Charles Bannerman

ictforresfan - these are pretty hefty accusations which, if you are unable to bring forth evidence to confirm them, could very easily be construed as defamatory.

Is this thread to CTO as The Ancient Mariner or Kubla Khan are to poetry?

cif73's link is very informative. It confirms 3.004M voting shares and the other 900,003 are non voting historical relics of the previous roles played by Thistle, Caley and Inverness and Nairn Enterprise. The nominal share value is £1 but there's already the notable precedent of Ian Fraser's going for much less than that (there was a rumour of as little as 20p in the £) In practice, if shareholders were prepared to sell, control of the club could probably be acquired for considerably less than £3M. There are a few interesting blasts from the past in the list of shareholdings. Orion still have their 275,000 as a quid pro quo for bankrolling the Marius Niculae deal, the McGilvray family still have over 100,000 and while the half million plus Tulloch shares are now with the Charitable Trust, David Sutherland himself still has 50,000 and Graeme Bennett 28,000. The biggest holding is the 574,000 ex-Catto/Ian Fraser holding of the Highland Hospice.

Dougal.... for the first time in my life, I have given you a green dot for most of that post!

Ownership of a company is achieved by purchasing its shares and the shareholders are hence all part owners of its assets. To my recollection, although I can't currently lay a hand on my copy of the accounts, the club's share capital runs to something like 3 million £1 shares which are owned by the likes of the ICT Charitable Trust, the Muirfield Mills consortium, the Highland Hospice and also much smaller holdings down to £250 by individual fans although this last category doesn't make a large percentage of the total. £3 million is therefore the kind of money needed to buy the whole lot at face value. A fans' body might want, or indeed would probably want, to settle for less than the full complement, even if the owners were willing to sell them. There's also the possibility that some owners would be prepared to part with their shares at less than £1 each. For instance the late Ian Fraser is said eventually to have parted with over 300,000 shares to Sandy Catto for just a fraction of their face value and these are actually part of what the Catto family then donated to the Highland Hospice. As a result, there are possible ways for a controlling interest to be acquired for a lot less than £3 million, but a lot of money would still have to be raised. The raising of further share capital by way of a share issue would be another opportunity for fans to acquire some interest. On the other hand, fan ownership also brings with it responsibilities such as the running of a business turning over anything up to £4 million a year and with many employees. Inevitably there's a lot more to that than meets the eye and a supporter led board would have major responsibilities requiring significant expertise and time, as previous boards have had.

Where do you find what I reckon would be around £3 million to buy the club's shares?

As they say on Wikipedia "Citation Required". I am really baffled by Alex' statement.

Yngwie.... on that one I would quote Greavsie: "It's a funny old game". This is one of the ironies of which football is full. One thing needs to be said of the aftermath of this joint worst defeat by County - the questions to be asked have become a lot clearer. Top of my list is (totally objectively) - How far does lack of money go to explain the current predicament? Is there more to it? Majority opinion seems to think so and the extent of that answer may go a long way to defining the future of Caley Thistle. When I hear people of the calibre of Charlie Christie and Barry Wilson saying what they have said, I have to take this very seriously. These are highly intelligent guys, ICT playing legends and, in their different ways, intimately knowledgeable, who have come to separate but quite consistent conclusions. The appraisal of the state of Denmark in Hamlet painfully appeals. This prompts the supplementaries: Would the Board, in a hypothetically revisionist situation, change any previous employment decisions? and ...Does the Board regret having shrunk into a shell of uncommunicative anonymity in recent years, relying only on a "Hitler in The Bunker" unworldly Twitterfeed to support its position?

Agreed. When Brewster left in 2006 there was a considerable hiatus during which the feeling was that Charlie was being leant on to accept, and eventually did. I think he did a very good job but am also quite aware of how his life outwith football was suffering from his place in the goldfish bowl. Now that the minutiae of board business are no longer available in a certain, recently refurbished hostelry, Charlie's Courier column, coming as it did on the heels of Richard Smith's resignation, gave rare food for thought as to what may be happening.

Two very important questions there, as speculation about next season's dugout lineup must surely intensify even futher.

I really can't think of a more crass and empty gesture than this proposed protest and anyone doubting my sincerity here should note my rare empathy with Dougal on this subject.

As the weeks and results have gone by, the probability of survival and number of means of achieving it have continued to reduce as defeat has followed draw. The significance of Saturday was that it saw the disappearance of the last route which was still in Caley Thistle's hands. Overhauling Hamilton and/or Motherwell by simply by beating them is no longer an option. Now such theoretical chance of staying up as remains has reduced to a single route with favours required on the way. In other words, to return to a familiar theme from 2010, Dundee have to bottle it - or at least to continue to do so. On that subject, just as they got rid of Jocky Scott, they have now sacked Hartley but that's just an observation as opposed to an expected cause and effect.. The only realistic prospect, and it's now a pretty remote one, is for ICT to win at Dens and in addition to pick up three more points than Dundee do in the other four games to leapfrog them into the playoffs. And of course it would be far from done and dusted even then. Ironically, this hands Ross County a very influential role since they have to play both Dundee and ICT once. Please don't take this as an expression of faith or expectation. Look on it more like the way you fill in your lottery numbers in awful realisation of the number of permutations which would miss the jackpot compared with the single one that would win it.

Dundee binned Jocky Scott for Barry Smith latish in season 2009-10 and it didn't work. I'm just making the observation though - not suggesting that history could repeat itself.

I actually remember that vaguely. Must have been fun having to do Jock's bidding!

As in 2010, everything now depends on Dundee continuing to bottle it.

Sugar daddies are great while they are there but when the plug is pulled, the consequences are devastating. You just have to look at Gretna, Rangers and Nairn County to name but three. It isn't sustainable. I must also say again that I find this expectation that directors and wealthy people should be expected to subsidise loss making football clubs. The root cause of the problem is that players just about everywhere are paid more - often far, far more - than their realistic market rate.

You could well be right Snorbens and there are two pieces of evidence in the photo supporting your theory - the twin unlikelihoods of Thistle winning a trophy and of their notoriously parsimonious committee stumping up for individual trophies for the players.

That doesn't reflect events at all DD. The ICT statement was issued at 9pm on Tuesday, just 16 hours before the HN's deadline at lunchtime on Wednesday. It is also, and it remains as I write, the last statement made by the club with any reference at all to the situation of the manager or indeed on anything. The only other source of information is the manager's own pre-match comments to the HN where he is hardly going to speculate on his own future. The HN's report therefore was at time of publication, and remains at the time I write this, the most up to date account of the situation available.

Off the bottom tonight with a 4-1 home win over Strathspey! http://www.highlandfootballleague.com/LeagueTable/

Sustaining a Premiership team long term in a remote location with a turnover of £3-4M, crowds often struggling to reach 3000, relying on windfalls and asset sales, and with no current benefactor is a highly marginal activity. Rather like walking a tightrope (there you go - non-political analogy this time!) it doesn't take much of an error somewhere for things to go badly wrong and that's what may very well have happened this time. The nature of any errors can certainly be speculated about, but any inquest is best left until a final conclusion has been reached. Efforts are meanwhile best focused on maximising such chances of survival that remain. Getting angry about the situation isn't going to make it any better. If anything is remarkable, it's that errors capable of upsetting the tightrope walker which is ICT have been as infrequent as they have. Indeed the largely error free transition (one major exception) from the Highland League to the Premiership in 10 years and remaining there for 13 with just one instantly redeemed hiccup is what has been truly remarkable, and not that the odds this time appear increasingly likely to catch up with the club. I wouldn't perhaps go as far as saying that Premiership status has become taken for granted. However I do think there needs to be a greater awareness each relegation time of the "there but for the Grace of God go I" principle (religious analogy now ) which has often given Inverness Caledonian Thistle a hefty rub of the green in very marginal circumstances.

That sounds a wee bit like the claim that the NHS in Scotland is OK because it is allegedly better than the NHS in England. What I am saying is that there are SOME Inverness fans, including those booing loudly at full time on Saturday, who have been very quick and early to turn on various parts of the club. One concern I have is that, notwithstanding the fact that the team's situation is indeed very bad, some fans are already assuming that relegation is inevitable so are demanding a reckoning now rather than at the end of the season. It's just as well James Vincent didn't come to that conclusion in the 2015 Scottish Cup Final, or the scorers of the four goals after Ayr United went 3-0 up or the team and management after Dundee built up a huge lead in 2010.

Interestingly, STV made no reference at all to the club's statement on their 6pm sport bulletin.

Certainly a defined and effective statement or indeed rallying call aimed at focusing minds in the face of desperate danger would be beneficial and very probably overdue. The main problem is that in terms of delivering it, Winston Churchill has been dead for over 50 years! To continue that analogy, this is like when the Germans were continually bombing the airfields during the Battle of Britain. One can only hope that Hamilton and/or Motherwell do Inverness a favour and make mistakes such as bombing London instead. One or two Churchillian exhortations wouldn't go wrong either though. Quite frankly, there aren't too many options left now and you can analyse what did, or didn't, happen in the past until you're blue in the face but it won't make one iota of difference. The ONLY options that remain are those which will maximise the points take between now and the end of the season - especially in the three games against Hamilton and Motherwell. I also believe that a certain sector of the Inverness fans need to take a look at themselves in all this. Constant undermining of players and management in various ways, including booing at matches, will have done nothing to boost confidence and morale. This is without doubt a "perfect storm" scenario where a number of adverse factors have conspired together but the reaction and to be blunt, the Holier Than Thou self-righteousness of SOME fans has most definitely contributed.

That's all very well, but it's also somewhat revisionist. What "should have" been done is a matter of debate and you may well be right or wrong. However the reality is the situation which applies at the moment and that is a team which has consistently not been performing well sitting four points plus goal difference adrift of safety and with six games to go - three of these against the two sides immediately above them. What has happened can't be changed and the best possible course therefore must be to make the best out of what remains until a numerical conclusion is arrived at one way or the other.

Precisely DD. The purpose of the STV story was to imply that, presumably following Saturday's latest setback, the board were going to take some extraordinary measure to consider the future of the manager. The club's statement in response in effect denies that any extraordinary measure is planned but that by no means excludes the matter being discussed during this week's board meeting. In fact, given the ongoing, deepening situation, it would be surprising if this WASN'T discussed. The other consideration is that if a need had been seen for emergency discussion, would that not have been more likely to have been at the start of the week, such as Monday, rather than right on top of a crucial away game? Again I get back to all the "bogus exclusives based on rumour" that regularly appear in football and "emergency board meetings " are pretty high up the list. I actually think that the statement that was issued was probably the best option available to the club. Speculation about the manager's future is probably inevitable but its very existence is actually damaging any chance of escaping from the current, very serious situation. As a result, the best strategy until there is something concrete to report - be that relegation/salvation or retention/departure - is to do everything possible to dampen the issue down to give the team the best chance for what remains of the season.