Kingsmills

Sounds like we only just got away with it. Brewster must learn that we are in no position to take any team lightly. The bonus is that with Hibs and Hearts being knocked out we will now be one of the 8 seeded teams in the last 16 draw.

A management team of Ian Polwarth and Billy Skinner. Appropriate material for a Caley Thistle forum !

No great surprise. He didn't fir Brewster's template for an SPL player.

I'm a little worried that we might be taking Arbroath a little too lightly.

The Olympic Associatio are quite capable of being flexible. Hong Kong, which is not a sovereign nation, competed in the Recent Olympics under their own distict banner.

So Eastbourne Borough would have been a step up for him then !

The damage was done in the home leg.

I see a player by the name of Smart scored for Eastbourne Borough in the Conference on Monday. Would that be Alan Smart by any chance ?

The not unexpected annual loss, approaching half a million pounds makes it all the more essential that a number of the issues reflected in this thread, particularly the lack of communication, are addressed sooner rather than later. We don't want the club ending up in the situation it was a decade or so ago struggling to servive a large burden of debt to the prejudice of the football operation.

Good start but they need to score at least one more to progress.

Broadly whatI expected. One year of such losses, after two successive years of substantial profit, is not a disaster but we cannot afford to let this become a trend. It was a number of successive annual losses of about this magnitude that almost forced the club into administration before as a result of the strain of trying to service a debt aproaching three million pounds before that liability was spirited away into the stadium trust. Our wage bill, Marius apart, is the highest it's ever been. The club need to be maximising all income streams which is all the more reason for more professionalism and greater openess at boardroom level.

We still don't have a single experienced forward but, having said that, it's difficult to see who would be available within our budget. We do have two or three young forwards with obvious potential so there may be merit bolstering the defence with Dods or someone similar and seeing how the youngsters up front perform at least until the January window.

No he means the proper cup. You know the Scottish FA Cup that's so popular that it's about to enter it's second season without a sponsor.

Monday could be quite interesting then.

As far as I understand it the Setanta Deal doesn't pay by the match so ICT will not suffer financially by not featuring.

Despite the fact that we've been an SPL side now for 5 years, the commercial/PR side of the operation seems often to be still hovering mid way between the Highland League and the Third Division. I had the impression that that side of things were being improved under the Chairmanship of Mr Savage but that his commendable efforts to improve things were being frustrated by those with a different and less positive agenda as demonstrated by the laughable efforts to put some positive spin on the unsavoury nature of his parting from the club. I nothing is done to improve things then I agree with Caley D that it will not simply be a matter of stagnation but that we will begin to go backwards perhaps even more rapidly than we progressed in the first place. We'd all hate to see that so hopefully someone with influence at the club will take notice and begin to take the appropriate action before it's too late.

Interesting replies. I missed the Hamilton game, thank god, but have seem some encouraging and entertaining football against Aberdeen, Liverpool's fourth string and, at times during the first half, yesterday against Hibs. Nevertheless, I share the underlying dissatisfaction with the style of football we are playing especially at home. The TCS has one of the best and widest playing surfaces in the country crying out to be exploited by expansive creative football but Brewster seems intent, even against opposition like Hamilton, in continuing to deploy negative counter attacking tactics. I suspect that if we were utilising the park like we did in the days of Steve Paterson crowds would be at least 1,000 more on average even at the extortionate prices now being charged. Although cost may remain the biggest factor. I'm relatively comfortably off but still find it difficult to justify to Mrs Kingsmills paying well over ?100 to take my two sons from Aberdeenshire to watch the football when the four of us can go the the cinema, sit in the warm and get some gurantee of entertainment for a fifth of that. The club have to recognise that, more than ever now, they have to provide value for money or this trend will only accelerate. Even as things stand, we will need to embark on the sort of Cup run we've not enjoyed for a number of seasons now if the loss of gate revenue is not going to be reflected in a six figure hole in the profit and loss account.

I agree, we're not good enough to be able to treat Arbroath Lightly.

Last week we had a very disappointing crowd against Hamilton for the first home match of the season especially considering our great start away at Pittodrie. This week, on a pleasant August afternoon, we can only muster just over 4,000 against Hibs, far and away our lowest ever SPL gate in Inverness against the Hibees. I know that season ticket sales are well down on previous SPL seasons despite slightly improved marketing but it seems a worrying trend is appearing. Since we moved back to the Longman our average crowds have hovered about the 5,000 mark. This year it could be 5 or 6 hundred less which would equate to a drop in income of around ?200,000 in the course of the season at a time when, Marius apart, our wage bill is the highest in the club's history. Is the novelty of SPL football in Inverness waning ? is it the recession ? or is it dissatisfaction with poor results and negative, uninspired football even at home ?

I think that's right. The new one will be cheaper to reproduce on merchandise etc.

To be fair to Brewster, he's made it clear for some time that he would like to sign another defender if he can get someone of the right quality at the right price. It appears that the man we had on trial was a Colombian by the name of Enrique Pla who had been playing in the Venezualan Premier Liga. It seems we're casting our net far and wide these days !

No great surprise really. The clue is in the suffix XI after the word Liverpool. A bit of a throwback to the Highland League days when Thistle and Caley both regularly faced Old Firm XIs in friendlies.

The signing seems to have been confirmed.

Early days but the most worrying thing is that man for man we've probably got more skill than Hamilton, we've undoubtably got more experience but they seemed much more committed to the cause. We've got to recapture the team spirit from our early seasons in the SPL if we want to avoid being sucked into a relegation dogfight.

Good luck to Queen of the South tonight in their first foray into European football. Tonight's match at New Broomfield appears to be on following a pitch inspection. I've lonng had a bit of a soft spot for the Doonhamers and it would be great to see them make progress against one of our pre season opponents.