Charles Bannerman

There are some rather unfortunate views in there which I quite frankly find to be misguided. To say that boys in their mid teens "don't know any better yet" with regard to how to behave in public is nonsense. If they are such poor, naïve little souls and still so uninitiated in the ways of the word then what on earth are their parents doing letting them go to a football match, never mind one 100 miles away in a large city, unsupervised? You can't have your cake and eat it. Either they should know how to behave or they shouldn't be there unsupervised. This apology for them is rather like saying that it's OK for an dog to attack somebody in a public park because it's just a dog. What we are looking at here (and this is backed up by a personal account from Row S) are what are commonly known in education, and especially in staffrooms, as "Wee Sh*tes". (Don't succumb to the offence culture - this is pretty standard educational usage.) Then there's the apparent suggestion that the most essential thing in football is people making a noise and that doing so seems to justify any other collateral anti-social behaviours. Vocal support cannot be drummed up at any cost. There also seems to be this rather simplistic assumption about - it's appeared in several other threads before - that noisy football fans are somehow more "virtuous" than others. This is equally nonsensical. If people pay their money to go to a football match then, as long as their behaviour isn't illegal, offensive or detracting from the enjoyment of others, then they should be able to behave as they wish - and that also includes remaining silent should they so desire. And finally.... "Young team is the future of fans for the club". God preserve us!

All I can say is that the last paragraph there doesn't seem to square with the regularly heard observation over a period of years that the main hospitality suite is not occupied on a number of match days.

But unlike you, Caleyboy, I am merely recording observations and relating perceptions as opposed to complaining.

That seems to suggest an alarming degree of fatalism! I would feel more comfortable hearing that urgent efforts are ongoing to create the kind of demand which seems to have been very consistent at Ross County for many years. Whilst not knowing the precise extent of that lack of demand or how occasional full cancellation is, the general perception out there seems to be that the lack of demand is considerable. This is turn may create a self fulfilling prophecy since people may be less likely to want to take up hospitality under these circumstances.

I think what I did was to ask if there was room to expand revenues from match day hospitality? I don't know whether this is true or whether it is an urban myth, but I frequently hear it said that the Kingsmills Suite can often be an available nook since it is either very thinly occupied or there is no hospitality there at all for some games.

Interesting insight!

Outsource it to the new Inverness prison - an alternative to sewing mailbags!

Serious question - how prevalent did you find these issues within the sporting community in general?

And did you not know that although many of the maximum of 250 who voted against the merger 20 odd years ago have always come to games.... at least 6000 of them are still boycotting the Caledonian Stadium? If Dougal was here he would tell you, Sunny Chim!!!

I can't say I ever particularly noticed that and if he did, he always kept it well hidden. Terry Butcher used to give us unprecedentedly long answers to questions which were great because you could sometimes get a couple of quotes or soundbites out of each one. However when John Hughes arrived, his answers turned out to be even longer than Terry's and he would even digress into providing answers to questions that he hadn't even been asked. I would have thought that someone who loathed speaking to the media would have kept things as short as possible, although conversely short answers aren't necessarily a sign that an interviewee doesn't like speaking.

RiG makes a very valid point. The Chairman is very accessible and approachable and already has a considerable track record for making himself available on a one-to-one to fans with issues to discuss. As for the AGM, that's usually a pretty small, brief and staid affair that's unlikely to be a happy hunting ground for an anti-acronym insurgency. Things have changed a great deal since the Rose Street Hall!

Sack Foran! Appoint Sturgeon!!

Looks like I'm going to have to wait until the AGM then to find out who Caleyboy is!

Oh well, there's one who rose to the bait

That's my take as well. There are (at least?) two grounds on which the stats presented need to be questioned. 1 - As HTG says you can't compare two averages like that. You at least need to know squad sizes. 25 players at 50K = 1.25M but 20 players at 60K = only 1.2M... bigger average, smaller total. Then even squad size will fluctuate during the season. 2 - And you don't know how accurate the numbers contributing to these ambiguous figures are in the first place. I'm rather surprised that STV claim to have total knowledge of all the Premiership clubs' wage bills.

What Caley Thistle's budget is RELATIVE to St J's, be that in reality or by way of dodgy stats, is completely irrelevant. What matters is Caley Thistle's budget in ABSOLUTE terms. St J's financial arrangements, which we don't know, have no bearing whatsoever on the cash available to Richie Foran. I just can't believe that such a meal is being made here of the basic fact that you simply can't spirit money out of nowhere!

Intriguing that STV seems to know more about ICT's wages than the shareholders do, since these aren't even detailed in the club's accounts. Then there's the Ross County figure of EXACTLY (!) £36,000. What on earth has that club been doing with its money if it's needed millions written off by Roy MacGregor and STILL pays thousands a year less than anyone else?? You should never believe everything the media tell you!

So what is the ICT player wage bill, and what is the source of that figure?

On the first point - even if they do, that's money which doesn't therefore have to come from other club sources for youth development. On the second - it might be an idea to try to get the Kingsmills Suite working at full capacity first.

I wonder if you would have taken a similar view of some complete layman sounding off about treatment of the mentally ill of Lancashire?

Caleyboy - you just don't seem to get it! Once again you seem to be falling into the trap of expecting the people who run the club in their own time to go out fundraising so you can purchase a product which you consider to meet your satisfaction at a price which is round about half what that product costs to produce. As it happens, the board already in many ways go above and beyond the economic realities and are even found, for instance, running car boot sales so you can partake of cut price football. There may indeed be some ways in which traditional revenue streams could be spruced up. For instance I understand that match day hospitality could be extended, but the overwhelming consideration is that the board finds itself running a company in a totally artificial market. There simply isn't enough demand for the product at prices dictated by the wage requirements of the company's employees. When this happens in the real world, you don't find the directors of Marks and Spencer, Tesco etc rushing about organising car boot sales etc so their customers can buy their products at a fraction of what they cost to produce. At Caley Thistle, you do. That's because in football there seems to be this expectation that other people will either make efforts to bridge the monetary gap on the consumers' behalf or subsidise the loss from their own pockets. If you want to see a better product at ICT, which has lived a charmed financial life so far, what are YOU prepared to do about it? In order to meet wage demands which are way above what the market can realistically sustain, would you be prepared to pay more at the gate for a superior product or go or help with the car boots sales? (Maybe you do - I don't know.) Football's fundamental problem is that players are paid far more than their realistic market value and until that situation is resolved, this kind of thing will continue to be commonplace. So much for the board. Now the management. It also seems from this thread that spectators have been so busy watching in detail the body language of Foran and Rice in the technical area that they can't have been able to watch the game at all. Either that or what we have been seeing are completely anecdotal and random "observations", with the individual's own spin on them, which have actually been contradicted by others who were also at the game. What business is it of people making such observations as to how the professionals charged with running the team go about doing so in detail? What has it to do with them whether Richie Foran jumps up and down waving his arms about or adopts an entirely different body language? That's Foran's business and nobody else's - irrespective of how strong the belief of these observers is that they know far better than experienced football professionals about how to run a team. It's maybe time for understanding that you don't solve football problems by throwing money at them or shouting loudly.

You are dead right 12th man. I'm sure somebody from Hearts would come up with some reason not to sell match day tickets but, at a time when Scottish football is desperate to get fans through its gates, this does seem like something of an unwanted complication. It's not as if you had to book in advance because grounds are going to be sold out. There also seems to be a strange irony that Hearts are scrapping a link in the ticket selling chain here in the form of match day cashpoints whereas ICT(POTH) have put in an extra one in the form of the pre-turnstile sales points. (That's not a judgmental statement and merely illustrates a contrast.)

It's all down to what economists call "elasticity of demand" which is how extremely or otherwise purchase levels respond to change in price. With some products, demand will increase rapidly as you reduce the price (elastic) and with others the change will be much less (inelastic). One of the factors influencing this will be how the quality of the product is perceived. Income = number of units sold x unit price and in order to maximise income you need to adopt the price on the elasticity of demand curve which produces most from that number x price product. It would be interesting to get detailed figure on the elasticity of demand for SPFL Premiership football, but clubs have no option but to maximise income. This is especially the case when operating costs are artificially high - such as when a player market that doesn't reflect economic reality.

This idea reminds me of this.... http://www.igf.org/ ... and even that seems to be changing its title to retain any credibility at all. The Society for the Relief of Indigent Gentlewomen of Scotland was basically set up to subsidise posh women of the upper classes who hadn't found a man to support them but who also considered it below their status to get a job. Believe it or not, people of lesser means actually paid money into this fund so that daughters of chinless wonders, many of whose ancestors had acquired their status by cheating, stabbing and fornicating their way into positions of wealth and influence, didn't have to get off their backsides and get a job. The notion is absolutely obscene! On yer bike darlin'! However it is being replicated in uncanny fashion here where ordinary working people are being asked to fork out money - which could otherwise be used to buy books, sports centre memberships or a new bike for their kids - to subsidise the wages of footballers whose salary expectations vastly exceed their crowd pulling ability. And even when folk do have genuinely spare money, would that not be much better pointed in the direction of genuine charities helping people in need. To be honest, it seems even more bizarre that the targeted group in the football context should be people who don't actually attend matches and who therefore stand to gain even less from their generosity. Let's be realistic. The 10,000 who attended the 2015 Cup Final over and above relatively regular ICT fans only had a passing interest in this club. Consequently they are looking for no more than their single day of glory so strike me as less likely than most to part with money for nothing in order to subsidise the wages of players who earn far more than they do themselves for a much shorter working week. I know this sounds a bit Thatcherite, but it's maybe time that a bit of financial Darwinism descended on football.

Yes. As I said somewhere else, what you get for your £30 (or less in other ticket categories) actually costs around £44 to produce - mainly because of the nonsensical football wages market. Unfortunately there seems to be an assumption in paid football that much of it should be very well remunerated. Why? On what basis? If the play you produce only creates revenue to pay you £450 a week, why should you expect - and indeed get - £800? Many other sports do not have the finances to pay participants at all so don't. As a result many world class performers - who by any measurement are vastly superior performers to footballers, say, in the SPFL Premiership, actually lose money out of what they do. Footballers, on the other hand, often get paid well above even what the privileged economics of their game would otherwise dictate.