Kingsmills

Thanks for the updates. Nice to have a spot of good news today.

I know and appreciate how thorough and accurate you usually are but you seem to have slipped up this time. You appear to have omitted the experienced forward(s). Surely we can't have let yet another transfer window pass without recruiting at least one.......

I can't think of a more disappointing transfer window .At the beginning we lost Shiinnie and Watkins and, at the end we have parted with the best young player ever to come through our ranks and possibly the most promising young midfielder in the league without recruiting the proven goal scorer, or at least experienced striker we have been so clearly needing since January. A poor show even by our standards. Can someone please have a word in the manager's ear and tell him that, unlike experienced forwards and a reliable left back, we have plenty of attacking midfielders and our own young forwards short of first team goals and play time. Please stop wasting our limited budget by recruiting more of what we already have.

Firstly congratulations to Ryan on securing a four year contract playing for the team he supports at more than ten times his rumoured salary. Nobody can blame the lad for accepting that. Secondly, thanks to him for his contribution to our recent unprecedented success and his role in creating those very special Hampden memories for us all. As far as the club is concerned, £600,000 and the player back for at least half a season is probably the best that could be negotiated from the position we found ourselves in. I am assuming we have been prudent enough to negotiate additional payments based on first team appearances and a full international call up as well as at least 20% of any future transfer fee. That said, we should never have found ourselves in this position. We have lost the best player we have ever produced for well under a million pounds. It was clear two years ago that Ryan was a very special talent. Prudence and caution are, of course, desirable but it was over cautious in the extreme to offer the 17 year old Ryan only a two year contract even if it was going to cost the club an extra few hundred pounds a week. I have little doubt that we could have secured Ryan for at least another season and probably two. For an extra forty grand or so in salary we could almost certainly have banked at least another million pounds. No use crying too much over spilt milk as far as Ryan is concerned but a lesson we must learn for the future.

One way of getting round that would be to enter into a deferred purchase agreement with Celtic with Celtic contracting to buy Ryan in January but with the bulk of the purchase price paid now by way of deposit. That way he would, until he moves be our player albeit with Celtic having the right to him later but he would not technically be on loan so Celtic could then lend us another player as part of the arrangement.

I suspect, as far as ICT is concerned, that very soon he will be his storey

Perhaps the most depressing aspect of this thread is that it was started back in January yet now, as we are on the cusp of September, the matter of a replacement striker appears no closer to being resolved.

Frustrating that, like Billy McKay before him, the boy quite properly gets into his national squad while Gordon Strachan's eyesight is too poor for him to see this far North.

It does.

Trouble is he may not want to join that entirely different club.....

Yogi is a likeable character but PR is not his strong point. Nor, for that matter, appears to be player recruitment.

There's not really any better alternative to what we're doing though unless Ryan was to sign a new contract with us. If we kept Ryan until January because no club met his asking price in this window, he would sign a PCA as you say and leave for nothing next summer. The other option would be to hope that a club was willing to pay £1 million, or whatever you deem to be his true worth, in this window - which might not happen. That's a pretty big risk to take; cash up front and a loan back until the end of the season is the best option for us. However, it could be argued that the board should have got him tied up on a long-term deal much sooner which I certainly agree with. Ryan is contracted to us till 2017 due to having a year's option on his existing contract so would not have left for nothing next summer The trouble is he's not contracted to us until 2017. The 'year's option' thing is something the club announce quite regularly when announcing new contracts but is utterly misleading. Unless the club have a commitment in the original contract to keep and pay the player for that extra year then the club cannot commit the player to that additional year no matter what the original contract states. Basic employment law. It means nothing and I wish our club would stop doing it. If we wanted to tie Ryan down for three years we should and could have offered him at least a three year contract to begin with. It's what the Likes of Dundee United and Hamilton do an benefit from it to the tune of millions of pounds. High time we learned our lesson so that we don't lose our next outstanding youngster for a few hundred thousand pounds. If we had given Ryan a proper and enforceable three year contract at the time we would almost certainly be looking at a fee that would guarantee keeping us in the black for four seasons.

I am not entirely convinced CB represents the solution to our goal scoring problem.

Quite happy to offer to drive Stevie May from Sheffield to Inverness myself.

We can't complain. Away from home and hardly a money spinner but gives us a good chance of progressing which is the main thing. Would be nice to have a forward on board by then.

I sincerely hope not.....

Might be prudent to wait until the story appears in a newspaper before giving any weight to it.

Quite fancy a cup Highland derby.

No reason to rule him out now if he's willing to come within budget. Would far rather have him as a player than his old man as a manager.

Thanks. I don't use the bus myself but do appreciate and understand the hard and sometimes thankless work that the organisers do to try to provide convenient and as affordable as possible transport to away games. Well done all of you.

He would, however, grow his bank balance...

I don't see negativity just justified concern about a poor start to the season and a concerning recruitment policy. Expressing such concern in moderate terms while still attending matches and supporting the team certainly doesn't make one a 'happy clapper' but neither does it render those of us who have supported the team through thick and thin 'fair weather fans'.

Not sure that the fault should be laid at the feet of the board. Funds were available which the manager chose to spend on recruiting a number of midfielders, an area we were relatively well covered for already but did not recruit a single strikers when it's been obvious for months that we need at least one and preferably two.

Ah, what might have been if only we had a scorer.....

Well deserved but will he still be an ICT player by then ?