marks

Luck is a myth created for making excuses.

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."

"I believe life is a series of near misses. A lot of what we ascribe to luck is not luck at all. It's seizing the day and accepting responsibility for your future. It's seeing what other people don't see And pursuing that vision."

Would it be such a bad thing if he went? We have had one good result this season, out of the league cup to the side propping up division one, he failed to dig us out of a bigger hole than we are in now two seasons ago even after beating Rangers and having a reasonable run of results. He tore the team who were pushing for a top six place to bits to build his own team which is struggling at the moment.We would, as the OP states, get compensation. I am happy enough to give Butcher a chance here but on the flip side I would not shed any tears if he were to move on.

Why would Hibs want him? See above for reasons against the idea.

Luck is a myth created for making excuses.

I sometimes wonder whether these rags actually send reporters to the games they report on. Far to often the "reports" bear no resemblence at all to the objective analyses we read on CTO.

Every piece of writing you read anywhere is tainted by the author's bias, CTO reports are no different.

Those papers are more biased towards the Lowlands because they are Glasgow papers, how many Lowlanders look at the P&J and think ther reverse? How many weejies want to read about Hamish McSporran getting fined ?150 for puking in the street then swearing at Police? However, I think if you watch the match again and concentrate on how good a game Dean Shiels had then you might just feel he merited a place in the "Team of the day". I don't believe Shiels inclusion in the ToD is evidence of a North/South bias but the emitting of some ICT players from the ToD might show that a bias exists.

I don't think this is evidence of a Highland/Lowland divide, I think it is a case of recognising the work put in by a striker who could easily have let his head drop instead of showing the mettle to have a go at the team who were ripping his team apart.

Nice try, a little too obvious and lacking in imagination though 4/10

Watching the SPL highlights yesterday I saw a "Inverness Hearts" banner in the stands, if Hearts go down the tubes I will feel no emotion for them and my first thought would be of possible new fans for TCS. You need to look at the positives of every situation.

Very funny, although I was thinking more along the lines of you sharing the oozelum bird's very rare and impressive ability to get so far up it's own ersehole.

After reading that I think that you should change your username from IHE to "ouzelum".

4-2-3-1 4-3-3 and 4-5-1 are the same formation

All then have 4 defenders 3 centre midfeilders usually 2 holding the other in the hole 2 wingers given freedom and 1 striker

At the end of the day if calling it a 4-3-3 gets us 6 goals every week that's what I'm calling it

I'd agree that 4-2-3-1 and 4-5-1 are the same formation, essentially a 4-5-1 but a preset formation on Football Manager of 4-2-3-1 saves you from having to drag player icons around the virtual pitch during set up. 4-3-3 however is a very different formation with 4 defenders, 3 midfield and 3 dedicated forwards, with dedicated meaning that their role is as a forward player and not a midfielder.

You see the confusion that football management games cause to armchair tacticians?

Tokely in a sweeper role, Proctor and Gillet given freedom to get forward down the wings, Hayes and Davies interchanging throughout the match, Foran sitting just behind Tade.

Now in the new way of writing this as a formation is it a 1-4-3-2 morphing to a 1-2-4-2 when going forward then a 1-2-4-4 when the wing backs get right up to the bye line for a cross? or is it just called a 5-3-2 sweeper?

But then, England played a 4-4-2 in the World Cup and were slaughtered by a more intelligent German formation (can't quite remember it - was it 4-2-3-1?). Having said that, I'd go for a 4-3-3 (switching to 4-5-1 if under pressure). Stokes, Hooper and Forrest are too good for us to stop. Kayal, Wanyama etc are playing pretty average with Celtic's defence all over the place. Our only hope is to give them a doing. Piermayr in for Meekings, Hogg in for Proctor. No other changes. Just go for it. Our season won't hinge on our Old Firm results.

We have used that same 4-2-3-1 formation and it won us the First division. It does work well against bigger teams where we can counter and move the two wide men of the attacking midfield upfront to make a kind of 4-2-1-3

So it's a 4-5-1 with attacking (when the situation is right) wide midfielders?

Honestly guys there are 4 classes of player, Keepers (who are not named in formations) defenders, midfielders and attackers. It is only since the advent of tactical football management games that these stupid formation names have sprung up.

I firmly believe all this 4-1-1-2-2. 4-1-2-2-1 etc etc is all just bullsht names made up by computer geeks to make programing "but I want my left sided central mid fielder to drop off towards the defence a little more with the CF to play slightly behind the two strikers" a heap of crap really. Set up traditional systems then as the match progresses direct the players to where they would be better utilised. This is a far more dynamic game than the American version of football where a "play" is a set of tactics played out over a very short space of time and there is no need to over think positioning, reaction is much more important in soccer than over ellaborate tactics which can be unfurled in one simple step over from a skillful winger.

PS England were mince and would have gotten humped anyway and was Germany's formation not just a 4-5-1 with two of the CM playing slightly behind the the rest of the midfield line?

Renegade has it bang on, old fashioned football formations FTW.

Too many people (real managers included) are coming out with fantastical formations which end up looking like nothing more than a series of random numbers on a page, I believe the old fashioned 4-4-2, 4-3-3, and 3-5-2 are the only way to go, maybe a 5-3-2 if against really tough opposition. over thinking problems does nothing more than create more problems to over think. Stick with the basics then react to how the match is being played out, be flexible and do not impress too much rigidity in roles upon players, play football the old fashioned way and aim to score more than the opposition without too much worry about letting them score.

I blame Champ/Football Manager for the way the game is going.

Excellent interview with TB here http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/15608595.stm

I know we famously beat Ayr 7-3, but at SPL level is this the highest number of goals we have scored, and the highest scoring game we have been involved in?

IIRC it is level with the highest amount of goals scored in an SPL game, but it is not the biggest win - that was a 6-1 in over Gretna in 2007/08.

Highest amount of goals we have scored but 9 is not the highest scored in any spl game. There was the 6-6 Motherwell Hibs game a couple of years ago

In other words the score line is not a record breaker either for us or for the SPL.

A good scoreline and hopefully our first step towards recovery from this awful season so far but not ground breaking.

Things to do on Halloween week, hang about woods which have a reputation for being haunted and put the shighters up fools who believe in fairy stories so much that they have to get rescued by coppers and firefighters laughing their heads off.

Stevie, thanks for the supportive words.

I'd like to set out my stall though. I am not in the Butcher out camp, I am however very much against the timing of Butcher and Malpas being given new contracts when the club are in the state they are at the moment. I am also a bit perplexed at the level of support they are recieving without people looking at the bigger picture, the squad are in perhaps the worst state since our division two or three days, short term contracts, loans etc. it seems there is no vision for the future, with the exception of the two people who have gotten rid of the core of our squad. If TB and MM do not move to improve things by 31st of January I may very well be creeping into the "out" camp.

I am correct then in thinking that our manager finds that playing an under performing, unfit, player is more favourable than playing a younger, fitter player even though the players available were either his signings or recently re-signed by him? The mind boggles.

So if I am understanding you correctly Gringo, it is okay to slate the captain on this website but not the manager who picks him and gave him the captaincy? The captain is to blame for the team's poor results, not the management team who decimated the squad and replaced them with short contract jobbers and loanies who see ICT as nothing more than a shop window for their names to be seen by "bigger" clubs?

I decided to have a look through some of the archived posts from the Brewster era, the similarities in our predicament are quite something. Manager blaming the players, injury list, board backing the manager, forum members split and splitting on support for the manager, manager not accepting responsibility himself, very close to being in a safe mid table position, manager had gotten rid of players the fans would rather have kept. A couple of differences worth noting back then we were not bottom after 11 games and the fans were more in favour of ditching the manager than keeping him.

Almost forgot one question which kept creeping up back then was "who will replace him?"

Much of this is true, but one difference (I think, anyway) is that to all appearances Brewster had lost the dressing room; or a large part of it at least. There were a lot of stories of excessive fining for petty misdemeanours, and of the assistant manager being widely resented. There's no evidence yet of Butcher having lost the respect or confidence of the players: if that was to happen, then maybe then it would be time to think about changing. I also think Butcher is more likely to accept responsibility himself than Brewster was: he's never shied away from making line-up changes or dropping or releasing players that he brought into the team. The biggest problem is that this is probably a poorer squad than the one Brewster had at the start of 2008-09, and for that Butcher must take some of the blame.

Good post, I will say that one point in the post I'd pick up on is that Butcher should shoulder the majority of the blame for the poor standard of our squad, by ditching a Munro he has left us with a mountain to climb.

Worth a read-

http://community.caleythistleonline.com/topic/8954-brewster/

I decided to have a look through some of the archived posts from the Brewster era, the similarities in our predicament are quite something. Manager blaming the players, injury list, board backing the manager, forum members split and splitting on support for the manager, manager not accepting responsibility himself, very close to being in a safe mid table position, manager had gotten rid of players the fans would rather have kept. A couple of differences worth noting back then we were not bottom after 11 games and the fans were more in favour of ditching the manager than keeping him.

Almost forgot one question which kept creeping up back then was "who will replace him?"

Whilst I think it is far too early for Butcher out threads, I firmly believe that Butcher's contract extension was also far too early. So much for gelling the team.It looks as if TB and MM might just be thinking "We are set for two years now [they will get the full contract pay off if they fail] no point in trying anymore" perhaps they should have been put on 6 month rolling contracts like the players they put so much faith in.

BUMP

When we were promoted first time around our preferred choice for groundshare was McDairmid but SPL would not allow it because we were in different leagues. Falkirk tried to share with a lower league team but were also refused so I dont think County will be allowed to share with us.

The SPL would not allow it because the SFL would not allow SPL games to be given priority over SFL games.

Additional information this is a cached page from the Scotsman-

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:f05Ijb97Qc8J:sport.scotsman.com/stjohnstonefc/Saints-reject-groundshare-plea-from.2498745.jp+caleythistle+ground+share+with+st+johnstone&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

The Spl never rejected the ground share with ST J, ST Johnstone rejected it.

However, Geoff Brown, the St Johnstone chairman, has rebuffed the request.

"Caley have approached us but it won't happen," said Brown. "The home club must have priority over fixtures, and if Caley were promoted and we were to stay in the First Division this would be totally impractical."

If the unthinkable were to happen then they could play at TCS, so long as SPL fixtures were given priority over SFL fixtures.

Not sure what you mean there marks?

For those who are new to ICT we should of course point out the annual tradition known as the 'Ross C(o)unty April Collapse' :laugh: :laugh:

Sorry, should have put it more clearly.

If we were to be relegated and County promoted then County could ground share with us so long as County's SPL fixture list was given priority over our SFL fixture list. As you correctly point out though there is a lot of football to be played yet. County have got one advantage though, they have a Munro, whereas we have a mountain to climb.