DoofersDad

The Supporters Trust hasn't disappeared, but is alive and kicking. A brief report of the recent AGM was posted in the Supporter's Trust section of this site just a couple of days ago.

The Supporters Trust held their AGM on 13th December with members attending both in person and via Zoom. Chair Jennifer Aitchison reported a very significant and welcome increase in membership with nearly twice as many members than a year ago. I (Peter Mutton) had informed colleagues a while ago that in order to focus on other aspects of my life, I needed to step down from the Board, unfortunately, nobody else has come forward to serve on the Board and there are now only 4 members serving on the Board. In addition to Jennifer, the Board members are Laura Grant, Alison McInnes and John West. Jennifer updated members with the latest work of the Board. The Trust continues to try to work with the the club but with limited success. Earlier in the year we had offered to work with the club in raising money for a roof for the West Stand. Requests for a meeting to discuss options went unanswered. More recently the Club has contacted the Trust with non-negotiable plans for a roof over part of the stand and asked us to be part of a fundraising group. Despite having had no opportunity to input into the plans, the Trust again demonstrated its goodwill by agreeing to help. However, after an initial meeting, it appears to have stalled again with meetings being cancelled at short notice. We are also trying to liaise with the Club on a fairly detailed survey we have been working on about the match day experience. We are awaiting feedback from the Club regarding this. The reach of the survey and therefore the quality of the data will be significantly greater if this is a joint effort with the Club and therefore, the Trust Board very much hopes the Club will engage constructively on this. With or without the Club, the Trust will be launching this important survey in the New Year. At a meeting in September, the CEO told Jen and I that the Club were close to appointing 2 new members to the Board and that the AGM would take place soon after that. It has taken a while, but there are now 2 new Club Directors and therefore we can reasonably expect that the Club will hold an AGM soon. Given concerns about the Club's finances in the light of a number of factors, it is important that the Club Directors update shareholders and supporters at a long overdue AGM. The Supporters Trust will continue to push for this. Given the concerns about the Club's finances, it is more important than ever that the supporters of the Club have a strong voice. The Trust has grown in strength in the past year and it now has a far better infrastructure behind it to support a growing membership. Whilst the membership has almost doubled in the past year, it is important that it continues to grow strongly in order that it can be seen to be properly representative of the wider fan base. But a growing membership and a sound infrastructure counts for nothing if there aren't people to do the work. The Supporters Trust Board can have a maximum of 10 elected members and now there are only 4. They need your help. Jen, Laura, Alison and John have been a pleasure to work with and all are passionate about the future of the football club and the need to get the voice of the supporters better embedded in the working of the club. But they all have a range of work, family and other commitments which restricts the time they can spend on work for the Trust. The Trust urgently needs people to help both on the Board and behind the scenes. You can find out more about the Trust on the website, or, if you are interested in helping out one way or another, you can contact the Trust at [email protected]. All best wishes to everyone for a happy and successful New Year. And here's to some genuine togetherness between club and supporters and to success on the pitch.

Looks like the weakest starting line up for a league game all season. Good luck to the lads, but that line up looks like a damage limitation exercise.

If the club say they "will have no choice", then presumably they will also have no choice the following week (also at Hamilton) unless several players who played against Dundee have miraculously recovered from previously unreported injuries sustained in that game. I do sympathise with the plight the club is in and I would be supportive of bringing in 2 or 3 youngsters for the game. But public statements like that really aren't very helpful. We may have a long injury list, but the team that played against Dundee are all in the first team squad. One or two may have picked up injuries in that game but clearly we have a choice to play a team which consists of entirely 1st team squad players.

A bit of a grim watch that. There was a good bit of effort and we were generally OK defensively, but we could have played all night and not scored. I lost count of the times when players either failed to see or failed to execute simple balls into space for team mates to run onto. Instead, it was foot on the ball, have a look around and then play the ball backwards for it to be hoofed aimlessly forward. When we did have an attempt it was invariably feeble and off target. With the players we have missing, I'm not expecting us to win the league or even get close, but any player who is good enough to be in the squad should be able to execute the basics of the game better than we saw today. Glimpses of quality were few and far between. I hate to say it, but this is relegation form were are witnessing at the moment.

Hopefully the club will open up the North Stand for this tie and make it look as though they actually want fans to come and support the team in a competition we actually won a few years ago. It's not the most attractive tie but it is eminently winnable. We need a good run in the cup to get a bit of a buzz around the city for the team. Hopefully club and fans can come together to get the cup spirit back for this one.

I'd have taken a point before the game but disappointed not to have got all 3. We played well in the first half and would have gone in at the break with a comfortable lead had a couple of well worked chances not ended up with tame efforts straight at the keeper when a bit of composure would have seen the ball side-footed past the keeper into the net. Nathan Shaw showed great composure for his 2 goals and others need to follow his lead. The surprise return of Danny Devine showed what we have been missing in central defence and David Carson showed why he should be playing in midfield. I was, however, rather disturbed to hear Billy Dodds' comments after the game saying that both Devine and Welsh were not fully recovered from injury. If they weren't fully recovered, they should not have been playing. Putting players who have not fully recovered from injuries into a highly competitive match environment puts them at serious risk of aggravating their injuries. It was a real worry to see Devine forced to go off in the 2nd half and I sincerely hope that was simply a reflection of a lack of fitness . Oh, and why did people boo Logan Chalmers? It only made him play better. In fact, he played very well, and after he came on as sub, he was far and away Ayr's most effective player.

If we had all of the squad fit, I wonder how many of Saturday's starting line up would have been starting - and in the position they played? Not very many, that's for sure. Missing the central pairing of Deas and Devine together with Allardice is a big loss defensively, whilst the loss of the creativity of Dan MacKay, MacGregor and Samuels limits our attacking options. In addition we are without the often under appreciated Shane Sutherland whose importance to the team is reflected by the fact that he was the players' player of the season last year. In those circumstances, I thought we played pretty well on Saturday. Mackay was rarely troubled in goal, we played some good passing football and created some decent chances. Shaw, in particular, had an excellent game. No doubt with the return of some of the injured players we will create more chances, but the question is, will we take them? Billy Mckay remains our main striker, he works his socks off and has scored 5 goals in all competitions this year, but his conversion rate is just 14% . Oakley has played in 17 games and scored just 2 goals with no assists. He's only had 7 shots in those 17 games. Doran is 7th on our all time scoring list but in 16 games he has only scored 1 goal with 1 assist. Boyd isn't shy at having a pop at goal but just 1 goal from 20 shots is a poor return. Of the players out, only Samuels looks as though he might contribute a reasonable number of goals in a season and therefore it seems to me that we are over reliant on Mckay to get the goals. There is a lot of pressure on him and he gets a lot of attention from defenders, so we really do need others to step up and get their shooting boots on. We also need to be sharper in our attacks and have a bit more movement in the box to help Mckay find a bit more space. Given our injuries, we have performed pretty well defensively and in midfield. What we need now is to be more clinical in creating and taking chances up front.

He scored it just 2 minutes after conceding a penalty at the other end.

We can help them out with that dilemma by getting promotion ourselves.

He's told the Supporters Trust that as well and that the hard copy programmes are simply not economically viable. The Trust is currently developing a draft survey about the matchday experience which we hope to discuss with the club in the near future. The aim will be to issue this as a joint venture. We hope to include a small section on matchday programs, and if there is a reasonable demand for their reintroduction, the Trust would certainly be happy to be involved in its production in order to provide the kind of content fans are looking for.

The combination of defensive errors was a bit freakish, but missing Deas and Devine we can expect to be vulnerable at the back, especially with Allardice missing as well. If we are vulnerable at the back, we have to be more incisive and clinical up top, and that is where we struggle at the moment. We have only scored 4 goals in our last 6 games. We huffed and puffed tonight with good possession but very rarely threatened. Often when it looked like we might threaten, we turned back and played a safe ball which only served to allow Morton's defence to get back in position. And when we did shoot, our shooting was woeful with only 2 shots on target and their keeper never seriously tested. You don't win games by keeping possession, you win them by scoring goals.

tm4tj lists 9 players who are currently out injured and a further 2 who are just returning from injury. Those players would make a pretty impressive starting 11, so it is all the more impressive that we are as high in the table as we are. It may not always be pretty but when a team is picked on the basis of who is fit enough to play and you can't play a settled side, then any result is a plus however it is achieved. Morton will be very hard to beat. After their 5-1 gubbing at the hands of Partick on the 1st of the month, Morton have taken 10 points from 4 games and only conceded 1 goal. To get anything out of the game will be a real achievement, but we tend to do well when the cameras are there. It is an opportunity for those coming into the side to show what they can do and fight for a place in the side when injured players return. I'm not expecting us to win, but I am expecting to see a team playing with real commitment.

I'm afraid you are too late, for the meeting Robert, but your points are well made and we can pick up on points not otherwise covered at a later date. We hope to be in a position tomorrow to issue a brief statement regarding the outcome of our meeting.

Sorry to see Keith departing the club. Always very personable and helpful. Vacancies now at the club. https://ictfc.com/job-opportunities-at-inverness-caledonian-thistle-football-club

The issues around the Concert Company must be a real concern for everyone linked with the football club. As was pointed out above, the Club stated in its financial statement presented at last September's AGM, that its projections were reliant on income generated by the Concert Company. Clearly that income stream is not going to be available. In addition, the news that the Concert Company is apparently unable to pay its creditors more than 67% of what they are owed has serious implications. Whilst it may be legally a separate company to the Club, its 2 Directors are also Directors of the Club and much of the work done in the name of the Concert Company was done by ICT staff. The reputational damage to the club will be significant and there will be financial implications to this. The ICT Supporters Trust is keeping a close eye on developments and has issued a brief statement on our website and which I have also posted on the Supporters Trust forum on this website. We will be having a meeting at the Club early next week when we will be raising our general concerns on this issue. Many thanks to everyone for their thoughts and information posted on this thread. It has been very helpful to us in developing our understanding of the situation. Please keep discussion going and sharing information. If there is information or particular questions you wish to share but don't want to do so on a public forum, you can contact the Trust at [email protected].

The ICT Supporters Trust Board has put the following statement on its website. Inverness Caley Thistle Concert Company The ICT Supporters Trust would like to confirm to supporters that we are aware of the current situation relating to the Inverness Caley Thistle Concert Company CVA and we are keeping an eye on proceedings as they develop. In the meantime we would like to confirm that we will be meeting with the club next week and would welcome any questions or concerns that you have that you would like us to raise on your behalf. If there is anything you wish to raise - please email us at [email protected] or via our contact form and we would love you to join the Trust and be a member. (You can join here)

That’s the Rugby match off. Worcester have called off. No idea what impact that will have on the club’s finances.

If you think our club may be in a bit of trouble, spare a thought for the fans of Worcester Warriors. Worcester have received a winding up petition from HMRC and are thought to have an unpaid tax bill of around £6million. Interestingly, their website seems to make no mention of the fact they are playing a game in Inverness on Friday.

Our heaviest defeat in the league for quite a while and yet I've put central defender Zak Delaney as my MOTM. Mark Ridgers was not at fault for any of the goals either, although the same can't be said for the usually reliable Robbie Deas. Let's hope that was just a one-off, bad day for Robbie and his lack of concentration wasn't because his mind was distracted by an imminent move. Billy put in a decent shift and Austin Samuels grafted hard trying to do the midfielders' work for them but the rest were poor. A good delivery from a corner leading to a superb headed goal from George Oakley at the death was a belated reminder of what we are capable of.

Many thanks to those who turned up to the Caley Club and to those we managed a chat with in the Sports Bar afterwards. Below is a brief summary report which we have included in our latest newsletter to members. Prior to the game on Saturday, Trust Board members met with supporters in an open meeting at the Caley Club and in the Sports Bar at the stadium. It was good to meet with members and potential members and to learn where they felt the club could improve its relationship with the fans. We must apologise to members looking for the Supporters Trust desk in the Sports Bar. Unfortunately it wasn’t there! Despite assurances that it would be back in its usual place at the far end of the bar, it was still sitting in an adjacent storage room and it was not safe to manhandle it through the busy bar. Hopefully it will be back home in time for the Morton game. There was a general feedback of a disconnect between club and supporters, with fans feeling they were being taken for granted. Common themes raised were the state of the toilets, poor facilities for disabled supporters, long waits for poor fare at the serveries, and the cost of hospitality – especially for young families. These are all issues we will be taking up with the club. Of, course, this was only a small snapshot of opinion and we are exploring how we might reach out to a much wider range of opinion through a structured survey. More about that another time. There is quite a lot going on in the Trust at the moment, and as a lot of that will be of interest to non-members, we have placed the latest Newsletter on our website. You can catch up with our activities here.

It was a bit nervy for much of the 2nd half but a good striker's goal from the excellent Samuels got us back on track for a well deserved win. With Devine, Duffy, Carson and Welsh all missing, we do look a little vulnerable defensively at times but Harper and Hyde are developing well and Delaney looks to be a useful signing. If we look a little bit vulnerable defensively, we are more than making up for it with our attacking play. At times we displayed some really good short passing moves with excellent movement. At times it came to nothing, but as players get to know each others games better, our cutting edge will only get sharper and we should be a really exciting team to watch. In a good all round performance, Austin Samuels was a clear MOTM. His goals were both well taken, but he was also very effective in receiving the ball a bit deeper, turning his man and finding a team mate ahead of him to get an attack going. Aaron Doran had another excellent game and seems to be playing better than at any time since his lengthy injury. Billy Mckay may not have been on the score sheet but it was another really good performance from him. His work rate, link-up play and movement causes real problems for defences and creates space for his team mates. We somehow seem to expect Billy to score but it is clear that we have several players who are capable of scoring. We may have several players out but there is still real competition for places. Today's performance shows great promise for the season ahead. Well done, lads!

STFU, I note you say that was your last post on the matter and therefore I will not prolong this debate further. What I would say, is that we do appreciate thoughtful contributions such as yours. Even when we disagree with the content, it gives us food for thought about what our strategy to build the Trust up should be and how we communicate it. I thank you for your contribution and hope that progress in the coming months may provide initiatives you feel you can support.

Many thanks to those of you who have responded positively to the Club's recent statement and have joined the Trust. It is a positive start for the rejuvenated Trust and a growing membership will increasingly help the Trust Board to make the fans' voice heard. The Trust Board met last night and we will be putting out a newsletter to members old and new sometime next week to update them on progress following the events of a very busy and important weak for the Trust. For those who remain sceptical about the Club's support for the Trust, the need for a major increase in Trust membership and the reasons why they should join, I would make the following points:- The club is supporting the Trust by putting the statement out and saying publicly that an active Trust is good for the club. Issuing such a statement is in sharp contrast to pulling the plug on the Fans Focus Group without explanation and is a reflection of work gone on behind the scenes. The statement is a recognition from the Club Board both that working with the Trust will be useful to the club and that the current Trust Board consists of people the Club can work constructively with. Short, medium and long term goals are detailed on the Trust's website and they are what we are asking the supporters to buy into. The detail of what projects the Trust will get involved with in the future will be influenced by what the Club wants to do and what our members want the club to do. It is not an excuse to say we need more members in order to be more representative and to do the work. It is a harsh reality. Why should the Club choose to engage with a group who might be seen as an unrepresentative clique pushing their own personal agenda? It is absolutely vital that the Trust Board is seen to be as representative as possible and accountable to the members who voted for them. It is also vital that more members get actively involved because the level of input required to make meaningful progress on our goals and to successfully engage in joint projects with the club is far more than the small number of current volunteers can possibly achieve. The open meeting at the Caley Club at 12.00 this coming Saturday is an opportunity to meet the Trust Board members and to raise issues that may be of concern to you. There is also the opportunity to come and raise issues with us and to discuss how you can get involved at the Trust's desk in the Sports Bar prior to home games. Together we can make the fans' voice heard. You can join us on this journey here.