't match fit though but maybe Keatings coudl be an option to come back in. I thought Harper looked a lot better than in the league cup game, Allardice was good and is having a great start to the season and Welsh was OK as well, although you are just counting the minutes until he gets injured.