AlexJones

Fon Williams Meekings Warren Raven Williams Draper Wedderburn Tansey Vincent Polworth Storey

Sounds like a panic move on Delia's part. Hopefully he doesn't end up spending most of his time on the bench.

Not Horner's finest performance today but in fairness to the lad he kept plugging away and looking for the ball even with the crowd on his back. I still think he's a valuable squad / utility player but probably not our best right back. We're going through a wobbly spell at the moment. Scraping a jammy draw at home against a team 8 points adrift at the bottom of the table is not acceptable. It's relegation form. We need our experienced heads to steady the ship. Dave the Rave should start next week. Yogi's tactics are becoming too obvious. Every team in the league is pressing high against us and winning turnovers of possession in dangerous areas yet we're still getting into trouble with hospital passes along the backline every single week. I get the impression the players are even doing exactly the same drills in training day in day out. Our play is so stale. You can see the lads virtually on autopilot at times. Making the same passes, the same runs and sadly the same mistakes! The boos ringing out at half time had nothing to do with the work rate or attitude of the players and everything to do with the tactics. Nothing ever changes. We even make the same substitutions at the same times every week. Mutombo on for the last 15 minutes when the game is stretched, even though he has no pace, no assists and no goals. As it happens he had a pretty good game today. But we really need to mix things up a bit and give some of the other lads on the bench a chance. A few weeks back the lads came out rallying around Lopez after the whole suspension issue. You'd think the guy would be desperate to get out there and redeem himself for his teammates. He's been sitting on the bench for weeks, patiently waiting for a chance to get out there and prove a point. Yet Yogi won't even give the guy a 5 minute run-out. What's going on? I could understand not wanting to interfere with the team during a winning run, but at this moment in time our form is dreadful.

I see your Nauris Bulvitis and your Roman Golabert... and I raise you Vetle Andersen.

But can he do it on a cold, wet Wednesday night in Stoke?

I think Meekings has done pretty well at right back. He's probably overall a more sturdy defender than Raven and a bigger physical presence for set piece situations, but his end product at the other end isn't as good. Raven chips in with assists and goals whereas Josh all too often balloons his crosses into the stand and rarely gets into goal scoring positions. I also don't get why we don't use Meekings long throw in since we put him back on the right. It's almost as good as a corner, he's the SPL version of Rory Delap, but for some reason we have an aversion to putting the ball in the box. Same story with free kicks, almost always taken short in situations where every other team in the league would get the big men up and put it in. When you see how good guys like Warren, Draper or Devine are in the air, you have to wonder how many goals we would actually score if we gave these guys the service. We could easily be leading the chart for goals scored from set pieces. As it is I reckon we're probably near the bottom.

After losing so many talented players for nothing, I would suggest that now would be a good time to get Liam Polworth signed up on a minimum 3 year contract. What a prospect he's turning out to be. Won't be long till other clubs are sniffing around with PCAs. The usual. Hopefully the club has learned from the Ryan Christie experience.

Kenny Cameron clearly has an eye for a player. He's wasted as Chairman. Why don't we make him Director of Football or something?

Thought we outplayed Celtic for long spells in the game but didn't get the breaks in front of goal. We were also on the end of some dodgy decisions, in particular Story being wrongly flagged for offside when clean through on the keeper. Good performances all round. Polworth continues to impress. Meekings did pretty well at right back, can see him having a wee run there. Vincent looks back to form. Celtic were rubbish bar an outstanding opener from McGregor. I reckon even the Barnes era Celtic team would drub this one. Definitely going backwards under Delia and Collins. Usually anything you take from them is a bonus, not anymore. One minor complaint. How much had the matchday sponsor had to drink when they picked their MOTM?

Fon Williams Horner Warren Meekings Williams Tansey Draper Polworth Vincent Sutherland Storey

Agree that it would be very cynical of the club to terminate his contract over this, especially after the man has uprooted his family and moved over from Spain to sign for us. There is a precedent with Richie Hart's contract termination, but IIRC the club were excessively 'trigger happy' at that time, punting club legends left, right and centre as part of the Brewster project. We failed to replace Hart and co adequately and were relegated shortly thereafter - karma perhaps. We didn't rip up Owain Tudor Jones contract after he threw a punch at a Killie player, or Tokely's when he chinned Steven McGarry. Butcher even joked that ICT would avoid relegation if we racked up as many league points as Tokely's disciplinary points. Can't speak for anyone else, but if I had to choose between being punched in the face by Ross Tokely or spat on by Dani Lopez, I would choose the latter every time. It's hard to fathom how spitting can be deemed a more serious offence than assault. I'm hoping the club show a bit of human decency, and give the man a chance to redeem himself.

Did he miss the target? In all seriousness, if true, this is pretty poor craic. Would be interested to hear the context also, i.e. had the opponent just assaulted him in some way? This wouldn't be the first time an Inverness player has been pulled up for this offence. I remember Paul Cherry getting sent off for doing the same thing to a Cowdenbeath player many moons ago.

Is this one of those petty battle of wills that businessmen often engage in, whereby they refuse to be the one who initiates contact for fear of appearing lower status than / beholden to - the other party? Sounds like both sides are playing hardball and waiting for the other to pick up the phone. Very poor craic! Everyone should sit down with a bottle of single malt and get this deal done ASAP.

The referee got the penalty re-take spot on (no pun intended). When Tansey strikes the ball a Motherwell player has encroached so far into the box he's in line with the penalty spot. What a mug. Certainly fortunate from Tanseys perspective getting a second bite of the cherry. But Well have no-one to blame but themselves for gifting it to him. McGhee up to his usual clown routine post match I see. Makes the result even sweeter. Shame we seem to have picked up 3 injuries. Seems to be a recurring theme playing against Motherwell. Thought they looked a dirty team last time out, breaking Warrens leg and putting in some shocking challenges on Mutombo. Good time for an international break. Vigurs goal was world class. Reminds us what he's capable of.

It's not often you see Charlie Christie towering above someone. Have to come to the defence of the cult hero that is 'Deano'. For a diminutive guy, he got absolutely stuck in and gave 100% every time he was on the pitch. It's not his fault a manager signed him then never gave him a chance. Imagine uprooting a guy, bringing him all the way up to the Highlands, seeing him impress in pre-season - then completely freezing him out without so much as a run of competitive games. He didn't put a foot wrong. If anything his run here reflects worse on the club than it does on the player.

Typical Daily Record Story - made up on the back of a cigarette packet. What have either of those managers done to be linked to bigger jobs? If anything, you'd have to say Stubbs is on a shoogly peg after last seasons embarrassing capitulations in the play-offs and SC semis. Warburton has a massive club at the top of a league which contains the likes of Alloa, Dumbarton and Livi. His nearest challengers include Falkirk and Raith Rovers. In their only meeting with an SPL side they were comprehensively drubbed at home. At best you could call Warburton competent relative to his predecessor.

Polworth has been one of our best performers recently IMO. Vigurs I agree hasn't contributed much but he's been played out of position. Would like to see him more involved in the final phase where he's at his best.

Thought we were miles ahead of Dundee before the red card. For all their spending in the transfer market they actually look a worse team this season. Good to see the referee awarding us a ridiculously soft penalty to level things up after giving one to Dundee at the other end. Hard lines for Dave the Rave who was basically sent off for standing his ground when a ball came into the box. Some very weak officiating on display today. When Dundee appealed for a decision loud enough, they got it. Good to see Warren back! Gaining some man points for returning from a broken leg faster than most players come back from a pulled muscle. Soccer Am should send 'hard man' expert Danny Dyer up to do a feature on him.

The Caldwell brothers performance against Norway was so calamitous it inspired a 'chuckle brothers' meme on social media.

A bit harsh that. Wedderburn is a crisp passer when I've seen him. He tends to keep it simple and has a pretty decent PSP, something that couldn't be said of many of our lads for the first 75 minutes last night. He's also only 24 and inexperienced so playing him is an investment in the future, as we've seen with Polworth who's coming on leaps and bounds with a run of first team games.

Disagree with those who are unconcerned about the League Cup. That might have been the case in the 1st round, but if we'd won last night we'd be only 1 game away from another major final. I know technically the League Cup is the 'wee' cup, but seeing as we've already got the 'big' cup in the trophy cabinet, I'd rather we won something we haven't had before to complete the set (1 Challenge Cup, 1 Scottish Cup, 1 League Cup).

Tonight we pretty much carried on where we'd left off against Saints. We had no width, no runners, no overloads, no space and low energy. Our game consisted of easy, negative passes around our own half and we were extremely slow to adapt when County's pressing kept resulting in turnovers of possession in dangerous areas. In fact we only adapted when we were 2-0 down. At that point the rigid, negative, predictable, unproductive tactics went out the window and the players started to play with much more freedom, resulting in more attacking moves and chances than we'd created in the previous 4 hours of football. With Aberdeen and Sevco already out, and either Hearts or Celtic to follow, this was a golden opportunity to reach another final. What a waste. Hopefully lessons learned tonight. Vigurs and Tansey sit far too deep in possession and need to push up the park when we have the ball. Neither one of them is defensively good enough to play the Draper role. Our back 4 were exposed again and again. Our midfield is unbalanced when both of them play. This was our undoing (along with our negativity in possession) tonight. It was a carbon copy of the Hamilton game in this respect. County were winning too many 50-50s and second balls.

Some harsh words spoken on this thread. Emotions obviously running high, not surprising after a mugging like that. Basically we played Saints off the pitch for the majority of the match and came away with nothing. We could and should have 6 points against them this season, as it is we have 1. That's football sometimes. The only criticism that I agree with was our inability to translate an extra man and 70% possession into any decent efforts at goal. Our build up play was unnecessarily intricate and long winded. When your opponents are camped in their own half and playing for a draw - they're happy for you to dominate possession and knock the ball around in your own half. Instead of trying to score the perfect goal we should have shown much more urgency and directness. The more balls you play into the box, even bad ones, the better odds of one finally breaking your way and ending up in the net. As it was, we never asked any questions of an underperforming Saints defence. Ironically, the closest we came was from a long ball over the top to Story, who easily outpaced Shaughnessy and Anderson only to lob over the bar.

So Thompson has gone for the cheap option? In retrospect, this should have been the obvious outcome all along!