Yngwie

What a knob. Basically he's not happy because we don't conduct our dealings in public in the way the tabloids would want us to. They'd also love us to get into a war of words with Aberdeen, which I'm sure we have no desire to do. All of us would like to know what happened here, but in a case like this it's actually very difficult for ICT to make a statement that answers the questions without going into confidential and commercially sensitive contractual details, which ought to remain private.

Apparently it was in the contract small print that the £200,000 release clause could only be validly triggered by an offer from a club that has won the Scottish Cup within the last 25 years.

Can I suggest that ALL of our players would rather be elsewhere! The difference is that most of them don't really have a choice of anything better or more lucrative than ICT at this particular moment in time, whereas Tansey believed he did. I applaud him for having maintained thus far a dignified silence on all this, (in public, at least) and hope he has the drive and professionalism to keep giving his all. He may well feel some bitterness just now towards the ICT board - but surely not towards Yogi, his teammates or the fans. In addition, he should perhaps be having some strong words with his agent who at the end of the day, agreed to a release clause that wasn't adequately worded to secure Tansey the move his performances had earned.

I don't think anybody has said it yet, but well done to ICT for resisting the temptation to let go of a key player in order to bring in a hefty sum of cash. Better still, just as they stood firm when Dundee Utd wanted our manager, it was good to see our Board fight tooth and nail (with perhaps a bit of hair pulling too) to resolutely fend off the raiders from the east by whatever means were possible. It does no harm to send out a signal that we aren't the pushovers we perhaps once were.

Keith Jackson tweets: "Aberdeen's bid for ICT's Tansey has collapsed under a tsunami of bad blood between both clubs. Won't happen now. Storm brewing." "ICT unhappy with Aberdeen's conduct. Aberdeen believe the player has been shafted. Much unhappiness."

Payment terms might be valid grounds, though, and are surely the reason why the deal hasn't gone through yet. If Aberdeen's offer is £200,000 to be spread over 1000 years, would we have to accept?! I certainly hope not, but we don't know the exact wording of the clause, or the offer, so all we can do is speculate.

A week ago on the "Player of the season to date" topic, you said: Just saying.....!

Agreed. And without the release clause, how much would Aberdeen be offering? £60,000, increased perhaps to £100,000 when we reject the first bid? You can easily see how, with pressure from the player and his agent, and our policy of not standing in the way of a player who gets the chance to earn vastly more than at present, we would have ended up with much less than we are going to get here. £200,000 would be our 3rd highest transfer fee ever. The timing absolutely sucks, of course, leaving us no real time to identify, properly assess and strike a deal with suitable replacements, if indeed there are any available. But nobody saw this coming, and it's only happening at all because the Dons failed to land Don Cowie.

There's a major flurry of tweets from journalists on this, I'm afraid. Latest is that we want the £200k paid upfront, Aberdeen want to pay in instalments (unsurprisingly!). Until that is resolved, I don't think we have to let him speak to them, but I'm resigned to the fact that a deal will be done.

Are we doing one of those "pay what you can" days today?!

Source? Great news, but if Esson is staying, I guess it pretty much means that we'll be saying farewell to (at least) one of Brill or Fon Williams.

This seems to have passed under the radar, but on 13 January Dani signed for Arenas Club de Getxo, which is near Bilbao. They got promoted to the Spanish 3rd flight last summer, and ground capacity is 1,200. 40 years ago their manager was a young Javier Clemente, who went on to manage Spain. http://arenasclub.com/el-delantero-madrileno-dani-lopez-es-el-nuevo-refuerzo-del-arenas/

I always like to see the "wee" teams do well, but not County. We are in direct competition with them for players, fans, sponsors etc and any success and additional money they have can only be detrimental to ICT.

No, they didn't.

Here are some more stats to add into the mix, inspired by this comment from the Partick thread. Here are our points out of the possible achievable against each team so far: Celtic 0/6 Aberdeen 4/6 Hearts 3/3 County 6/6 St J 1/6 Dundee 2/6 Partick 2/9 Motherwell 3/6 Hamilton 3/6 Killie 3/9 D Utd 2/6 Now, splitting this into performance v Top6 and Bottom 6: Top 6: 14/27, achieving a very credible 52% of points available Bottom 6: 15/42, a mere 36%. This would appear pretty consistent with what PerfICT shows earlier in this thread, whereby the more possession we have, the fewer goals we score and the less likely we are to win. It also reiterates the importance of getting into the top 6, because given our apparent inability to beat the poorer sides, 5 post-split games against those sides and you can see how we might easily slip into serious relegation contention - unless something changes or we adapt our tactics against weaker sides. Hmm.

So basically anyone trying out the "pay what you can" won't be rushing back to watch us for full price?

That's one goal in 9 games for our star striker only striker - it's not that he's playing badly, it's just a symptom of the way the team is playing. We will slide down the league until the goals start to flow again for him, you can't rely on long range efforts from midfielders finding the target as frequently as they have done during this time.

Never enough hole punches either.....

And everyone elses. The funny thing is, when talking about this kind of "luxury" foreign player with tricks and skill, there's a longstanding cliche whereby media pundits invariably ask something like "but what's he gonna be like on a cold Tuesday night in January". Well now we know.

I can see why fans like pyros (I like them too, I just wish they were safe) but the one thing that puzzles me is this: WTF was the point of releasing a smoke bomb in the dying minutes of a slightly embarrassing 0-0 draw against a part-time team from the 4th flight? I can understand that there are times when a passionate fan might think it worth risking a ban or criminal record - but this was not one of those times, surely.

Mutombo was our only source of creativity and the one player a neutral fan would have noticed. He (usually) has some good close control and has the skill to get past a man with ease, and the desire to do so. However, he is still deficient when it comes to the final ball so most of his good work ends up fruitless. I'm sure I wasn't the only person who was surprised when his shot hit the back of the net - I can't help thinking that any premier league keeper would have saved that.

And in other breaking news, David Bowie has died. RiG's succinct post basically translates as "Fisher played in the first cup game at Stirling and again at Killie on Saturday - where've you been?!"

No, but I did hear the away fans singing "SPL, you're having a laugh", demonstrating a lack of understanding of the league reconstruction that took place in 2013!

Fisher was taken to hospital for an x-ray on his ankle.

MOTM-bo!