DoofersDad

I appreciate USH is very expensive to run so can I suggest 2 further alternatives in order to avoid this type of farce and inconvenience to travelling supporters and teams? Firstly, the Board should hold a meeting on the pitch. The hot air generated should thaw the ground in no time. Secondly, they could invest in some insulating covering for the pitch. This should be easy to acheive as they seem to be good at cover ups.

Fair comment above about improved home form. We have also tightened up defensively with only 2 goals conceded in the last 6 league games. We are the form team at the moment with 14 pooints from those 6 games. There's no reason why we can't win this league!

But our away form is better than our home form. 22 pts from 12 games away compared with 15 from 10 at home. We need to give the team the support at home that they get away.

I would have thought there should be scope for signing promising youngsters and getting them out on loan to Highland League clubs. This would suit both clubs and the lads themselves. Whilst being associated with the first team squad would be a great experience for them, what the lads will really want to be doing is playing regular competeive football. If we don't sign them up then they will get opportunities at some level or other and any who develop and show real promise are going to get snapped up by someone else. What a waste to nurture good players through the early teens only to hand them over to our opponents as soon as they mature. There seems to be no prospect that we will ever be a rich club that can buy success so we need to do all we can to develop and give opportunities to local lads who have ambition to play for their local team. Nurturing local talent should be a priority for the Board.

No. He was on the bench but didn't come on.

I'd agree with you again. Cox must be injured if he wasn't on the bench today. I'm afraid it's far too much to hope that the club would put news of the team on the website.

Well said, Captain. I am one who has been very critical of Butcher but I've never called for him to go. New managers need time to shape the team their way and to prove themselves and he now seems to be producing increasingly solid performances from the team. I'm still concerned over his judgement on certain players and the players who are now doing well were not his first choice at the beginning of the season. Remember that someone called Barrowman, I think his name was, was preferred to Rooney at the start of the season, Stratford was preferred to Proctor and just about everybody else, and he thought Lionel was a better left back than Richard Hastings (and probably still does). He seems to have arrived at a good team by trial and error rather than by good judgement but nevertheless, the performances and the results are coming despite the lack of resource . To lose him now would not be clever. My guess is that he will not be wanting to stay but the Board should try to retain the services of Terry and June now. The side is far better than at the start of the season so even if we don't bounce straight back (and we just might) we need consistency in the management team to secure as many of the players for next season when we should then be well placed to return to the SPL. Sentimentality about former managers cuts no ice with me - if they were good enough to get us back into the SPL they'd be doing the business for someone else at the moment.

[Perhaps the trust could organise a Toga party

No you weren't. Tokely did well enough on the left but that was because 'well were very poor on the day. A good player on the right will cause him serious problems. However, there's not too many options, I would at least have Shinnie on the bench and bring him on at some stage if the state of the game and performances of others allows.

Who's Andy Barrowman?

Yes, Poland and Ukraine

I find it strange that Butcher has any time for Lionel at all. Butcher himself was a superb and committed defender, always attacked the ball, never messed around with the ball and always got back into position quickly. You would think he would value defenders who demonstrate the no nonsense approach he demonstrated and so you would think he would take one look at Lionel and say there is no way he is going near the back four. It is totally beyond me how Butcher rated Lionel higher than Hastings. Whilst the 3rd goal was a shocking error, you could possibly put that down to a simple lack of awareness of where the Killie player was, but what I found more disappointing was the first goal. After completely mishitting a clearance he just stood and watched what unfolded after. That is simply unforgivable. The higlights reply shows him slowly ambling back into the box. Having made the error he should have quickly got back into position when he would have been in a position to mop up the mess he created. Someone else said earlier that Munro plays worse when Lionel is playing and that is spot on. He can have no confidence if he has to keep covering and get himself caught out of position.

Quite what you're arguing here is beyond me. BARROWMAN NEVER GOT CHANCES!!!! What part of that is difficult to comprehend?! All of it, to be honest. What do you mean by the fact that he never never got chances? If you mean he never got in the team, then clearly you are wrong - he played 41 matches. That's 41 chances. If you mean he didn't have any scoring opportunities then just whose fault do you think that was? Strikers have to be in the right pace at the right time, they have to react quickly to where the ball is going, they have to work to make the space for a shot and then they have to be incisive in deciding when to shoot. If Barrowman never got chances to shoot then perhaps its because he wasn't very good at these basic strikers skills. Rooney is far from the finished article but he creates openings by his awareness and hard work. Take yesterday as an example. Early in the first half he had a shot blocked by the keeper after muscling his way past 2 defenders who should have dealt with the threat comfortably. In the same situation Barrowman would simply have given up and there would not even have been a sniff of a chance. How about focussing your comments on players who are still here. I agree with you that Shinnie should be given a chance.

Back on subject. Well said! From the brief highlights on TV it was clear this was a decent effort. With the rub of the green and a different left back the result could well have gone the other way. The league is the main business and there's no reason why we can't still make a serious challenge.

That's not a strike rate. Strike rate is number of goals scored from shots taken. I'd put money on Rooney having one of the worst goals from shots ratio in the country, never mind the league. So if a striker decides he will only shoot when he gets into a position where he has an open goal from 6 inches and can't miss and as a result only has one shot all season from which he scores, then by your reasoning he will have a strike rate of 100% and be the greatest striker in the world. Get real!

To be fair to Barrowman, he was hardly ever played. When he was played, he was either played out of position or didn't receive the service he needs. Rooney appears to be Butchers favoured striker - but why? I'd be embarrassed of his strike ratio. Rooney contributes a lot to the team apart from his goal scoring. He works really hard, pressures defenders, holds the ball well and lays balls off well. He does all of that better than Barrowman. As for strike rate, from the stats in the last programme I bought (the Motherwell game) Rooney had scored 17 from 63 appearences 39 of which had been as sub. Barrowman scored 3 in 41 appearences of which 24 were as sub. Not only is Rooneys strike rate about 4 times better than Barrowman's, a slightly greater proportion of Rooney's starts have been from the bench. Barrowman's strike rate of 3 in 41 games is only half that of Bulvitis and far worse than Foran and Sanchez. Unfortunately, the facts are that he was a disaster as far as ICT are concerned. The one thing I will agree with you on is that when he played he was out of position - he was on the park when he should have been off it.

County win 9-0 and we lose 3-0. Sounds really bad. But looking up the match stats on the beeb it seems we were unlucky and county just had one of those days. We had 51% of posession and more attempts on goal. Reports suggest that 3-0 very much flattered Killie. County and Stirling had 7 corners each and County only had 12 attempts on goal. Scoring 9 times from 12 attempts is pretty phenomenal and suggests the Albion keeper probably wasn't MOTM. It seems that the County strikers feel they have to prove themselves now that Barrowman is back and challenging for a place - or do they feel they can relax as a starting place is now guaranteed!

Could be bad for Dougie. Killie, St Mirren and Falkirk all winning tonight means it could be SFL football for him next year. We'll give him a wave on the way past.

He's a striker and scoring goals is a confidence thing. He had no confidence here and nothing was done to boost his confidence hence he got worse and worse. He should have gone out on loan. Back at County things will be different - he will score and more importantly, he will score against us.

The abuse and dissent players and those on the bench give to the officials is one of the things I really dislike about the modern game and there is no excuse for it. Of course the officials make mistakes but don't we all. I am no fan of rugby but at least the officials are treated with respect by the players even when they have got a decision badly wrong. If referees showed a yellow card more often for dissent, awarded free kicks, allowed free kicks to be taken quichly or moved free kicks 10 yards forward then things would soon improve. The players and coaches have no business shouting abuse at the officials - that's our job!

Unbelievable. Have CAF made a ruling about how many members of a squad have to be murdered by terrorists before it is acceptable to withdraw from the competition?

This is bad news. You'll be sorely missed in that role, Caley D. Whatever your views on how the club is managed, they do not impact on your ability to do the announcers role, nor (as far as I am aware) have you ever abused that position to suggest any criticism of the Board on match days. Whether you continue as announcer should be purely based on how you perform in that role It seems the Board are seriously losing the plot here. But if there is a positive in this, it is that Board are clearly aware of the criticisms and are aware of comments on this forum. If the Board have any shred of decency then I challenge them to use this forum to answer the criticisms made.

Whilst this is great news, let's not get carried away. Whether Narius is here for the rest of the season or not we are not going to get promoted nor are we going to get relegated. What matters is to get more players tied in to longer contracts because unless that happens soon relegation to division 2 is a real possibility next season.

I expect we would have got even more bullsh*t from the Board. Seriously though, is there any reason that would have made a difference?

In an article in the P&J today, TB was calling for more of the killer instinct in front of goal. We'll certainly need that if Bully is leaving because if he has gone I fear we will start leaking goals at the back again.