clacher_holiday2

is there any call to improve hospitality facilities at the stadium?  both corners of the main stand would be ideal for this and id guess youd have a far greater chance of a return, would be able to offer a better product too with a better home or away only option.

bolton have hospitality facilities in the corners

not much call for expansion is there?

St Johnstone, Livi and Falkirk all have superb small stadiums, Falkirks especially is impressive despite only having 3 proper stands.

clearly seperated at birth

also the cost of starting pre-season early, plus the potentially expensive traveling arrangements.

a sell out for the home leg of any preliminary round match would be a boost, a european campaign for a scottish side typically lasts only 2 matches.

the day wont be complete without foran lashing out at a ballboys ribs

offer him a slice of any transfer fee paid to the club for him in exchange for an extra year on the contract.

should put his agent into overtime getting the highest offer possible.

im going to start clapping for butcher in 6 minutes time if anybody wants to join in

After all his brother is still an important player for us and also he may still see sense & stay !

pretty sure he signed a 2 year deal a few weeks ago

The lad has ability of that there is no doubt but how much confidence in it does he have? Too many decent players have left their clubs too early to head to seemingly greener pastures and become bit players and end back where they started or lower. If he is actually confident in his own ability then he will stay and play his part in a decent season for ICT and move on to a bigger club at the end of the season when there will be some real interest from the type of club that he deserves to take the next step up to. If he does go now or signs a pre then I wouldn't hold anything against him but he will always look back at it as a what might have been that's for sure. I know what I would do but we all have different drivers in our own professions and footballers are no different.

As I said in my post, even if we do have what we would consider to be a superb season, the big offers might not come in.

The only player to leave for a better club from Kilmarnock after they got to the final and won the League Cup was Shiels to Rangers Lite, we're way off the final, nevermind beating Celtic.

As he will be starting next season aged 24, he will be best served by signing the highest paying deal possible.  Hes hardly a teenager, if we have a poor end to this season, he may never be in the shop window again.

We only got him for free in the first place because his old club under rated him, I can't remember if any other clubs were even interested, if he picks up an injury or if we end the season winning nothing and finishing 4th, yet again nobody will be interested.

He's got to sign the best deal he can while his reputation is so good.

Agree with a lot of what Clacher says but I dont see Aberdeen as being a step up. I think Shinnie has to go to Championship or Celtic for that. All the teams, outside of Celtic, this season are very much on a par with each other. The Aberdeens and Dundee Uniteds are cutting back drastically on spending. The others are struggling to balance the books. AS may get offered a little more to move to Aberdeen but will he get what he could get come the end of May if he's part of a cup winning, Euro challenging team. Also, perhaps we could offer better than Aberdeen when we confirm the £2.4m prize money for being second + the million, or whatever it is, for competing in Europe.

Thats the flip side to what I said could happen. 

If we have a poor run and end up in 4th, out at the semi final of the League Cup and out of the Scottish Cup before the semis. the big offer from England/Celtic/Rangers may not materialise at all.  Shinnie would be out of pocket to the tune of around 100k+ over a 2 year contract if he was given no real choice but to stay with us.

NOT signing an improved deal with another club has to be too big a risk for Shinnie to take, no matter if its St Johnston or Albion Rovers.  He'll be turning 24 at the start of next season, hes got potentially 6 or 7 high earning years left in him and needs to make the most of it, he could break his leg again and be KO'd from ever doing anything but setting up cones for a living.

If he was 18 then I'd say staying for a better deal might be a gamble worth taking, if the assumption is that continued good form here would lead to a better offer elsewhere, he would have time on his side..

I guess you could argue that if we do go on to have a lackluster end to the season then he doesnt deserve any more money (along with the rest) for a job half done.

How memorable a year did Kilmanrock have last year?  How many of their players made massive moves south of the border?  They won the League Cup against Celtic no less, which we would consider a massive success, I can only think of Shiels going to Rangers and Liam Kelly going to Bristol City (which only happened last week).

Theres no guarantee that any offer will come in for any of our players if we do well , anything Shinnie gets offered just now he has to snap up while his stocks high.  For me theres little to be gained by his stock going up on the back of a good season with us and there will always be a contract with ICT to fall back on if he does end the season in poor form.  There is no real downside to him accepting a pre-contract or not, he just obviously has to take the very best deal thats offered to him while his reputation is so high.

he has had plenty of poor games this season aswell as the match winning ones.

might be best for him to sign the best deal he possibly can with anybody.  ive said it before but with the league being so tight, we're only a couple of points away from the whole campaign taking on a very a different complectionm.  we arent points clear into seocnd by a long shot and only a poor 90 minutes or a goalkeeping howler from being nowhere in the cups.

if we have 2/3 bad games in a row, if we play celtic in the league cup final (fingers crossed) and get cuffed 4-0, if killie knock us out of the scottish cup... then suddenly the chat on here about "MIRACLES" etc will explode into a puff of mediocrity and the asking price for our players will correct themselves in line with the overview of the season.  the likes of shinnie could be seriously out of pocket if he waits until the summer to see what we can come up with.

everything is on a knife edge right now, a memorable season is still on the cards, its just the margin for error is minimal.  if there is a contract offer from aberdeen or anybody else for shinnie, knocking back any offer worth more than we can give him is a MASSIVE gamble.  he'd be risking about 100k over 2 years on one or two games going our way this year and the hope he can get a bit more in the summer, which is insane.

put me in his shoes and its a no brainer, get the pre-contract signed.

id expect nothing but 100% commitment from him for the rest of the season regardless of his decision, as would his current team mates, manager and future employers.

we still have two more games v celtic, why aim for second?

makes grim reading that november post of his.

fingers crossed for his fitness the rest of the season.

i used to quite like his blog

is it still going?  cant see any obvious links on the official site or here

is this it for the transfer window then?

county air

I used to drink in there, 5 minutes from the ground, easy for cabs and buses, would recommend it.

he posts when he wants

I'm really good at standing, I've been standing most of my life and touch wood, so far it hasn't killed me or anybody else near by.

Why is standing considered so dangerous at an SPL game? Don't you have to stand up when walking in and out of a stadium?

I'm posting this while standing.

would be a real loss of face for him to now leave for virtually anywhere in the short term, could his ego handle that IHE?

i suspect he would love to come out with a statement saying thanks but no thanks

we will only play 5 games v county this season

no need to ask where I was pre merger.

along with about 90% of the football fans in inverness, I didn't give a **** about the take the high way league or any of its ****** little teams.

It seems straight forward to me.

If you end up in the bottom or top 4 of each league then you are in a relegation or promotion battle, should be a few decent games at the end of each season and pre-split.

Of course you'll still get the likes of Dundee this year who will know well in advance they've a relegation group to go through but for the teams above them there really would be a fight on, same goes for the teams behind Queen of the South or Rangers in the leagues below.

I guess its the leaders of the lower leagues who are the real losers, they can win every single game in the second or third tier and still not go up.

so you all think its bollocks?

shock horror- i actually quite like it.

That Terry has turned down what will be the biggest job offered to an incumbent ICT manager, to reamain at the club shows just how far we have come and also how nuch belief he has in his team, make no mistake this is his team. I have no doubt that Terry will move on but until then he's ours and I'll continue to feel all warm and fluffy.

hearts are a much bigger club than barnsley, robbo was never going to turn them down

aberdeen and pele too?