Charles Bannerman

While you were typing that, I was typing my earlier reply where I effectively ask the same question, but it appears that for both his contributions of cash, RM has got something in return - namely co-ownership of the car park lease and security for his £1.65M loan in the form of the Charge (if, as we must now ask, it’s valid.)

I think you’ve hit on the great unknown of this whole thing. Inverness Caledonian Thistle Properties was set up late in 2000 as a vehicle to assist Tulloch’s bail-out of that period and it appears to have been the umbrella company, for the car parks at least, from that date. You may remember about seven or so years ago there was a seemingly eternal process where Tullochs gave the stadium, which was part of the 2000 rescue, back to the club and the car park part of that seemed to take for ever. At this point, there’s a section of “cold trail” where I’m not sure exactly what happened but it would appear that in August 2023, Morrison and Cameron took the opportunity to buy the Propco and hence title to that part of the lease, and the proceeds disappeared into the bottomless pit of overspending that was ongoing. In the case of Morrison, what he has put into the club therefore has very thick strings attached in that he is joint owner of the car park lease, along with the other main player Cameron, and the Charge over his £1.65M. His backside therefore appears to have been carefully covered. Ironically (and I quizzed AS about this at the conference) this situation arose at a time when Morrison was also the Chairman. There’s one further point which could become important. Did anyone notice that the Administrator said that, given the point in the process that the Charge was created, there may be grounds to challenge its validity? That, I think, is a space that may be well worth watching.

One of the things that came out most strongly once again to me this morning was the hold that Ross Morrison and David Cameron have over this situation. Morrison is owed a secured £1.65M and Cameron (I believe) an unsecured £810K, while they also hold the car parks lease. And from what AS said, there’s clearly considerable tension between himself and these two. I asked AS if it was not rather ironic that Ross Morrison should be the major creditor and also chairman of the club when it became indebted to him to that considerable extent, and he agreed. I also have a rather vague recollection that the Administrator may have made a sort of enigmatic statement to the effect that there could potentially be some question over Morrison’s security, given when in the cycle of events it was given? Meanwhile AS, who again emphasised that this should be about football and not land deals, expressed the hope that the Council would step in and refuse planning permission should any unconnected, non-football use of the car parks be proposed by RM and DC. The administrator also confirmed that the £70K against Gardiner’s name in the document released last week reflects a claim from Gardiner rather than an acknowledged debt.

I don’t think that the 47 page document tells us a great deal that we didn’t know already - apart from the identities of creditors we weren’t aware of and what they are owed, and how much the Administrators are being paid. Up to £1100 an hour for a BDO partner’s work and pro rata downward among a £252K total so far is pretty formidable and, I understand, these hourly rates are somewhat above the odds for accountancy services. However, on reading it (and trying to penetrate some of the extensive jargon), I suddenly for some reason find myself less confident about a way out of this mess. That’s not made any easier by the understanding that AS is finding it a bit difficult to get people to come in with him, and a suggestion that Dougie had been set to sponsor stadium naming but has now withdrawn. It’s the sheer magnitude of the problem that’s so discouraging and I remain mystified as to how so much could have been spent without challenge for so long and to such little effect. That brings me to the £1.65 million Ross Morrison is owed. It seems ironic in the extreme that there should be such indebtedness to the very individual who occupied the top position when it was decided to over spend to that extent in the first place. What he seems to have done is to have written a large cheque to finance his own irresponsible spending, but been fly enough to get security for it in the event of it all going wrong.. which it dramatically did. And then there’s the £70K listed against Gardiner which I hope and trust is nothing more than a claim and a figment of his imagination. Monday’s conference may well be a complete damp squib - simply a pre-Christmas formal update - but maybe not. We just don’t know.

At the September 2023 meeting of the Football Memories group in the Kingsmills Suite, Gardiner barged in and insisted on being given time to tell everybody what a wonderful job he had just done securing the services of Duncan Ferguson. So by Gardiner’s own voluntary admission, this appointment can presumably be added to the extensive litany of catastrophes that he inflicted on this club.

Scott has had an excellent start but I think it’s far too early to place him in a hierarchy of managers alongside people who did the job for years. More evidence is required. Keeping SK out of the reckoning for the moment purely for that reason, my own short list would be John Robertson, Terry Butcher, Yogi and Pele and indeed I don’t think even that Charlie Christie had long enough in the job for full consideration. My own choice would be Terry Butcher, even though he wasn’t in charge for either of the club’s two most important successes - the First Division title in 2004 or the Scottish Cup in 2015.

Yes indeed I didn’t mention the Montrose red card. Maybe I should have, but the post was long enough already. As I recollect the stats were looking overwhelming even before the sending off. EDIT - and indeed I’ve just noticed that Moog has quoted 10 shots to 2 and 56% possession at half time.

I’m sure that it was the orange strips, launched on the 12th of July, that made the difference.

What a remarkable afternoon… and the latest instalment of a remarkable period in the club’s history. What happened at Montrose was little short of astonishing, with the team coming back from 2-0 down to win 3-2, going from a losing to a winning position in pretty well the last six minutes of play. However the match stats are even more remarkable - not so much the 56-44 possession figures but the shot numbers. 19 shots at goal is a formidable achievement and 13 on target an outstanding figure. Three of these resulted in the goals and the other 10 (TEN) were saved by the Montrose keeper. Meanwhile at the other end, there were no saves at all - simply because their two goals came from the only two shots they had on target. A 10-3 corner count simply underlines ICT’s dominance. The tables I’ve posted here - just after the 15 point penalty in October and on full time today - are encouragingly revealing and really highlight the massive progress (albeit with some help from Dumbarton) since Scott took over. Just five of the 26 games remaining in October have already transformed the situation from a modest hope of scraping the relegation playoffs to a very decent chance of automatic survival. But let’s not get carried away….

Spot on, OCG. The supreme objective for this season must be to take 8th place, with 9th plus a playoff next best. A place above 8th might be possible but I personally look on reaching the top four as highly improbable and thinking about it isn’t worth the resulting deflection from the survival push. The Scottish Cup was also secondary, notwithstanding the chance of making a few quid from it. (If ICT had beaten Cove, a winnable but highly unprofitable tie at Clydebank would have awaited.)

It seems perfectly possible that, for reasons of commercial confidentiality or even legal reasons, that it’s not possible for the administrators to go any further than their earlier “20 interested parties” statement. What we are seeing now is also completely consistent with what the administrator told us in October about how things were likely to unfold.

I have a recollection that, at their press conference in October, the administrator said that in practice it would take rather more than 8 weeks for anything concrete to emerge. 10-ish weeks was maybe mentioned?

I think that this season, there are only two objectives - to survive as a club and to avoid relegation to League Two. As regards the latter, my most positive take on today’s football is that Annan’s 2-0 defeat by Fraserburgh may be a further piece of evidence that they are in trouble, although I do also note Dumbarton’s cup result last night .

Cheers Scotty. The very last.

I wonder if the black and white photo is of the last league game v Arbroath early in October 1996, or the very last game v a Highland League Select later that month… after which many, including myself, claimed their own piece of Telford Street turf? I can see quite a few well known characters of that era in the photo - Norman Miller, Jimmy Falconer, Dougie McGilvray, Herchie, Kevin Bisset, Ian Gordon, Craig MacLean, Austin McNiven, Willie Grant (I think), Ann Nicoll. PS - the other day, I bought a carpet cleaner from the left back position at the Distillery (aka Comet) End.

Spot the link:- “Intelligent” Finance; “Cognitive” Capital; “Intelligent” Land Investments.

I strongly agree, STFU. The main root cause of administration is clubs spending more than they are earning… even when they have subsidies from wealthy people, be these regular or random. And the main root cause of spending too much is paying players too much. The illustration here is from a report by the BBC’s Chris McLaughlin which presumably refers to increases in part time wages in League One. Clubs become so preoccupied with keeping wages up in order to keep their status up that they are prepared to take huge financial risks which make administration all that more likely.

I think we are back to the notion that it seemed great when two small clubs from the inner Moray Firth deservedly got into the SFL in 1994, but after both of them became a lot bigger - and after £30-40M of other people’s money has been jointly given to them - we find that this maybe wasn’t such a good idea after all. Caley Thistle, who have accounted for around £15M of that £35-40M, are currently going through the resulting reality check and correction, and that is the kind of reality that may also eventually visit Ross County, should the annual seven figure sum that Roy MacGregor is putting in there stop coming.

One major root cause is football’s persistence with paying players at levels well above the income they are capable of generating for the club. That creates disasters waiting to happen.

The fact that so many different “single” factors have been put forward by various people suggests to me that the decline of Caley Thistle has been a perfect storm of a number of adverse influences all operating in the same negative direction. You then need to consider that top flight football in the remoteness of the Highlands is, especially with another nearby club benefiting from even more external funding than Caley Thistle has, an extremely fragile business, so you also then have a scenario that is very unstable indeed, making disaster that much easier to happen.

I think you are being too fair minded, Robert. Administration is a consequence of overspending and incompetent governance, as we discovered at Caley Thistle. If Dumbarton have also been sailing too close to the wind then the whole of Scottish football is aware what the consequences are. But my goodness, if this comes to pass then it’s a game changer for Caley Thistle and it will take them four points off the bottom at a stroke. Across the last couple of weeks there’s been growing optimism that ICT could catch one team and get into the playoffs, but now the distinct possibility emerges of avoiding relegation by right, although absolutely nothing can and must be taken for granted.

And when Ferguson arrived, Scot Gardiner went out of his way publicly to claim “credit” for the appointment.

That’s been one of the revelations from this drop to League One - the quality of officiating is a lot lower.

I think it’s very significant that this team has defeated the league leaders on two consecutive Saturdays. That’s a very decent indication of the quality of the side and, watching this afternoon’s game, I also couldn’t help but get the feeling that technically, a lot of these players are above League One standard. That to me is all very positive in this campaign to escape the bottom/ bottom two in the 22 games that remain.

The appointment of Scot Gardiner. It was from there that an already declining situation went totally belly-up. However I fully agree with what STFU says about subsequent events being influenced by earlier ones. But purely from an Inverness perspective, and with the benefit of hindsight, I could also argue that Ross County being elected to the SFL along with Caley Thistle in 1994 was an absolutely critical event because it’s turned out that the inner Moray Firth has proved unable to sustain two large clubs. County fans would of course suggest differently….