clacher_holiday2

Steve Marsella appears to be a decent judge, can't we just ask him who should be next manager? Maurice Malpas can **** off with Butcher.

I can echo that last part of your post starchief but you did bring up the flag bearers job in his defense, which is symptomatic of a wider problem that could come back to bite us later down the line. The military are almost in a position now in the UK where they cannot be questioned on anything, it has been entirely orchestrated by the media. The dimmest and idlest in any society will always need a cause or group to identify with, I'm all for it as long as the cause is something harmless like following a football team or religion. I worry for the long term future of the UK though, when the media has decided to spoon feed the armed forces to the masses for their dose of false belonging. Even more worrying is the apparently massive number of people willing to swallow the hero crap wholesale. Of all the arms of the government they're the ones who should never be exempt from criticism under any circumstance, certainly since the days of conscription. We have a professional army, nobody is there because they couldn't do anything else or were forced into it, its far from a selfless sacrifice. On this thread we've seen people exempting the flag bearer from questioning due to their job, most people posting have probably never even met the guy before, he might be a total d*ck for all you know. Believe it or not, there's people in the military that don't always deserve your support, much like in any walk of life.

Whats somebodies job got to do with how appropriate or not taking a Union Jack into a football ground is?

The Union Jack is synonymous with more than one expressions of national pride, you cant point to an old lady cheering on a royal precession with a flag and claim her motives are the same as a 20 stone skinhead marching down Luton high street with EDL on his knuckles. Within the context of Scottish Football, what the flag symbolises has been well established, it is used to provoke hate and is a symbol for far right bigotry. I know that ignorance is bliss in the far north and I'm willing to accept naivety from the younger lot on here but to plead the case of flying a Union Jack within a Scottish Football ground as merely 'colour-matching' as Kirishima says, is laughable. As is the showing support for all of the British players in the side, how do we know that any of them are patriotic in the slightest? I've lived in England for years now and there's 50/50 split in people who hate this country and those who don't, much like there is in Scotland. What I worry about are the people who are aware of the flags connotations (ie. almost everyone) who can't find the strength within themselves to be honest and say that - "Yes, I do know what this flag represents within the context of Scottish Football and yes I want to fly it at a football game regardless of who gets upset"... instead of sniveling excuses and smirking, grow a spine and stand by your convictions. You cant refute that the Union Jack carries a different meaning depending on where it is flown or who it is carried by. If the bearer was simply showing support for their country and nobody within that country has the right to be offended by it, then why wouldn't they carry the flag with them everywhere they go, rather than just to football matches? Surely they're always in this country and thus should always want to show their support for it? Flag to Tescos, flag to the pub, flag to work, walking the dog, dropping the kids off at school, flags hanging out of the car and house windows etc etc If that sounds ridiculous to you, then you agree with me in saying the Union Jack makes a more significant and well defined statement within a Scottish Football ground. Whether people should turn football matches into political rallies is another matter, I'm not even against the Union Jacks, I'd just like to see people on here be honest about why they want a particular flag on show rather than hiding behind the teams strip colour.

Usually these BBC ALBA games will have a live scream with English commentary on all the illegal streaming sites. The BBC will be selling the footage to bookmakers abroad, on gambling sites here we can watch games that won't be shown live in their own country. Obviously if you're watching via an illegal streaming site the quality will be questionable but if you can find a way to sign up for one of the foreign bookmakers (with a foreign bank account and address) then the stream will be much better. By all means sit it out until 5.30 and listen in fuzzy-wuzzy language, I'm just informing that it might be available in English online at 3pm, I'll certainly be looking for it at kick off rather than waiting till later.

The bookies have us as even money favorites to win this, unless we were shorter to beat Gretna in Motherwell, I think thats the lowest odds I've ever seen us away in the SPL.

My early hunch this season is that Celtic are playing a lot better domestically, they got off to a terrible start last year but have picked up two good away wins where they may have faltered last season (Aberdeen and United). They also played well to come back against us at home, something they couldn't do last term. If this ICT side was up against last years Celtic then we would run them a lot closer. Can we win the league? Of course we can, we just need to avoid complacency unlike last year. We need to avoid all talk about 'special' seasons and we need management to be ruthless in making changes on a game to game basis pre match as well as during. Just because we go out and beat Hearts 2-0, it doesn't mean we automatically have to play the same starting 11 against Kilmarnock the following game. Getting a game the week after a win shouldn't be seen as a reward, winning the game is the reward, by the Sunday morning it should be forgotten about and we start again for the next with all 11 places up for grabs in training. We obviously have the players to do it, we just need the mentality to do it, all talk about budgets and squad depth have to be kept to a minimum. If anyone in our ranks doesn't feel capable of winning every game they step out onto the park for then they shouldn't be at the club or management have made a mistake in putting them out there. I wouldn't care if we finished bottom and got relegated, as long as it wasn't complacency, stubborn management or stupid mistakes keeping us there.

I remember that, it was when we went on our run without a 0-0.

Depends on the stake. If its joke money then his motivation cant be questioned.

While I was working in a betting shop in Edinburgh, I took some of what were blatant fixed bets on an English Premier league game. Nothing ever came of it despite a hell of a lot of people knowing at the time. For the curious out there it was Kevin Nolans first game back at Bolton with his new side Newcastle, the bets were on Davis and Elmander too score the first goal, 10's of thousands put on over the city and in Glasgow at odds of 6/1 the pair of them. Early in the game, Nolan (former Bolton Captain) was chasing the ball away towards the corner flag and under no pressure, controled it with his arm...penalty and 1-0 Bolton, bets landed. They were all paid out and no questions were asked, I can only pressume the bookies laid of most of their money with other firms abroad and made a killing or else there would've been some sort of media outrage. That was a drop in the ocean compared to the fixed tennis, snooker and boxing matches that are rigged on a weekly basis. Nevermind horse racig where at least half the field in every race don't try lol. I'm shocked anything is coming from this as it looks like it is. I used to take bets from footballers and coaches almost every week on games that were questionable, most of them wil be betting online these days. If Ian Black has put anything under about a grand on us to lose he shouldn't be punnished at all.

How is that scenario any different to games being played in the afternoon midweek? You could play the game at 10am and they'd still need to take a whole day off. The point about floodlights is spot on.

I wonder how much Holyrood would give us to build a windfarm on the site lol

TBH, Dougal is right in his points about the stadium only having three sides and its stupid location. The missing ingredient in his post is reality. Reality renders any topic like this irrelevant and a bit awkward to read. There's smaller changes to the stadium which could be implemented with the right investor, such as putting up big screens or expanding hospitality facilities, basically ICT would just rent the space out for another company to put the extras in and they take all the profit. I know I've looked into the cost of big screens in the past, for about 100-150k its doable. If you added an extra 10k to the installation costs you could probably have it rotate on the far side of the ground to face the incoming traffic to Inverness for when there's nothing going on in the stadium, which is where you'd make all your money back. If you had two then you could have one face the other way to outgoing traffic. In that location you could probably power the bloody things with a windmill.

to win by more than 1 goal was 5/2, used the same logic as yourself and took a chance

A season ticket is an annual pass for club owned sports facilities, gyms, pubs and youth clubs for some around Europe. We wouldn't have to go that far but I couldn't see any downside in putting together a snapfax style book of offers for season ticket holders, would make sense for local traders as well as give an extra incentive to own a ticket and promote partnerships between everyone in the community.

1 Raigmore 2.Inverness 3 Early 90's, all teams 4 Truro, Cornwall. The natives think England starts from Devon.

This is worse than last year lol. At least we played half a season before getting the open top bus out. Let's worry about taking at least a point v St Mirren and not letting them score in the 91st minute. We've hardly been tested pre-season.

I thought he retired, nevermind.

Tokely?

There you go Luke. The league table is just a collection of stats, do you think that's drivel aswell? Here's the stats you're ignoring, I just assumed these would be obvious. Celtic won 21 games when taking the lead and lost 4 when going behind. We won 12 taking a lead and lost 8 games we were behind in. Why don't you guys think its a problem we can't hold onto a lead? Do you like draws?

happyclapping taken too a whole new level in the summer already. Sneckboy calls us dropping 10 more points when winning games than St Johnstone as drivel and lukemackay thinks we're second best behind Celtic, despite neither table showing the number of points lost when going behind and games won when going ahead. It was you Luke who asked for the stats on the points gained from being behind and there they are, I don't care if you dismiss them. I'm expecting more of the same in the coming season. I can hope for the change though, I hope that defeat to County hurt Butcher as much as us beig relegated did.

looks like i was being hard on us earlier, 9 gained from losing positions. neither st johnston and motherwell could lose a game when going ahead, both finished above us.

I can have a look after work but I posted the tables for points gained from a losing position in a previous thread, we had lost 20 points from winning positions and gained about 6 from losing. 9/12 I think on that losing position one but top of the table for droped points.

the reason we dropped more points than every other team in the league last year, from a winning position, was because we did try to park the bus. even in your own example we dropped points because we were parked too deep. we need to be more patient, it won't happen, butchers sides have always defended leads with a ridiculous siege mentallity. foran is as much too blame as terry is, whenever he's at the back leading the line, everyone else around him gets desperate. players can't get rid of the ball quick enough, they'll pass to anyone to avoid taking responsibility during the self imposed siege, including the opposition.

first half of the season, top 6. second half, bottom 6.