clacher_holiday2

The reason I wouldnt want Robbo as manager is hes too fat.

Anyone but Di Canio, Barry Ferguson or Adams.

International management is totally different from club management. Coaches like Levein and Burley were horrible choices for Scotland as neither were ever likely to make an impact with players who only see once every month or two, for a couple of days, they were never going to build any rapport in that time. Somebody like Strachan can instantly get into the head of a player, he is vocal and wears his heart on his sleeve, he looks to me the type of guy who can speak to a player for 30 seconds and they'll know exactly whats expected of them. The other side of being a big character, being outspoken, is that you can make a total arse of it at club level. Somebody like Strachan (or Souness is a better example) will just **** players off long term.

Its not even our best ever starting 11, just a very good one, the rest of the league is much weaker than in previous years with no Rangers, an uncompetitive Hearts, the rest even more skint than normal and even Celtic were mostly in 2nd gear last year. Our best ever 11 was the year we had Fraser in goals, with Hastings, Munro, Dodds, Tokely at the back.. Rankin, Black, Duncan and Cowie in the middle and Nicolae and Bayne up top. That 11 would finish 2nd at a canter in this SPL. I think Christie was the manager then who managed to 'k up our best ever squad by giving them no motivation at all. Butchers praise in the media and from the support should all be about that year we came straight back up, including the ridiculous winning run, had we finished behind Dundee that season we would probably still be in the 1st Division now, it really would have been a nightmare. It looks as though the foundations for the next couple of years to come look solid with the performance of the youth players in the reserve league, so he's hardly leaving us in terrible shape should he decide to pinch some of our first team players in the summer, we should be fine to stay up next year no problem at all. The rest of your post I agree with, I called it last January in the winter break that we hadn't achieved bugger all, yet there were people calling him the messiah on here. He was totally one dimensional as a coach and was terrified of making subs or dropping players, I believe our form over the previous season and a half has been in spite of, rather than because of the management team. This next change of management is important for next season and the future but for this year I'm going to stick my neck out and predict we will now finish 2nd with ease, no complacency for anyone leading into the winter transfer window at least and hopefully a couple of fresh faces in the squad will carry us through to the end of the season.

apparently not online. what century is this?

So how do the other clubs do it for £5 per month?

lol

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.

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.