ALSY

Sure - think I've probably met you with GJ and IHE before matches in the past.

There are trains from Central at 1705, 1740, 1805 and 1835. Will probably get the 1805 depending on who I'm heading through with. Got to leave time for a couple of beers at the Norseman, one of Scotland's great, sticky-tabled football pubs. Trains back are 2131, 2156 and 2231.

I'm guessing a lot of people from Inverness will struggle to get down for this. I'm making the shortish trip from Glasgow though, for what I expect to be another tricky game. Who else will be there?

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssss ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss!

I don't f***ing believe this. What's the problem with our defence today, I wonder? Are we missing Duncan shoring up the midfield? Not too confident about Tuesday, as Morton's home form has been decent. Come on ICT - same attitude as we showed to get back from one down.

3-2

12 man Inverness do it again... :D Hope fully still four points clear for the trip to Cappielow.

Brilliant. Sounds like Dundee and County are really up for it, so we need this win.

Game on. Fantastic.

Ten men behind the ball from Raith and ICT looking ineffective in their attempts to break them down, according to Top Six Next year at the game. A bit worrying considering we only managed one against Morton when they employed the same tactic. 2-0 Dundee :)

You dont really believe that do you ? I think it's far healthier to believe that than adopt the mindset of some some bleating, toy-throwing old firm fans who attribute all their team's failings to a refereeing conspiracy. Sure, most referees will support a team, like anyone else, but most people manage to put their hobbies aside when they are at work.

Surprised no-one's mentioned Derek McInnes in Scotland. In England, Chris Hughton.

Nah, Rene just prefers to lurk outside it with a pin...

These were more or less my thoughts. In August I assumed we'd have a very mediocre season and finish fourth or fifth and though Butcher would just see out his contract. I never had any faith in us going up in thr first place and so never saw any need to call for Butcher's head around December when things weren't going particularly well. Turns out I misjudged Terry Butcher and the players, and even if we don't make it up this season I think they've done a great job.

I have a feeling Dunfermline will take something off us. They're a decent side, Gibson sounds like he's on great from and they'll feel they deserve something more from us this season. Given our goal difference, though, we can afford to drop two points and still go up even if County win every game. My only other worry - similar to a lot of people's - is that we drop points in one of the clearly winnable games: Raith or Morton. If we do that then the team might start to feel the fear a bit and teams like Queens and certainly Dunfermline are good enough to take advantage of that.

We're in such a strong position now. Because of the goal difference we can afford for Dundee to win one and draw one more than us and still finish ahead of them. County are still the biggest worry. Maybe jumping the gun a bit, but I really really really really hope we're in a position to win the league at Somerset. Imagine that terracing with 1000+ victorious ICT supporters on it at full time?

Feck me. Just got in from horrible day at work to this. Unbelieveable... ...and now 2-0 to the pars. Football isn't supposed to be this painless. What's going to go wrong? Heh. St Johnstone beating Rangers 3-1 too.

:D :D Nothing to do with not caring, Don - I'm just saving my fingers for celebrating all the goal updates coming in tomorrow on the matchday thread...

I know quite a few of the away regulars but very few who go to home games, so I had to go to a couple of games on my own at TCS last year. It was absolutely fine - once you look around you soon realise that there are plenty of others in the same situation. During an exciting game you might end up exchanging comments with a few of the people around you - frustration or excitement tends to make people more garrulous - but otherwise there's no pressure to be sociable: no-one will be looking at you strangely simply because you're on your own. Arrive just before kick-off to minimise standing-around time and take a radio or an ipod to kill time during half-time. Seriously: there's no need to feel self-conscious and even though you might feel at a bit of a loose end for a while, all that will evaporate as soon as the game starts.

I'm going to be ?20 richer at the end of the season Alternative Maryhill! Hopefully you'll be handing me a crisp purple note away at Ayr... If we win the league at Ayr I'll have the ?20 served to you on a bed of black rose petals in a diamond-encrusted casket, and be happy to do so...

I didn't believe we would do it. There seemed to be too many things stacked against us: the level of investment in Dundee, the fact that no team has bounced straight back to the SPL after relegatrion for about a decade, and the fact that Butcher tried to overhaul the team quite substantially at the start of the new season. I still don't quite see us as favourites to go up, although that might change if we beat County on Tuesday, but whtaver happens I think the team and management have already exceeded my fairly low expeectations for this season.

I've gone Foran; Rooney; Tokely, but it was a really hard choice today: it feels wrong not giving anything to Duncan, Cox or Golly. Nice dilemma to have though.

It's a combination of things, I think, most of which have been covered above, but the single biggest thing is that the team has had to learn how to play in this league. Today, in the first half in particular, the players looked far more aggressive and determined to be first to every ball that they did at the start of the season. Butcher has had to accept that his initial judgements about certain players and about his best line-ups were wrong, and he deserves a great deal of credit for doing so before it was too late. Certain players also seem to have developed greater self-belief as the season has gone on - Rooney is the most obvious example, but I think Foran is also playing better than he has ever played for us before, and both Duncan and Cox have been inspirational in the past few weeks.

First half was as good as we've been all season. What a difference Foran makes - he won everything in the air and engineered a couple of great shots for himself that would have been spectacular goals if it hadn't been for Jonny Tuffey. Rooney put in a tremendous shift too: he chased everything and produced some really intelligent set-up play as well as tajking his headed goal really well. Cox and Duncan in central midfield were excellent again and Tokely looked solid and commanding at centre half. Eric was our only ineffective player: he just wasn't making the right runs and also has a terrible tendency to avoid putting any pressure on opposition players. a lot of the time he just seemed to float around while all our other players were chasing and harrying everything. Partick were much better second half and that frustrating tenedency we have had all season to relinquish control of games kicked in again. We sat back too much and although we had chances, we could have thrown it away as we lived dangerously at times. The defence stayed pretty solid in the end, through, and although Foran looked flat out after about 70 minutes he kept fighting, and Dani was far more effective in possession that Eric had been when he came on. Great support today - 300-400 at a guess, singing throughout, and there were memorable moments when Tokely came straight to the away end after the final whistle, and Terry punched the air as the away support chanted "We are top of the league". It's a relief in a way that I won't make the game on Tuesday - the nerves couldn't go through that again.

Meeting Top Six... and a couple of others at Kelvinbridge tube just after one. In the past we've tended to go to the Pewter Pot on North Woodside Road (dcent pub but a bit dead) or the Landsdowne on Landsdowne Crescent, but we'll maybe give Munn's a whirl this time and see you there.