DoofersDad

Sounds like we were too cagey again. To win the match without it going to the penalty lottery we would have had to score twice. It would have made no difference if Astra had scored a goal on the night because 2-2 would have taken us through on away goals. Never mind. On the positive side we remain unbeaten on our travels in Europe and have yet to concede a goal.

Oh how we could have done with Billy in our two matches against Astra! I was interested to read today that Dundee Utd have tried to sign him several times but that their valuation and that of Wigan are "poles apart" according to Caldwell. Presumably Utd have money to spend so it would be interesting to know how much they have offered for Mckay and what Wigan's valuation of him is. Presumably Wigan want a lot more than they paid for him despite the fact that he has yet to score for them!

H-T 0-1 F-T 1-2 ICT Tansey Astra Budescu Time 33 mins

Celtic are not appealing the ban and I think that is very wise. A 6 game ban is really not very much for such a serious offence and any appeal could result in a significantly longer ban. The surprising thing for me in all of this is that Celtic have actually signed the player knowing what he is like. I just hope they don't condone his thuggery like his previous employers did, although I live more in hope than expectation.

Great draw for us and a massive incentive to get through to the next round. Interesting draw for Aberdeen as well. After their superb win in Croatia they must be favourites to progress to the next round where they would face another trip to Eastern Europe, but a very winnable tie. A win in Q3 would take them just one game away from the group stages and that must be quite a realistic prospect for them now. Should Aberdeen get to the group stages that would be really good for the Scottish game (plus it would probably provide a distraction from league business) so let's wish them well in their European venture.

Racist chanting? I think you are mistaken. I heard no racist chanting but I did hear the Astra players referred to as tipsy because they kept falling over as if they were drunk.

Maybe Yogi has good reason to believe Fon Williams is a better keeper than Esson but I think it was a mistake playing him simply because there will not have been enough time for him and the defenders to get to know each other and develop an understanding. There was poor communication between him and the defence on a few occasions and not just at the crucial free kick. A couple of back passes were played to his left as though instinctively the defender thought it was Esson in goal. Not sure that Lopez offers us a great deal upfront. He seems to have good control and has quick feet, but he won little if anything in the air and his movement was limited. He had one good chance but shot tamely straight at the keeper. Hopefully he will show up better when he gets to know the way the team plays a bit more. Good to see Foran back but did he actually touch the ball? The North Stand gave him a great ovation when he came on but at the end he seemed to storm off the park without acknowledging the crowd in the North Stand and with barely a word for opponents or team mates alike. What was that all about? Overall though we were the better side and for a first game of the season against a different style of opponent and with new faces in the side plus a bit of rearrangement to do, it was a pretty decent performance. Astra are no great shakes and we are still very much in the tie. We do need to get at them though in order to create more chances and we need to strike the ball with conviction when the chances do come our way.

HT 1-1 FT 2-1 ICT Tansey Astra Budescu Time 4

Wow! Never saw that one coming!

Apart from the bit about Miliband, that is the usual nonsense we get from the Nationalist left. It is nonsense to suggest the Lib Dems ditched most of their principles when they went into coalition. Of course they made compromises but that is precisely what coalition government is all about! Of course they agreed with things they didn't like but by the same token they blocked things that they liked even less. Those who don't sign up to right wing tory policy should thank them for that instead of vilifying them. One fundamental principle the Lib Dems clearly upheld was a willingness to act in the interests of the country rather than in the interests of the party. That is not something the SNP will understand. The concept that there is little political difference between the Tories and Labour is also nonsense. It is a lie the SNP put around with the "red tories, blue tories" slogan to capitalise on the Tories' unpopularity north of the Border and to imply that only the SNP offer an alternative. The truth is quite different. I recently heard Kezia Dugdale being asked why she appeared to agree with so much SNP policy to which she replied that of course she agreed with a lot of it because it is Labour policy which the SNP have stolen. But back on topic and the antics of the unrepresentative SNP rabble at Westminster. We now hear they are going to vote in the debate about fox hunting in England and Wales. This is just a few short weeks from when they stated they would only vote on devolved issues which impacted financially on Scotland and when they actually used fox hunting as an example of a topic they would not vote on! Sturgeon has defended this u-turn on the basis that the SNP felt they were being ignored in the Scotland Bill debates and so this would remind the Tories that the SNP were there and that the Tories only have a small minority. This is simple spite and so utterly pathetic. It is perhaps an appropriate Bill on which to abandon any last vestige of credibility. The SNP Westminster rabble are themselves like a pack of hounds who have scented independence and are determined to win their prize regardless of all the chaos and disruption they leave in their wake.

5764 in Perth tonight. Surely we can get more than that for our first ever European match!!!

Now signed for Celtic for £1.5m! There is something far wrong in the game when a player like that is sold for that kind of money. It does seem a lot of money for Celtic to pay just to make sure he doesn't kick Brown in the head again. I wonder if Dundee Utd will make better use of the money this time.

Having vilified the Lib Dems for "getting into bed" with the Tories after the previous election, it really is rather pathetic to see the way Labour and the SNP are whingeing about the budget and the fact that the Tories now have free reign to do what the Lib Dems stopped them doing for the last 5 years. But this of course is what the SNP wanted all along - a Tory Government showing a typical Tory lack of compassion. Had the UK election delivered a Labour Government then we would have had a budget which would have been far more appealing to voters who had switched their allegiance from Labour to SNP, and Labour would likely have clawed back a lot of that support for the Holyrood election. As it is, there is anger in Scotland over the budget and the Labour party have little credibility. No wonder Stewart Hosie was smiling when he was stating that the budget would hit the poorest in Society hardest.

One would like to think that the club would be announcing that all tickets had been sold by now. I don't know what more the club can reasonably do. I think the whole of the Highlands is well aware that ICT won the Scottish Cup and will be the first team in the Highlands ever to play in a European competition. By definition, our first ever game in Europe is something which will never happen again and if people aren't motivated yet to buy a ticket then I don't think anything the club can say or do will make any difference. It will be interesting to see what the crowd actually is, but if we can't get close to a full house for this one then you can kiss goodbye to any hope of ever making significant increases to our average gates.

Is that why he moved to the USA?

A very crude comparison would suggest that as England has 10 times the population of Scotland it should have 10 football clubs for every 1 in Scotland. Top tier in Scotland has 12 clubs so it seems reasonable that the 2nd tier could be seen as broadly comparable with the level below the 92 clubs in the football league. I think what we see of Conference (now the "National" league) football and the players who emerge from there bear this out as a reasonable comparison.

Another angle here is the role Brian Rice has taken on when "on holiday". Players warm up before a game to tone up the muscles to avoid injury. If they don't warm up properly then they could sustain an injury either during the warm up or early in the game and that could lead to some awkward liability issues, particularly if a player was injured doing an exercise specifically directed by Rice. Now I appreciate Rice knows what's he's doing and that he would be doing what he's doing nominally under Yogi's supervision, but the fact remains that a club at our level should not have people who are not employees of the club taking training / warm up sessions with the players. I wonder therefore whether Rice has some contract with the club or failing that, what form of approval for his involvement the club has given. Noting also the public criticism Yogi made of the Board in relation to getting trialists up here, one gets the impression that there are some significant tensions behind the scenes. It is all a bit unsettling at the start of what should be a historic season for the club.

One of Butcher's grouses with Hibs is that he was not given the opportunity bring his type of player in. No doubt he will be trying to bring players in quickly to Newport and he will be ruthless in getting rid of those whose faces don't fit. But we also have a link with Newport through Garry Warren and I am sure he would be aware of decent players who become available. His success here would encourage others to come here if the manager was interested in them. On the Foran front there may well be truth in that. I don't know what goes on behind the scenes but if Richie has harboured hopes of an assistant manager role here at some point, they might have been scuppered with Yogi bringing his old mate Brian Rice in. As a player I'm not sure that a fit again Foran will ever be more than a bench warmer here so if he gets an offer from elsewhere he might jump at it. The club would be happy to give him a free transfer and free up his wages

Well, the Women's World Cup is over and we haven't had a thread for it on our football forum. That's a shame, so let me belatedly put it to rights. It is a shame that there is not a higher profile for the women's game because it can be pretty entertaining. There seems to me no reason why women should not be equally able to develop good ball skills or be able to spot a good ball and I am sure as the profile of the game increases and more young girls are inspired to take up the game, even more players with even better skills will emerge. The world cup has produced some really good moments and good goals as illustrated in the link below. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/33398720 Where the game does have a significant difference to the men's game is the relative size of the keepers to the goals. A theme that comes through in the compilation is that when a shot is well placed, the keepers lack both the height and the leaping power to reach the ball. This should, in theory, increase the chances of a shot at goal being successful and therefore should encourage attempts at goal. The smaller stature of the women keepers must be equivalent to increasing the size of the goal in the men's game by about 15cm all round. Another difference has been significantly less foul play and gamesmanship (cheating) than we see in the men's game. And without getting into the England v Scotland thing, England's success in coming 3rd must be good for raising the profile of the women's game throughout the UK. The Women's World Cup has been a breath of fresh air and I look forward to seeing the game continuing to develop.

Would they be allowed to register women as players if they made the highest bid?

I believe he was playing in midfield tonight. Mind you, I have always been of the view that he's better in midfield than at full back.

Where Tansey has not been so great last season is free kicks. I agree with the point about Tansey coping well with the pressure of a penalty but Roberts looks as though he could be an option for free kicks.

Blackened timber. Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Work done in the last year. You didn't source the timber from the Glasgow School of Art by any chance?

I would have liked him to stay although I don't think he would ever have been more that a decent squad player as long as we retain top six status. I understand the desire to develop a career elsewhere but my fear for Nick at Dundee is that he will also be just a squad player there as well. He's a tidy player but rarely offers much drive going forward. He plays the safe ball rather than the risky ball that penetrates. He also seems to lose his composure in front of goal and should have scored more than he has. ICT have had a knack for getting the best out of players but somehow Nick's potential has never been properly realised here. Maybe things will click for him in Dundee - but maybe not. I am sure we will all watch his career with interest.

It's the Americans' use of the word "bathroom" that gets me. They seem to feel it is OK to bomb any oil rich or strategically important poor country whose Government they don't like, but to use the word "toilet" is seen as a bit indelicate. Or is it that at home they don't have toilets and actually use the bath? At least that way (unlike with some of their bombing) they shouldn't miss.