MrCaleyjag

39 minutes ago, bdu98196 said:

Dunc is hopefully arranging a friendly with his old pal Don Carlo

Way we operate, we'd probably end up paying them for the privilege. 

6 hours ago, WYNESS101 said:

Was thinking about this over the weekend what will happen with friendly's? 

Guess we won't be having our normal highland league teams guess it will be lowland league this season 

At the moment do we even have enough players to play a friendly?

Genuine question as well, I wasn't trying to be funny or sarcastic. The way things are fairing, I'm not taking anything for granted, just being in business and having a team that can cross the line is a big question right now.

1 hour ago, CaleyCiuin said:

I would like the board to put out a statement confirming they back this venture or otherwise !!!!

I find it highly unlikely that will happen, the Chairman's statement speaks on behalf of the board.

Anything otherwise will show a split in the boardroom and show that someone or more are going rogue.

On the basis this took months of planning without even a slither of info leaking, suggests to me that the board is united in this decision and everything before it.

Everyone will have their opinion but for me, the ones defending this decision have been caught hook, line and sinker. Everything that you state as a defence is a regurgitation of the board and previous managers since Foran.

First they have to convince people that there's a problem, make it out worse than it is, push the agenda, repeat, repeat, repeat before convincing you that they have the answer to something that didn't need changed in the first place.

It's of no coincidence to me that we have a manager with central belt historical ties, who from day one spouted about poor home form, constantly on repeat and still will, but yet never questioned. The man before also with central belt historical ties, also spouted the same lines but never questioned. Planting the seed about poor home form but clearly with an underlying meaning.

We hear how difficult it is to attract players up to Inverness, have done since after Foran, on repeat, constantly, the same lines over and over. 

It must be Inverness! By gosh, how didn't I figure it out myself, I feel so stupid having to be told on repeat before I realised.

Dwindling investment, dwindling income, disengagement with the fans, alienation of the local business community, picking fights with local government. It's always been the fault of others, make people believe it's others.

Could it just simply be that those who are in positions of power and decision makers just aren't good enough? 

If this next ridiculous venture fails, who's fault will it be then, will they claim travelling distance is the problem?

The biggest issue in everything is staring us in the face, we all know it, and it falls firmly at the hands of the board.

6 minutes ago, Drake said:

Much bigger budgets and cash flow than we have now.  Bigger attendances.  Better economy.  Whilst in the Premier we could lure players North with the incentive of playing in the Premier.   That's how we won the Cup and got Europe.  The recruitment playing fields have never been equal, but the appeal of Premier football on decent wages was.  Pre-2004, we were spending a lot of money on wages.  Attendances were higher than now as well.  Now, the money is not great, yes it's full time wage but still not a great wage, and to get someone to up root and come North for it is just not going to happen.  The realities are that we are not on an equal playing field with most League 1 rivals in terms of recruitment.  If we offer a player a wage of say £1200 per week, and another team in the same league offer £800 there's a high chance the player will pick the smaller wage for logistical, family and even financial reasons.  The cost of uprooting North, finding somewhere to rent etc etc is clearly going to be more expensive than the £400 difference in this scenario.  

Was this your boardroom pitch?

24 minutes ago, Drake said:

Wow!  Talk about an over reaction from some of our fans! 

 

We can finally attract any Central Scotland based player that we can afford.  There have been season after season so many players within our budget that will have said no due to location.  Why would a player move himself and his family up here on a semi decent wage but they have to find accommodation etc for family.  We are losing out to teams in Central Scotland with lower budgets than us!  This is a MASSIVE game changer.  

 

I agree it's a shame we have had to do this.  But we no longer have the finances and the appeal of the Premier League to entice players North.  County can still do this due to the fact they are in the Prem (at the time of typing) and have a reasonable amount of financial backing.  We have been propped up financially for years by various folk but the money is dry and the lack of the Premier league means we are losing out.  The lack of fans coming through the gate as well has not helped.

 

Hopefully in a few years the club can relocate to Inverness, but if we have this small team mentality being shown on here and don't go for this, then who will sign for us?  January transfer was a disaster.  If we are to rely only on youth players coming up then we won't get out of this league never mind back to the Prem.  We'd probably be in a relegation scrap down to League 2.

 

So, the way I see it is, that yes this is an unfortunate but necessary move. There's 2 options:

 

Option 1:  The fans get their way.  The club stays.  By remaining Full time and on semi decent wages and based fully in Inverness we get hardly any quality signings and we are on a race to the bottom of no return.  We are patched up by random loan signings, youth and short contracts and all togetherness is lost anyway.  Then part time and bust.

 

Option 2:  The move goes ahead.  We remain full time, give semi decent wages and based in central Scotland.  A fair amount of quality players sign.  Players that would never have considered us before.  Even players from our fellow League 1 rivals will look at it as a bigger move without even moving!  We mount a title challenge and hopefully go up.  Players stay around for longer due to location and we actually get togetherness back!  Eventually promotion back to the Prem and a full relocation to Inverness where quality players will once again be lured North for the chance of playing in the Premier League. 

 

I fully support this as a way to secure the long term future of the club.  As for the youth teams, they can still train and be developed in inverness! I believe that if we had made this move sooner, we would not be in league 1.  We have missed out on so many signings over the years that it's possible that we'd be back in the Premier League by now if we had done this in 2017.  Time will tell if this works, but I say give it a chance and get behind Dunc and the team!

You've missed your calling, if the club are ever looking for someone in their communications team, you should apply.

1 minute ago, Yngwie said:

Not sure wha5 you might be alluding to with your cynicism, but I think we have all assumed that it is Kelty because they offer the nearest suitable facility that is available at the times we need and is accessible to the central belt motorway network and to the A9.

That's like saying the Westminster Government only have the interests of the country at heart when they pressed on with their Rwanda project. 

Nothings ever clear cut or portrayed in the vain it should be.

All I'm saying is don't blindly look at things at face value especially with a regime that shows so much distain towards it's followers.

Unless I'm missing a sarcastic undertone in your reply pointed elsewhere.

Call my a cynic, many have over the years, but who else stands to gain from this decision?

Think about all the bad decisions that have gone before made by this board, Chairman and CEO and at the root of everything it's how to make money but unfortunately not directly for the club.

Who at Kelty Hearts stands to benefit? Who are Kelty Hearts main beneficiaries?

I might be wildly pointing accusations and jumping to ridiculous conclusions however there are far greater minds on this forum than me that I'm sure could otherwise dig into Kelty's background, affiliations, backers etc. 

Why specifically Kelty Hearts, there must be more to it than we're being told or led to believe.

Somewhat ironic that it's a local lad given today's revelations, wonder if this will happen again. 

10 hours ago, IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER said:

Some interesting changes made in club structure which will cut budget by 95 % -

CEO - Donview; Chairman - Mantis ; Director of Football - Old Caley Girl: Communication Manager - M4TJ : Recruitment Lead - Yngwie; Head Coach - IHE; Assistant Coach - IBM ; Academy Coach - Jack Waddington; Club Doctor - Naelifts; Physio - Lizi; Security - Red Card

Team contracts to be sorted out after Summer 5 a side inclusion tournament has been completed.

Add me in as first team coach driver, mind though, I might run out of weekly and fortnightly driving hours after all those north and south jaunts up and down the A9. 

Not detracting from the statement and everything surrounding it, as my brain can't process the ins-and-outs just now, but for me the rot and decline started when the club allowed people to come in with no vested interested in Inverness Caledonian Thistle as a whole. 

In that I mean people who had no understanding of ICT as a club before they came in, it's battles to become what it was before they came in, to understand the history, where it came from. Who had no understanding of Inverness as an area, a community, the way of life, the different pace in the Highlands and certainly no idea of how to deal with it or desire to manipulate their way of thinking.

What we see now is a club who are beseiged by power brokers who have a complete central belt mentality and at the top of that are the CEO, manager and Chairman. Just look at their backgrounds and where they've come from, where their allegiances were and probably in some ways are. Taking the SG as point in case, everywhere he's been in football has turned to rat ****, no one heeded the warnings.

I'm utterly dumbfounded that those in positions with money and those that claim to understand ICT as a whole and what it was supposed to stand for, are allowing the club to be ripped apart, bit by bit.

I said in another thread, when I banged my head and agreed with Dougal, that the statement 3/4 days ago was only the beginning and I feared for the future. Well, I fear there's going to be more.

Argue what you will about how it matters where the team trains, not everyone will agree, but what no one can surely argue with is that the team surely must be located within at least a plausible distance and catchment area of where the club is based. The statement effectively says the club doesn't give a toss where players stay and advocates for central belt living. We're not talking about any old job, sport, team sports are different.

We should be championing the Highlands, it should be a place where younger players come to learn their trade, mature, learn a bit about life, get better and we sell them on. It should about attracting an older few players of quality, not interested in money, who want to play out their career because they want to play and pass on their experience to younger players. There's no coincidence that our best two managers over the last decade and a bit loved their time up here, they couldn't speak highly enough of it. Ok one got dazzled by bigger city lights, the others head got too big but deep down everytime they spoke, they championed the Highlands - I'm not sure this allows us or anyone to do that.

58 minutes ago, Rebus1746 said:

A friend of Robbo's was telling me a few week's back that he was laughing at the fact ICT were paying him for doing nothing. I thought he was talking past tense, clearly not!

Tbh, we'd all do the same wouldn't we, regardless of love (or maybe lack of) for the club, you would accept it and would definitely be laughing about it especially when you are freelancing all over the place at the same time.

2 hours ago, dougal said:

So Robbo was getting paid by the club while they spent most of his time at the Global Staduim working for the media or taking in the County games? 

Mind boggling. ICT definitely a club like no other

Some of the revelations that are coming out now are hard to believe to be fair 

Dougal

I think the whole situation is getting to me because for once I actually agree with you, someone knock some sense into me again 

Genuinely though, I think and fear that there's a lot more to come and a lot more that we'll never know about until it's possibly too late.

18 minutes ago, caley100 said:

Always been my issue, Never ever ask searching controversial questions!  

That also stretches to manager interviews with DF and laterally BD, who was never asked a pressing question. It was actually very boring, lazy journalism but why would they want to disturb the old pals act.

The whole thing now surrounding the club is actually getting tedious, I'm not surprised in the slightest by the radio silence.

When I read far East, I secretly hoped that there was some cash rich saviour in the wings, gauging the support of the fans before deciding to make a move and buy us out.

That may be a little far fetched though 

Well done @Gringo on another win and also thank you for running it again. Always one we enjoying playing every week. 

You really are the definition of a fictional troll that sits on the edge of a murky lake with a scowl on their face, holding a wee fishing rod, hoping for bites. 

4 minutes ago, IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER said:

It's not over till the Fat Lady sings

That's not very pc, should it not be fat person  

It's very clear to see its a team of individuals and journey men. Loanees who aren't good enough that we've panicked in bringing in as we needed players.

Our lines are non-existent, I could go on but what's the point, deep down I knew this would happen but I hoped it wouldn't.

I want to turn it off but can't. 

My Prediction 

HT: 0v0

FT: 1v1

1st ICT: Pepple 

1st Ham: O'Hara

Crowd: 2247

Yellow: Carragher

Caleyjags Prediction 

HT: 0v0

FT: 0v1

1st ICT: Harper

1st Ham: Henderson

Crowd: 2222

Yellow: Ridgers 

Personally, while most of us are probably wondering about what will happen, al efforts should be focusing on tomorrow evening's game as as fans we have very little influence on what will happen.

Like everything we're just passengers, but there's one thing for sure, if the communication continues on the same vain as past days/months/years, we'll be told very little if anything at all until someone within the club decides that really enough is enough and changes that.

From my point of view, regardless of what happens, SG and DF have to go along with some others in prominent positions and the club operations need streamlined. I can't see why we need to be so top heavy. We also need to have a proper footballing strategy/plan in place as for the last 8-9 years we've been free-falling from one cliff to another without any real direction or plan hoping that something will change. It really doesn't matter what size of a club we are this should be standard.

I've never known a club to have so much off-field business disasters let alone allow the person guiding the club to remain in his position; in any other business that person would be gone. I can't believe that those who are digging into their own pockets are happy in any way doing this but just comes across like they are scared to make drastic changes.

As fans, no matter what guise the club sits in, we'll always be there to support them but unfortunately there's too many people currently that take that for granted.

We can't score, end of, so I have no faith that we can turn it round and that pains me to say it.

I had no confidence before kick off and even less now.

We can't cope with their fast pace, high tempo, high press style of play and seeing the pitch being watered (even though its 4G or whatever you call it) tells me that Hamilton will continue in the same way. 

Individual errors, trying to play a style that we just can't play. Referee has also been questionable and both sides could have had a penalty.

My Prediction

HT: 0v0

FT: 2v0

1st ICT: Billy Mckay

1st Ham: O'Hara

Crowd: 1367

Yellow Card: Duffy

Caleyjag's Prediction

HT: 0v0

FT: 3v1

1st ICT: Boyes

1st Ham: Henderson

Crowd: 1234

Yellow Card: Devine

My Prediction

HT - 0v0

FT - 1v0

1st ICT - Alex Samuel

1st Montrose - Lyons

Crowd - 2396

Caleyjags Prediction 

HT - 0v0

FT - 1v1

1st ICT - Carragher

1st Montrose - Lyons

Crowd - 2222

**Joker** if still one left