davie

Well I wrote that preview and I stand by it. With all due respect to dundee, we've beaten them 4-1. twice. they are bottom of the SPL and we are third. By any logic, that means we have a right to suppose they should win this one. Just saying.

That original statement is quite funny really. I did wonder who they were when I saw reference to them on the BBC website, but quickly got the message that they were a third division pressure group for a new club that is trying to establish it's own identity. Oh wait...............

Win everything. Liking it. I'm really confident of making top six at least and I can't see any sides other than Celtic and Motherwell who are genuinely better sides, so eorpa looks a decent shout at the moment. I don't think that the club would care one iota that we might lose money on the deal because it might be the one and only time we ever make it. I care not whether it's a one horse town in the Ukraine, somewhere barely thawed out in Norway or somewhere in the balkans so bad you need an escort in and out. I'm going. PS: Why can't kilmarnock defend like that against us?

Foran might well be key for the derby, his height is something we've missed and along with Warren should terrify the wheels off county at set pieces. I thought our passing was exceptional at times last night, and there looked to be times in the first half that united could barely live with it. It's amazing how quickly teams shut OTJ down now if he gets the ball anywhere in their half. Devine and Andrew Shinie were exceptional for me - if we ever have the makings of milion pound players at the club, they have that potential. Happy with that point and roll on Saturday.

We look so tired yesterday, and Motherwell looked loads fresher not having a midweek game. The first half was the best showing we've had this year against Well (which ain't, I admit, saying much) who looked every inch a second place side. We played some neat stuff, and Shinnie's goal ? Should have stood really. Their second goal killed the game stone dead, and for about 15 minutes our heads went down and we lost a lot of coherence. Thought that Shane and Phil Roberts looked ineffective when they came on, but that was probably due to us having to chase the game whilst Well were already home, dry and knew it. I think that Butcher put Draper out wide because it provided an out ball for Esson because Ross, McKay and Shinnie were winning nothing in the air down the middle. As for Roberts, his style of play looks what the papers would call "languid" if it works and "lackadaisical" if it doesn't. To suggest that the guy is getting a game when he doesn't care or try is stretching it. So is suggesting his personal popularity has any bearing on it. Do you like everyone that you work with? One thing is certain - if he was the complete player, he would still be at arsenal. He isn't and that tells it's own story - he's lightweight and inexperienced and looked it yesterday. Still third.

yep. I'll be there

This is probably one of the most negative posts I have read on here. Let's get this right - The weather's rubbish. Barnsley get bigger crowds than us. County are "suberb" at attracting crowds. we need to improve the product from being second in the league. We are never going to have a bigger fanbase. We make sarcastic remarks about "punching" that never happened, but we ought to stop moaning. Precisely how? It's a serious question.

what a fundraiser that would be!

I read TB's comments with a real feeling of inevitability. As a manager who lives and breathes the club and believes passionately in his team, it must be frustrating. As fans on the other hand, we're lucky in some ways in that we have a choice as to whether we get into all that - or even if we turn up at all. The fans, though are the lifeblood of the club and is 2500 or so really what we want to see when we're second top of the league? Of course not. The big issue seems to be prices, and ideas for lowering them. How can the club bring down ticket prices permanently in mid season - all that would result would be a storm of protest from season ticket holders who would (with some measure of justification) feel they were bankrolling the scheme. the club has tried bring a friend schemes and two matches for the price of one already this year and attendances haven't improved. The club regularly distributes tickets to schools etc, but again attendances have stagnated. The club builds bridges through community development, the all together now capaign etc. and a lot of that is designed to get more through the gates. I am as mumped as anyone about the prices, but we are'nt paying more - the £20 nominal admission price often quoted was worth £9.48 in 1990, and about a tenner is roughly what I was paying to get in back then (old age!) This year especially, I think we feel poorer because our banks bu**ered up the finacial system and now we're paying for that too. People moan as well about the product. We are second top in a league that has less than ten points seperating us and second bottom and if that's not compeditive I don't know what is. We didn't want "hoof ball" that we'd complained about for ages - well we certainly don't have that now. You can moan about the manager, the tactics, his loan signings etc. but evidence suggests that he's doing something right. You can moan about the board as well, but their budget is built on an income that has been pre-identified. Less income = less club. Literally. As well as the above, there's a feeling around that the club just can't please the punters at all, no matter what. Nick Ross talked of the disappointment of being booed off on wednesday - we're second in the league for goodness sake. There have also been boos directed at Phil Roberts and frank verbal abuse at the manager and it detracts from what we try to promote as a family based, close knit club. Some of the stuff on CTO has been pretty negative in tone as well.Fans really do have some responsibilities as well as rights to voice their opinions in public (and on national radio on wednesday) Caley Jags Together have an AGM on 28th of this month and if you want to tell them what is wrong with the club and get it through to them, come along and make your point. Then there can be real meaningful debate and we don't have to air our dirty linen in public as we are right now. Shouting abuse and booing from the stand ain't going to do that. It's up to people, at the end of the day, whether they sit in and watch barca on sky sports instead of going to the game on the relatively rare occasion when these things clash. But in 20 years time, when your apathy has killed everything below la liga, the premiership and Ligue 1, who will you moan to?

Hold on, up front with McKay? Who do you then get shot of? Foran? Doran? Shinnie?Ross? IMVHO Shane is not the equal of any of these players either skillfully or tactically and is in what is probably the best position he can expect in this squad. I'm not being harsh here, he's a lovely lad with considerable ability but what's in front of him is probably impossible for him to overtake.

It's complete rubbish. TB was angry after the game, but only because of the amount of chances that we scorned. He wasn't even rising to the bait about Bobby Madden. Contrast that with Kenny Sheils interview, which was off the planet. Make no mistake, we thumped kilmarnock tonight - we had over 20 shots at goal,they had one on target. When you see the replay of Sissoko's foul on McKay, it was as blatant a penalty as you will ever see. The tactics, which as far as I could see were to play our usual passing game, worked. There was no need for a plan B, because we passed through them at ease. They then scored at at a time where reacting was out of the question anyway. As far as subs go, Sutherland was simply replacing tired legs, so it was immaterial as to when or where he came on. He simply had a job to do in his area of the pitch. Devine for A Shinnie was ok for me - devine plays a good passing game from what I have seen and I think that 70 minutes or so is all we can expect from Shinnie after his injury at Killie in the cup. We missed Foran tonight, he might have converted one or two in his area at the far post, but we should have been out of sight at half time. Loss of form? No. Loss of confidence? No. Just an inability to put the game to bed when we should have. Unless we forget, we are still second in the SPL (our highest placing ever) and we have reached the semi of a national competition. That's something to celebrate.

OP - nothing to see here. Just move along.

what? With all due respect mate, I suggest you find out what tradition is and means.

Caley Jags Together would be delighted to hear from either of you. The web site is here: http://www.ictsupporterstrust.co.uk/ and get in touch at [email protected]. We look forward to speaking to you

Joe, I stand by my points and any reaction I might have had to the incident, but we are going to have to agree to disagree about this. That's life.

Ok I'll leave CJT out of this, and address it purely as a caley thistle fan. This is a purely personal reply to the points raised above. This is the second time that kick off has been held up in a game involving us which is televised and is therefore contracted to begin at a certain time. The SFL will be unhappy about this, and can sanction the club. The club is responsible for the conduct of its fans home and away and are in an awkward position with this, and I believe that we were warned after the County game. Yes, local police will deal with it if they can identify anyone at the time but so will Focus, their specialist football unit. This will result in increased surviellance on all ICT fans, increased bag searches (this happened after the County game and people complained - few made the connection) a more controlling approach to us at away grounds and less leeway for standing etc. There are unintended consequences here, but consequences none the less. Because CCTV records crowds at all SPL venues, someone is going to be identified and prosecuted. They will belong to the same group of lads who bring colour and passion to our support (they did again yesterday) and one of them will end up with a criminal record over this. It does involve a group of people - you can't lob a smoke canister over a crowd of people with no one around you seeing it and your mates not knowing you had the thing, and those around you are associated and implicated in what you do. These are the same lads that sing and chant and they will be targetted by association, and that would be a great shame. Can you honestly say hand on heart that they will not sing anything about gypsy travellers at the next game and put themselves at risk with a police force that is already watching them? Even with the intervention of others to clarify what is and isn't acceptable to sing /chant, we know one thing - it is clearly an offence to throw pyrotechnics at a football match. No grey area here. So I'm not concerned by causing guilt by association with a group of our fans, they have effectively done that themselves. I'm not convinced that the police will seperate out the issues, they will simply look to apply whatever legislation when enforcing the law. They will have done that with any others arrested at the game, and I don't want to see them have to do it to more.

We just got sucked into this. the state of the pitch didn't help.

To those who were responsible for this, you should hear loud and clear that today you did our fans and our club great harm. Just because you got away with it at Dingwall, and were warned against a repeat does not mean that you got away with it this time. Easter road is brimming with CCTV cameras and you were caught on film. It's just a question of whether or not anyone from either club or the police can identify you. I suspect that they can, and if we can help to identify you, we will. It is utterly unacceptable for any ICT fan to throw things on to the field of play. As Caley Jags Together, we are committed to representing fans views, fans perceptions and fans rights. We are about to meet with the Police about chanting at derby games and you, whoever you are, have just made our job ten times harder. Please, we never want to see this again.

This, and the posts like it are pretty unforgivable and do no credit to the people posting them. It's the easiest thing in the world to miss a penalty, never mind when 16 000 people are screaming at you. Those who are posting this stuff have no idea what pressure is about. Ballooning it, hitting the post, getting too smart - either way it's a miss and the result is the same. Similarly, those who wanted Reguero subbed for the pens - if we had done that, the lad would have been perfectly justified in getting the first plane back to spain and saying stuff you. Can't believe the attitude. I can believe the expectation, the demands etc. but not that attitude. As for the game, Foran should have walked, so should Ngoo. He was brutal. we were sucked into playing Hearts game of pumping up long balls and it suits us even less than it suits them but we so nearly made it. Dust ourselves down, st. mirren on wednesday.

I think what Laurence is trying say is that it is a big game when everything is taken into context (i.e. falling crowds, girns about the quality of scottish fitba, the amount of vultures that are circling our players, the state Hearts are in etc.) In fact it's probably the biggest game he's known. Others will feel differently, but it's better than the OF obsessed feeling nothing at all! Personally, I think that the numbers going are about right for our fan base over the past few years and they will make a racket win, lose or go to penalties (please god, anything but that) No doubt thousands more will go to the final if we are fortunate enough to get there, but I'll no be slagging them. If even a few decide that they will keep coming to see the team that will be a result.

Chris did the MFR podcast with us last night and was unbelievably positive (as well as quite funny) He reckons he might be a couple of weeks away from a U20's game and it would be braw if a few of the posters on this thread could go to that game and welcome him back. It's some achievement after all.

Gaz - Old age and treachery will always defeat youth and enthusiasm. Trust me.

The short answer Laurence is that their gates have not increased, as "the" rangers have held onto their fan base even after being demoted to D3. There are reasons for this, bound up in defiance, paranoia and the wider protestant identity of the fans. If the demotion had happened to their neighbours, the result would have been the same (but catholic) The team that has benefitted most from their demise is, strangely, us as evidenced by our league position. If we stay where we are, we unaffected by the proposed reorganisation and we will happily slot into the top 8. Champagne & cigars time. Clubs like County and Dundee United, who are currently on the slide, may not like it so much if they get caught in the middle 8 dogfight. That, as they say, is their problem.

Meekings will still be ahead of Hogg in the pecking order. Cooper no more needs loaned than I need a sex change.