DoofersDad

I would doubt there would be a clause in his contract which allowed the club to relieve Butcher of his contract so early without compensation in the event of relegation. To sack him and Malpas now will not only cost money which is needed on players but will require a search for a new manager to pick up the poisoned chalice. The irony here is that the type of manager they need in the situation they are in is exactly the type of manager Butcher is. That is someone who can bring in underachieving players on the cheap and realise their potential as part of a team that complement each other's strengths. He did that well here and our drop in form since he left is perhaps a testament to just how good he was at that. At Hibs he has not had a chance to do what he is good at. Appointing Butcher could well have signalled a recognition from Petrie that unless you are a very rich club, you cannot buy success, you have to build it. He would have considered Butcher as a long term appointment. There was always going to be a big clear out of players at Easter Road for Butcher to develop his team with his players. Neither Petrie nor Butcher would have expected relegation but Butcher was always on a hiding to nothing for the rest of this season, after all, if you make it crystal clear that there will be big changes to the playing staff you can hardly expect the players to be particularly motivated. If Petrie can keep faith with Butcher I can see relegation being almost a blessing in disguise for the club. Rebuilding a team rarely brings instant success but you can be sure that had Hibs stayed up there would have been an expectation for Hibs to be top six at least next year with failure to achieve that putting pressure on his position. Down a level gives a better opportunity to rebuild over time. With Both Rangers and Hearts in the mix, not winning promotion next season would not be a disaster but yet after 2 seasons in the championship, Butcher should have been able to produce a strong team that will be a real force in the top flight the following year. Butcher would have that advantage that players are more likely to want to move to Edinburgh than to Inverness and the club will be able to pay more to attract and keep the players Butcher wants. If he can repeat what he has done here but with the added bonus of being able to attract better players, then Hibs could be a pretty formidable team in a couple of years time. The question is whether Petrie has the guts and the patience to give Butcher the chance to do what it was he originally hired him for, or will he take the coward's way out and use Butcher as the scapegoat to appease the anger of the fans.

With The Rangers, Hearts and now Hibs all moving into the Championship there should be some pretty decent gates in that division next season. This will be not just for games between the big three, but clubs such as QOS and Cowdenbeath will find the season a real money spinner. The top flight will be without 3 big clubs and that will impact on the average gates, in fact there may not be a lot between the average gates in the 2 divisions. Whilst money continues to talk in the football world in general, it has been a good year for the smaller clubs in Scotland. We had another top 6 finish, County survived another season in the top flight, St J won the Scottish cup for the first time in their long history, Cowdenbeath prevailed over Dunfermline in the League one play off and today Hamilton saw off the once mighty Hibs. I can't help but think that this must be really good for the game in Scotland. As for Butcher, I know he only has himself to blame but all this vindictive gloating is really in rather poor taste given all he did for our club. However, I'm not averse to a bit of bad taste myself from time to time - so Relegation Terry?

2 vouchers. £1 of any footlong and a free 6" sub when you buy any one 6" sub and a 16oz drink.

Only 2 County fans asked but they are 39% undecided . Perhaps one of the poor souls was unsure whether he was undecided or not.

To be fair to Lennon, he has been on the recieving end of some horendous sectarian abuse since he has been Celtic's manager. I'm actually surprised he stayed so long and has maybe made a sensible decision to get out now before there is any danger of Celtic having a match against the third best team in Glasgow and all the vileness that game will attact. He's maybe putting his family before football and if so then good luck to him.

Tie is far from over. By all accounts Hibs were still pretty poor last night nut got the breaks in front of goals. Hibs will know that to fail now having got the 2 goal cushion would be even more embarrassing than had they lost the tie following a first leg Hamilton win. If Hamilton can score first Hibs will be as nervous as hell. Hamilton have it all to play for and can take confidence into the game in that they are the better footballing side and yet are now the underdogs. Hibs will adopt spoiling tactics and Hamilton will need to be patient but I can see this one going to the wire.

I refuse to bow to the Neil Doncaster regime. It will forever be the Division's 1,2 and 3 for me. Should that not be divisions 2,3 and 4? Making reference to the lower leagues. Premier League, Division 1, Division 2 and Division 3 to clarify I gathered that, but my point is that the premiership should really be division 1 with the others 2, 3 and 4. I don't see the point of accepting the top division being called the premier league or whatever and the 2nd tier being called the first division, but then objecting to the 2nd tier also having some contrived name and calling the 3rd tier the first division. The records show that The Rangers are the First Division champions this year and that the original Rangers also won the First Division in the dats before all this premiership nonsense. The records shows the same thing but they are in reality 2 quite separate things. It just causes confusion. First should mean first and not third.

I refuse to bow to the Neil Doncaster regime. It will forever be the Division's 1,2 and 3 for me. Should that not be divisions 2,3 and 4?

There have been suggestions that he was not keen on Yogi's style of play and certainly he has not been the same commanding presence in some games in the latter part of the season. However, signing a 3 year deal would suggest that if he did have any problems with the management change, they have been resolved and he is happy with the plans on the playing side of things. Not only has Gary been superb in the heart of the defence since he arrived here, he has also scored some cracking goals from set peices. He's a very important player for us so this is particularly good news for more than one reason. Personally I wouldn't be surprised if he is made captain next season. I'm not convinced Foran will get a regular place back and if Shinnie does not extend his contract then Warren is the obvious choice - TBH I think he's the obvious choice even if Shinnie does extend his contract.

I believe it's the first time the letter "J" has appeared on the trophy. Got me thinking - how on earth would they fit our name on? Wel'll maybe find out next year!

Better than the other way round. At least Vernon would be able to see what's happening. If wee Billy was sitting behind Vernon he wouldn't be able to see a thing.

I would agree with Tob, I can't recall seeing so many empty seats in the body of the main stand as there were on Sunday. There were never over 3,000 folk there. With reference to CaleyD's point, my earlier post identified that last season the attendences went up for the 2nd matches for 5 of the 7 teams we played twice at home. I've only looked at the figures for ICT and only for these two seasons so it may have been that last season was bucking the trend due to us having a very good season and challenging for top three for the first time. According to the official figures, the St Johnstone gate for the 2nd game this season fell by less than the average - just 134 down on the first match compared with the average of 498. Hibs was the biggest drop - the attraction of an away day with Terry and Mo is obviously less appealing these days.

I don't know if the Chairman's comments in the P&J were from a statement or an off the cuff answer to a question a journalist posed. I would suspect the later because as CaleyD says there is nothing to be gained from deliberately misleading folk. But that doesn't alter the fact that his statement would appear to be wrong. Against the 7 sides we have played twice at home this season the average gate for the 2nd game dropped from 3,655 to 3,157. That is a drop of 498 per game on average. Kenny should have the figures for home and away support but I would be very surprised if a reduced away support accounted for that level of drop in attendance.

The only difference between this season and last was that County were top six last season as well. I don't know that any team played post split matches against both us and County but it won't have been been more than one and any impact on the overall figures from fans not wanting to go to both games would be pretty minimal. In any case, the impact would have been to reduce last year's 2nd half of the season attendances when it is this season's that have dropped off.

I don't get why people point to us being a small club with limited finances and say that therefore it is unrealistic to have an expectation of finishing in the top six next season. Yes we are a small club with limited resources and it is unrealistic to expect that we should be top six every season, but we are talking about next season. This season we finished 5th with our highest top 6 points total. All the first team squad are signed up till the end of next season and this continuity should give us a realistic expectation that that we will do even better next year. Not to match this year's points total would represent relative failure unless things are hijacked by other clubs suddenly getting resource to buy success. Celtic will win, Aberdeen and Dundee Utd will be strong and I would expect them to be top 3. Motherwell have done very well to finish 2nd again this year but I think it should be between us and them for 4th. That is a reasonable expectation. I hope we might be able to get top 3 but I predict we will be 6th or 7th.

I can't compete with RiG's graphics but I have done a bit of number crunching in order to compare like with like with attendances for the last two seasons. Looking at the figures for the 10 other teams which were all in the top division both seasons, the average gate for our home game in the first half of the season was 3,980 last season and 3,925 this season - a drop of just 1.4% Looking at the attendances only of the clubs we played a 2nd (or in Dundee Utd's case last year, a third) home match against, our average gate for the 1st match last season was 4,220 and the average gate for the 2nd (and for Utd using an average of their 2) matches was 4,337. That represents an increase in gates for the 2nd half of last season of 3% This season the average for the 1st matches for the clubs we played a 2nd home match against was 3,655 and the average for the 2nd matches was 3,157. That represents a drop in gates for the 2nd half of this season of 13.6% Looking specifically at the 4 clubs we have have played at least 2 home matches against in both seasons (Aberdeen, Dundee Utd, Motherwell and St Johnstone) the average gate for the first match last season was 3,417 and for the second match (again using an average of utd's 2) was 3,977. That represents an increase in the 2nd half of the season of 16.5% This season the 1st matches against those 4 teams average 3,519. This is an increase of 3% on the previous year. The average for the 2nd round of matches was 3,285 - a drop of 6.6% on the first round of matches and 17.4% less that the 2nd round of matches against those 4 clubs last year. Of course, there will be specific reasons for sepecific matches but in general, comparing like with like in this way allows for a reasonable comparrison. A specific match can still skew an average so it is also worth looking at whether the attendances against clubs where we played 2 or more home matches were up or down for the 2nd game. In both seasons there were 7 teams we played at home twice. Last season the attendance for the 2nd match was higher for 5 teams and lower for 2. This year it was only higher for the Dundee Utd fixture - For the othe 6 teams there was a lower attendance for the 2nd game. I think it is clear from this that comparing like with like, there has been a significant downturn in attendances in the 2nd half of this season. Those are the facts. Make of them what you will.

Personally I pay very little attention to sponsors logos on shirts other than to register how they invariably ruin the look. The only one I've ever really liked was Lifescan's "One touch" logo because the brand name of their product reflected the style of football I would like to see. I've always thought Subway to be a particularly unappealing brand and the appearance of their premises certainly don't persuade me to darken their doors. Mind you, unappealing premises, but good honest unpretentious fare on offer suggests there might be a natural partnership here. Good on Subway for coming up with the money - I just might give them a try to say "thanks".

Adams is looking to buy him at a knock down price

Now that's sorted I'll go and get my seasoning ticket - although it looks as if we'll have to manage without the Pepper.

England - because I'm English!

The semi-final win was rather special and the final was a good occasion but I rather enjoyed the 3-0 drubbing of County at Dingwall. Following the initial abandonment of the game there was a very lengthy delay before the game was replayed and coming into it our form was not great and County were improving. On the day, we outplayed them in every department and with Motherwell losing heavily in Perth it looked as though we were back on track for a top 3 finish. We still had the league cup final to come and a Scottish Cup quarter final against Dundee Utd. There was a lot to feel good about after that performance - shame it didn't last.

So whether you agree with me or not is based on whether you think I know what I'm talking about and not on whether what I actually say is consistent with your thinking! I'm flattered! Just for clarity I can confirm that I haven't a clue what I'm talking about and my family and pyschiatrist can confirm that. But you are way wrong if you think I am one of the anti Hughes people looking for any scrap to have a go. Quite the opposite, I very much want Hughes to succeed but unfortunatey I am having to look for scraps to convince me that he might. In essence, what I was saying in my post was that I really don't know what style of football Hughes is trying to achieve but I like what I saw in the 2nd half yesterday.

Sorry but do you not remember his last game as our manager? Do you mean the last game when he was employed as our manager or the last one when he was actually doing his job in the dug out?

How would publicly knowing the numbers (presuming they're down) help you know the actual reasons for non renewal? You could just as well guess the reasons knowing the numbers or not. Unless they publicly released contact details for those not renewing so we could all give them a ring and ask. There's two points here. My original comment was in response to conjecture around poor sales and I was simply making the point that unless info on sales is made public there is little point having that conjecture. Any idividual can post the reasons for them buying / not buying a season ticket but having that debate in the context of known sales data would allow the thread to explore the reasons behind the facts rather than simply dabbling in speculation. Quite separate is the issue for the club. Whether they release the data or not, the club will know whether sales are up or down and that will influence what steps they decide to take to find out why folk either do or do not buy a season ticket. It would be perfectly reasonable for the club to give folk a ring to find out their views.