Charles Bannerman

He's already got his £200 brief for the Jail End.

Maybe people are taking the lead from Beaut House and are "reflecting" on whether to take this thread "off the table". Irrespective of its fate, apart from this post, I have no plans to return to it "within a generation". As I stated some time ago, I decided to withdraw because the unfortunately divisive nature of this subject was causing too many fractious exchanges with people whom I value and for whose CTO contributions I also have regard. Part of that may well have been my naturally satirical take on things and I certainly avoided the temptation of some kind of triumphalist return post-election. Instead, it has been far more fun winding up some of the complete numpties, Freedom-bellowers, out and out Cybernats and UDI-demanders you get on The National and The SNP Facebook pages. Although a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, that is genuine entertainment and it avoids confrontation with far more esteemed fellow contributors to CTO.

Kenny can take NO responsibility for the ST price decision, the complete bungling of the crucially important announcement of that controversial move or the more or less total information blackout there has otherwise been since relegation and his departure. That has all been under the new watch. The lack of information, communication or even acknowledgement that the fans and the public exist, cannot be laid at the door of the departure of CaleyD (although there was a rumour that he may not remain departed.) It's not rocket science putting stuff out to the media or on social media and I'm sure plenty people could have done this - if asked to do so from boardroom level. Ross County, for instance, issued three press releases today alone - and all directly to newsdesks, avoiding the complete nuisance of constantly checking the cybersphere. So we now know that Roy MacGregor will have another face to face with the fans at a Supporters' Open Meeting, that County have appointed Emily Wilson as their new General Manager and that NEW sales of the £200 Jail End STs have risen to 300. And that's just today's ration. This is all information which it's in the club's interest to volunteer, but I am enough of a conspiracy theorist also to note that, for instance, today's three releases show that County are 1) Communicating with their fans, including directly via the Chairman. 2) Are dealing with and publicising major appointments quickly and efficiently and 3) Are (OK with more than a little apparent help from a benefactor) attempting to increase their market share, especially in the face of the open goal which has voluntarily materialised in Inverness. Quite clearly County are specifically seeking to exploit ICT's weaknesses to their own advantage and who can blame them? It's called competition. Meanwhile on this side there's been a complete clampdown with everything remaining in the dark - to ICT's huge peril and disadvantage. I'm mystified as to why the new Chairman, as one of his first priorities, didn't set up and publicise a face to face open meeting with the Inverness fans. I certainly know very little about him apart from an unconfirmed anecdote that he lives in Edinburgh. But even if there was really quite little to say, the gesture and being seen to have made it, would have addressed at least some of the mounting dissatisfaction we are seeing. If Roy MacGregor can do this as a matter of course, surely it's far more urgent at a critical moment for Caley Thistle? Having observed the development of this club since before it was even born, I am quite dismayed that the critical, indeed potentially fatal, issue of obvious supporter disillusionment has now been ignored over the 23 vital days since relegation - which will best be remembered for a complete car crash of an announcement about season ticket prices. (By the way at the time of the last relegation, George Fraser was the Chairman.)

Sorry Yngwie, I didn't make that very clear. The inferior product I meant was Championship football compared with Premiership. I meant how that would affect next season's sales at the same price. This is the slightly anomalous thing. It's not a classical elasticity of demand situation. The price isn't changing (unless you rate a reduction from 19 to 18 games as a 5.6% increase) but product quality is decreasing. My favoured analogy is changing your underwear suppliers from Harrods to Primark but paying the same for a multipack of Y-fronts but with one fewer pair in it.

I have often wondered about elasticity of demand for football tickets. If it is indeed inelastic, this presumably also means that "pay a fiver" or "pay what you can" schemes are a waste of time and indeed money. One other consideration is that at ICT, attendances seem to have been dropping in recent years, even with no change to prices for the same product, so I also wonder how the additional factor of an inferior product may or may not influence things?

I think you are slightly overstating things there, Chris. I would suggest that it was more "a single, throwaway WORD about the prices" - so obscure that I actually missed it the first time I scanned through that car crash of a Season Ticket communication last Thursday. The word in question was that prices would be "maintained"! You would almost think that they were doing fans a favour by charging the same for one game fewer in a lower league. I really can't think of a more bizarre word than "maintained" to describe the scenario. And of course the revelation of a 5% discount come the certainty of a return to the Premiership in 2018 only made an awful situation a whole lot worse. The timings of recent announcements have also been interesting... or should I say bizarre.... given that you need to take this into account when planning the impact of what you want to say. The revelation that Kenny had stood down appeared in two parts at 10:40 and 11:50 on a Monday night... too late to catch any newspaper on the Tuesday. Then the departure of Richie Foran appeared the following Monday after 6pm - in this case too late to catch Inverness's bigger selling local newspaper. All were issued electronically, putting the onus on the consumer to look for them. Was this simply an inept attempt to bury "bad news"? But then, when selling season tickets became the desired outcome (as opposed to the achieved outcome!), there was a complete U-turn and emails were fired out to all and sundry on a much more user friendly Thursday morning. Sorry chaps, people on newsdesks notice this kind of total failure to win friends and influence people and their perceptions of the organisation in question are bound to be affected accordingly.

And where is the cash going to come from to fund this "adventurism"? Season ticket sales?

I believe Shane may have just signed a new contract with Elgin, in which case he could be costly.

No, we didn't hear it here first. We heard it first from the club in Thursday's press release which promised "an extra 5% off next year for returning season ticket holders on our promotion back to the Premiership in season 2018/19."

Now there's one good reason to pay £100 more to go to Inverness!!

The problem is that the game hasn't got it - despite this being its fundamental Achilles heel.

The decrease from 19 to 18 home games for the same money represents a 5.6% increase in prices for a lower standard of football. I'm actually not hugely fazed by dropping to the Championship but if you move from Next to Primark you don't expect to have to pay the same money for a pack of in-house Y-fronts with one fewer in it. What is it about football and the laws of economics that the rest of the world observes?

"We need to talk about Kevin" Well why not? Kevin MacDonald's name comes up in connection with ICT vacancies more often than Tommy Ring appears in the Off The Ball Team Of The Week! Do I think Kevin is a contender? Well not having listened in to my boardroom bugging device for some time, I haven't a clue and don't actually care until a name is confirmed. But ever since the post-Pele vacancy in 2002 when Grassa successfully wound up lots of people about this one, the ICT machine gun of random names will never have a full magazine until we "talk about Kevin".

Initially, I misread that and thought you were looking for a 55" toilet seat! But to return to the substance of the thread, I am dismayed at the low esteem in which the match day experience is held by fans. At this point I will head of any smart comments about the press box by admitting that the analogy with World War I generals in their chateaux and the poor bloody infantry in their trenches has already occurred to me. For the kind of money that is being asked then, apart from what you might want to say about the standard and fulfilment level of the football, it does appear that many of the ancillary facilities, especially in the North Stand, do leave something to be desired. Unfortunately a lot of the comments do seem to reinforce the notion that everything has been thrown at first team wages and even stadium infrastructure has been allowed to decay. It's possibly also worth mentioning in the passing that when Ross County publicised attempts to improve their match day experience some years ago, these received quite a lot of stick on this forum! Look, I know I have privileged, cost free access on match days but I'm there to do a job and that's it. However what I am reading on the likes of this and other threads does make me wonder if I would actually be prepared to pay the prices at the gate (and hence not have to work either!) in order to avail myself of the deal people's comments are making apparent.

Even retired ones?

Brian, I don't want to seem discourteous to someone who doesn't post very often, but in several ways I think you are right off the beam here. Your sentiment isn't totally new, but it's just completely wrong headed to propose that individuals, some of them possibly not all that well off themselves, should make voluntary donations to sustain the wage levels of footballers who are already being paid well above their realistic market value. Football really needs to get a bit of a life and realise that in the rest of the sporting world, or indeed in much of the rest of the world, you can't make a killing on the strength of not being very good. Indeed I often wonder if much of Caley Thistle's difficulties originate from a willingness to pay well over the odds to individuals of limited ability and, if the previous manager is to be believed, in some cases of questionable commitment. Historically, football fans complain about the cost of watching a mere 90 minutes of entertainment - a description which sometimes struggles for validity. They do so with some justification. So, what you are now proposing is that everyone should voluntarily increase the cost of their season tickets by a third by stumping up another £100 out of the goodness of their hearts. In fact, you also seem to suggest that even the 15,000 at Hampden in 2015 should do so. There really isn't the remotest chance of that. If 12,000 of these people aren't even interested enough to pay to go to regular games, what chance a voluntary £100 supplement? I would suggest that many of the 2500 or so who regularly attend have to make financial sacrifices elsewhere for their football, but here you now are asking for £100 a head to boost the back pockets of guys with flash Mercs, Beemers and SUVs who earn far more than these poor punters do. Bdu98196 is spot on. Football seriously needs a reality check. The expectation that anyone - the rich or the ordinary punter - should subsidise players' unrealistic wage levels is plain nuts.

I always wish my life away until managerial vacancies are filled. All these days of plucking names randomly from anywhere, usually based on no concrete evidence whatsoever, are just a complete waste of time. I would just lock the directors in conclave in the boardroom until such time as they are able to tell Tommy to go and release some white smoke from the woodchip burner. But I am still sticking with my original punt of well known Dutch coach Ruud Boogers.

It's at times like this that I wish football had something like the Representation of the People Act which operates to regulate comment on election matters and will, for instance, ban all political discussion on polling day. Random names of managerial "candidates" simply fly around the media like machine gun bullets and you do have to wonder about the basis on which they appear? Is the regular appearance of such and such a name based on any substance at all or is it all just part of a silly game that media play at times like this? Over many years, I've lost count of the number of club directors and chairmen who have told me about the waves of boardroom hilarity created by "revelations" such as "Johnny Smith is thought to be a contender". The principle seems to be that if you throw enough names about you may get lucky and be able to claim "you heard it here first folks". Nobody, after the event, ever seems to take stock of just how wrong about 95% of the speculation was. I am strongly tempted to put it about that well known Dutch coach Ruud Boogers is the front runner, just to see what ensues. If it were Ross County, I would probably instead go with experienced Russian manager Igor Gudgikoff.

Indeed why not? OK we have to accept that his appointment as a manager didn't work although I have already likened that to suddenly promoting a trainee teacher to the Headmaster's job well before his time to save a few bucks after the previous Headmaster fell out with the Director of Education. He wasn't ready for it, but Richie's contribution as a player puts him right up there with the likes of (no order of preference) Dennis Wyness, Iain Stewart, Barry Wilson, Charlie Christie, Grant Munro, Ross Tokely and one or two others. As such, that makes Richie's status as a club legend more or less impregnable, irrespective of subsequent events, for which I do not believe he was solely responsible. After all, not even Mrs Mann caused Bobby to lose such an accolade!!

I am still somewhat bemused or indeed confused. Kenny Cameron's resignation was announced last Monday and Willie Finlayson was unveiled as his successor much less than 24 hours later. This is followed by six days of complete silence during which it emerges that Richie Foran was personally hiring and firing players as late as Friday, hence heightening expectations that he would be staying on. Then, in another strangely timed late-Monday announcement, it emerges that Richie is leaving. What if the new manager doesn't fancy players who have been kept on or would have liked to retain players who have been let go?

I have expressed no opinion at all on whether a hotel in whatever site would be viable or not because I simply wouldn't know. All I am saying is that it isn't valid to make an economic case based on projected capital costs versus projected gross income because no figure is included for the major element of running costs. And that's before you even allow for the fact that the capital cost and gross income figures are based on "wild guesses". Adding up all the uncertainties and omissions, I would have to suggest that, in this case, back of an envelope calculation like this doesn't really tell us anything. You can't make an economic case on the basis of an incomplete set of wild guesses. Whether it's worth making a more rigorous investigation of the viability of a hotel is another matter.

From Edinburgh, are you?

I have heard from impeccable sources, from outwith the club but still impeccable, that Richie Foran was at the Stadium during last week and was re-engaging and disposing of players. Given the clear need for fans, including potential season ticket purchasers, for potential sponsors and even for the public in general to know what is happening after this unfortunate relegation, there must surely be some urgency for the Board to break with tradition and supply the necessary information.

So it's been confirmed that a short leet, and hence a vacancy, actually exist?

So it's been "caleythistleoffline" then? I had certainly been wondering where the site had suddenly gone to but my query has now been answered.