ilpadrino

I'd love to see Christie get a start on Sunday. What was it that Matt Busby used to say?

"Winning isn't everything.  There should be no conceit in victory, and no despair in defeat."

Thought this could be an interesting thread hearing what everybody's travel/plans are getting to the game

I will start it off, I'm actually driving down to Glasgow on Saturday morning, booked into the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Meal and a few beers Saturday night a late breakfast Sunday morning then taxi up the gallowgate to find a bar reasonably close to the piggery so the final walk/stagger isn't too far

Staying on Sunday night too so one huge pub crawl walking back into the city centre regardless of the result

What's your plans?

Dougal

Crowne Plaza eh?  I refuse to stay there since Intercontinental merged with Holiday Inn.

Always expect the unexpected from ICT! Would be good to get a solid win against Hibs mid week which would all but guarantee a Top six place and provide the players and Hughes with some confidence moving forward to the final.

Any win against Hibs will guarantee top six.

Why cross out Scottish parliament. Is that not where Scottish ministers reside? Not being one who understands the running of business perhaps you can shed light on why, if they are a loss making company, their latest accounts submitted to Company House show:- Cash in Bank - £9,968,000. Liabilities - £5,481,000. Assets - £13,854,000 and Total Worth - £76,978,000. Doesnt seem like loss making to me.

Dave Stewart MSP, for example, is part of the parliament, but he's not a minister.

The figures you show are about assets and liabilities, not about profit and loss.  The full accounts for the last five years are available at http://www.hial.co.uk/about-us/annual-report-amp-group-financial-statements/

Is this good or bad. I really don't pay attention to Scottish refs because I think they are ALL terrible.

He was the ref at the semi.  Good or bad? you decide!

 

 

HIAL.bmp

Good suggestion Alex but this company is owned entirely by the Scottish Government, so there is no chance of them giving over taxpayers money as sponsors.

 

The company is owned by the Scottish Parliament but is run as a Private Ltd Company and I believe the taxpayers money that went into saving the company and the airports has been recovered long since. This company operates in the black and is making decent profits. Bearing in mind that advertising generates income I dont think the parliament would object to some of the profits being used for such purposes. Besides advertising budgets are tax deductable so it would mean a little less going to the UK treasury.

 

From hial.co.uk:

Highland and Islands Airports Limited (HIAL) is a public corporation wholly owned by the Scottish Ministers. The company operates and manages 11 Airports at Barra, Benbecula, Campbeltown, Dundee, Islay, Inverness, Kirkwall, Stornoway, Sumburgh, Tiree and Wick. HIAL's airports are vital to the social and economic welfare of the areas they serve, but are loss making, and are supported by subsidies from the Scottish Government in accordance with Section 34 of the Civil Aviation Act 1982.

 

 

 

 

A bit test of Hughes's management skills. A wee bit pessimistic myself.

Think 6 points out of 9 makes this a decent week for us no?  

Ask me that question again after the next three games.

Kingsmills I'm obviously a half full glass kinda girl whilst you're a glass half empty guy ha ha? Top 6 almost confirmed and agreed a big couple of weeks to come. Bring it on!

 

Not quite girl. We need 4 wins and a draw to be sure of that.

 

If we win against Hibs, we need one more point to guarantee top six.

Yo Sushi! or Wagamama.

Maybe if they merged, we could have Yo Mama!

The Northern lights of Old Aberdeen

Mean S**** F*** A** to me

The Northern lights have long gone out

'cos it's not '83

Pause -------------- What were the chants about Brittains wife ?

She's signed a PCA with Iain Vigurs?

spoke to John Hughes himself and he said there is only one change for tomorrow's game, wouldnt tell me what it was though

A different team :-q

Don't park your car in Morrison's car park without a ticket

But it's nearly two miles from McDiarmid Park!  Anyway, it's a different game - they don't have gates, and they can FRO.

Is the office open over the weekend? Also please tell me the singi g section isnt already ful :/

If it's anything like the the semi, I just hope there's some space left in the singing/swearing/gesticulating/jumping section.

 

Mr Beaton deserves a stern talking to, but no more than that.

 

Wouldn't you just love to open up on them match officials? 

 

Is that a lemon man popping up from behind the wall?

Looks as though he has closed his account now, not very clever from him.

Yes, I had his tweets page open, left my PC for a half-hour, and it was gone when I came back.  Either someone's had a word, or the account's been suspended.

Devine wasn't the right sub.  Goal difference won't count at the end.  If you're behind in a cup semi, throw everything at getting an equaliser.

You started off so well with the team selection, but you've just gone downhill since then.  :-(  :-)

Really don't see what the ref has done wrong . Don't see Aberdeen having any problem with either of the teams in the final.

I know I'm replying to you with an 11 hour delay George, but F*** right off, and please post a picture and your address.

 

To steal one of Charlies titles...................

 

http://caleythistleonline.com/page/index.html/_/reports-2013-14/hearts-v-invernessct-semi-final-r1123

 

Fantastic achievement :notworthy: :clapoverhead:

Not a steal at all! I am more than happy to donate it.  (Come to think of it, the title was Dougie McGilvray's idea anyway!)

 

I've just come up with a new word: "plagiarism".  :-p

Edited because: Added tongue-in cheek smiley for FS.

Ok very early days but we've got a wee conundrum with both Warren AND Meekings ruled out for the final. So, on the premiss of everyone being available what would we go for?

 

- Brill -

Raven - Devine -  Tremarco - Shinnie

 

Draper - Tansey

 

Watkins - Foran - Doran

 

- Mckay -

Side note: was that you shuffling along row J - around 80s-90s?

 

 

What was the Meekings red card for?  Did he injure anyone?  Did he stop a goalscoring opportunity?  Threw a leg out.  Gave Hearts a bit of a respite to time-waste and no-one struggled to carry on?  Stupid, yes. But that's a yellow card.  Plenty of worse tackles.

I think they call it serious foul play

 

 

Serious foul play is that cheat John Beaton thinking he is actually a referee

 

Looking at it from behind (and left of) the goal, I said "he's off" immediately.  A few others around me knew it too.  I don't know exactly what he saw, but in this case, from his angle, we thought he reasonably thought it was a red card (I reserve the right to change my opinion once I've seen it on TV).  I still think that Beaton, and to a lesser degree, the far side assistant, were a wee bit pish.

 

...

Clarke won't be the only one in the next few weeks.  I don't fancy AVB's chances after today's result!

He's gone too

 

I think AVB knew he was going when he did this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Sv4Yrvsge0

 

You forgot them lot OTB ... Brewster played for County

 

 

Indeed, although I actually left them out deliberately because none of their former players have gone on to manage ICT (as he went their after his 2nd spell with us).

 

Nah, you're right Yngwie - the way you phrased the question means you can leave as many as you like out.

 

Here's a post from P&B from a Falkirk fan about Hughes.  This was made at the time he was manager, it isn't hindsight.

 

I have mixed feelings.

There's no denying he's done remarkably well to get us where we are just now, we don't play a boring long ball game (but more on that later) and have a good squad of great young players (Barr, Scobie, Cregg, Craig and Finnegan to name a few).

However, he has several bad points.

He has a streak of pride that I believe seriously prohibits players signing for us. We've seen players be benched, dropped and never play for us again after (allegedly) falling out with the manager, we've all heard the rumours and McBreen, McKenzie, Tiago and O'Donnell. Similarly, his "pals" seem to get a game every week regardless of form or fitness (Latapy, O'Neill and Kernaghan when they were here). It can't be good for players looking for a club to see things like this happening.

His record on signing strikers is very, very poor. True, we've seen Duffy and Stokes (and Thomson and McBreen both did a job) but we've also seen Lee, McMenamin, Xsausa, Barret, Stewart, Moutinho, Gow - who, despite a couple of them being good players, are not prolific goalscorers. Which brings me nicely to...

...We have no Plan B. Sure, we play passing football, but we are much the same as Arsenal (without the ability, obviously) in that we try to score the perfect goal all the time. We can't vary our style of play to counter teams who have learned to block us out, and that's why we can't beat teams like Aberdeen, Motherwell, Kilmarnock or St Mirren on a regular (if at all) basis. Also...

...We don't actually play good football all that often. Even in the season we steamrollered the first division, we were only brilliant up until the transfer window - then in came Kernaghan and we amazingly went to a back 5 of James (or Sharp), Hughes and Kernaghan, and played the most boring long-ball football I've ever seen. Which I wouldn't have minded had we the players in midfield or attack to deal with it! In our first season in the SPL, we took 4 points out of a possible 48 or something like that in one horrible spell. Even last season, after Stokes had left the football wasn't particularly pretty to watch - but then neither is most of the SPL.

Has he done well? Undoubtedly. Can he take us further? Remains to be seen.

 

Chris - it's from 6 ­1/2 years ago!  It may not have been hindsight, but it is now!

Thanks Don!  I thought about searching this thread out earlier (I didn't actually join CTO until a few weeks later) but Mr Glenlivet from Costco said "too much concentration required", so I'm glad you dug it out.

John Hughes is not Paul Hartley, and that alone is colouring the opinions of many.  Also colouring opinions is a perceived bad management record for Yogi.  What we need is a statto to show us what I believe to be the case: that Yogi's record is actually better than Butcher's.

Don't forget that he was sacked at Hartlepool for doing exactly what Butcher did in Inverness: failing to halt a slide to relegation initiated by someone else.  During the relevant half seasons -

    Hughes:  Won a Manager of the Month award.

    Butcher:  Selected Michael Fraser ahead of Ryan Esson from Falkirk (4-0 ICT) onward, in the season we were relegated by a goal.  Don't forget who managed the team that just stayed up either.

Yes, I'll be giving Yogi my full backing and belief, even if he wasn't my favourite, but he was in my top five.

PS - If Yogi's not announced at 11:00 tomorrow, I'll delete this post and deny all knowledge.