Alex MacLeod

As a former sportsperson, albeit not professional, I was always advised that foods like pizza and pasta were best to recharge energy levels after high activity as those were high in carbohydrates

I think Essons problem is age and fitness. Do we recall Cammy?

Not been on here for a while due to laptop problems but anyway heres my tuppence worth.

I've not been able to get to a game this season but have seen what TV has had to offer and what the papers write. I do think its been a pretty bad season for us but I also see that as being the same for a number of teams. There is six points between sixth and twelfth so, to me, that is seven teams fighting relegation. Any of those teams could kick away, including us, and any of them could end in bottom two. I wont give up believing till its mathematically impossible too avoid going down.

Relegation...Is it so bad in the current set up. There is more money filtering down now as opposed to last time. There is still a lot of quality in Championship as can be seen by the difficulty Rangers Hearts Hibs and DU have found trying to get back up. I think we'll survive but I also hanker a wee bit for a  change of scenery

Signed for Raith today till end of season

On 9/29/2016 at 2:27 PM, Scotty said:

I was in the Howden End that day, and remember this game well, and whilst Jeremy Corbyn might describe it as 'rammed', there was certainly adequate room in most areas. 

The closest TCS came to this was the cup game (replay?) against Dundee Utd I think it was in the early days when the stadium capacity of stand and terracing was somewhere around 6000. the stand was full and the terracing was also jammed ... we scored an injury time equaliser but I think we were beaten in extra time. 

From this site Scotty 4th round tie played on 14th Feb 98 ended one each. ICT scorer Sheerin. Replay at TCS on 18th Feb finished 2-3 Our scorers Thompson and McCulloch. Crowd 5821

All thats needed is for our support to show kindness and a highland welcome. A simple banner - 'Inverness CT Fans Offer a Sincere and Warm Welcome to The Rangers FC on Their First Ever Visit to TCS' - No hatred, no bigotry and no malice in those words

Think Barton will still be on his 3 week suspension 

Head to Heads Played 18 - 9 ICT wins and 3 draws in all comps. 7 ICT wins in league. Of 7 league games played at Hamilton ICT have won 6 and Hamilton 1

In 8 games played at TCS Hamilton have won 4 and 3 have been drawn

On 9/24/2016 at 1:55 PM, Charles Bannerman said:

According to one of this morning's papers Dundee have been to Inverness eight times and have never won. Maybe they are the new Hibs?

It is true. They have never beat us at TCS. Saturday was 10th meeting at TCS and we have won 6. Overall head to head - 24 played 10 ICT wins 10 Draws in all comps

2 hours ago, DoofersDad said:

The absence of The Rangers, Hibs and Hearts from the top flight will also have affected our average gates.  Not just because they are clubs who always bring a good following, but because they attract more home support to the game than the likes of Hamilton and Kilmarnock do.  With The Rangers having made it to the top division this will probably result in our average home gates being up.this season.

I'm not sure that the state of folk's disposable incomes is too much of a factor though.  Clearly for some individuals it will be, but in general spending has remained very buoyant, and if the continued growth in places to eat and drink in Inverness is anything to go by, a lot of people have enough cash to go and watch a game of footy once in a while.  It's just that they choose not to.

Even on a like for like basis I accept CaleyD's point that there is a drop in away support (most notably from OTB) to some extent.  There are also other factors for individual games such as weather, significance of the game, any promotions etc. What is difficult is to know how the various different factors affect the gates and therefore to judge any specific trend.  But I do think there is little doubt that the level of home support has been dropping over the years.

It remains to be seen if the new regime will produce a noticeable increase in gates.  On the back of losing our first 3 games, the game against St J attracted about 750 fewer fans than the corresponding game last season.  The crowd for the Celtic game was 100 up on last year whilst Saturday's game was very slightly down on the corresponding game last year, although, in line with Don's comments, the Dundee away support seemed to be much less than I would have expected.  Unfortunately, the club appears to be unwilling to release figures for numbers coming through the away turnstiles.

But I genuinely do think that the way we are playing at the moment will bring people through the gates.There are large numbers of people who attend just a small number of games a year and to be honest, the way we played in the last 2 years will not have encouraged them to come back.  Things are different now,  We have had 4 home games and they have all been open, exciting games.  I know we lost to County first up but despite that, I have to admit to actually quite enjoying the game!  There has been lots of good football in all the games and it is like chalk and cheese compared to last year.  We need to get the message across to others that there is entertaining football on offer at TCS.  We may not win anything and we may not achieve top six but it's going to be fun and it's going to be exciting.

 

Yes DD, I can afford to make the trip 'once in a while'. Just not every other week as I used to.

It was suggested by one of the TV pundits (Michael Stewart I think) that Polworth compliments Tansey whereas Vigurs stifles him. 

10 hours ago, lightwelter said:

Attendences dropping below 3,000 is a real shame and hopefully they'll pick up. It certainly won't be helping the financial side of things. 

I was procrastinating the other day and read a report from a game in 2007 were we beat Dunfermline at home to confirm their relegation (interestingly that De Vries lad who plays for Celtic was in goals and had a shocker... I digress). The attendance for the game was between 6-7,000. I'm not sure if that's a one off but how can our attendences have dropped so much from then until now, especially seeing as we're a far better side than we were. My guess is part of the answer is that the novelty of being in the SPL has worn off, amongst other factors. 

Here's the report if anyone's interested: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/scot_prem/6645249.stm

That Dunfermline game was a highly organised concerted effort by Dunfermline to get a big support behind their team in the fight against the drop. The crowd was 6464 and the South stand was chocka.

In recent years folks disposable finances have taken a bit hit and the spare money just isnt there for many. Personally I still support the club with player sponsorship but I have to be very selective as to what home games I attend. Train fares continue to rise as do costs of food and beverage for a day out + entry cost. Three or four years ago I'd think nothing of blowing £100 - £150 on a day trip to Sneck for a match. Sometimes I'd add cost of overnight stay if midweek game. Now circummstances have changed I have to be more frugal.

Many folk are in similar financial positions and are not following their teams to away games. My guesstimate from TV was that maybe 150 - 200 Dundee fans travelled on saturday whereas in the past that would have been 400-500 at least. The cost of the day out has gone up but wages have stayed stagnant so travelling fans are choosing to stay at home.

From TV at lots of angles, and considering the rule changes, it was a penalty. If a penalty was given it would be a yellow and not red. If deemed outside the box its red. In my opinion Draper was slightly ahead and had the right to cut across the Celtic guy. After all that's where the ball was. According to Howard Webb its a penalty because although incident starts outside the box it continues in.

I don't think, having watched two or three of their games, that Celtic are any better this season than before. Last night they played five defenders and two defensive mids yet couldn't hold back the three. For a team that professes to be of European standard their defence is shocking. Going forward they have been scoring a lot of goals but they are beatable. They are there for the taking and, on top form, we can be the takers.

On ‎9‎/‎6‎/‎2016 at 10:03 AM, IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER said:

Fraid for many the bright lights, the spondoolachs and the constant positive attention can quickly depreciate into dark holes, bankruptcy and constant negative attention. 

George Best, Paul Gascoine to name just two.

I wonder at times if people really know the purpose of the dots. Like or dislike a post or comment or is it like or dislike a person who makes a post or comment? Some time ago I was shocked that someone got a red dot for announcing an upcoming development game. A straight forward announcement in the form of 'our boys are playing xyz  on such and such a date at such and such a time at abc venue. A simple piece of information for those interested and the poster got a red dot from another. It didn't surprise me when I looked at who had given it but it did make me question the reason. Albeit the spelling and grammar of the announcement was not up to degree standard English but

1. Did they not like the announcement?

2. Did they not like the game being played, the opposition team, the date and time or the venue?

3. Did they not like the person providing the announcement?

Or did the dotter have such a high and mighty belief in his own academic standards that he was really making an anonymous attempt at pointing out the posters limited abilities? 

Whilst looking for something unrelated on Soccerbase I noted an interesting stat or two so far this season.

Our top scorer with 3 goals also has 3 yellows so far. So that's a 1 to 1 ratio of goals to cards.

Every good manager is only as good as the people around him (or her). This from Yogi, who not so long ago was singing the praises of Richie as a future Inverness manager, is no more than an awakening and realisation that he underestimated the resolve of the highlander. Yogi thought he could bully the board into finding extra funds for his experimentation. He done the same at Falkirk and tried it at Hibs. Yogi coached ICT to silverware and a foray into Europe but I wonder where his wins to games ratio stands against other ICT Premiership managers

Just to clarify a point mentioned earlier. Cabrini is the trademark name for sports clothing produced and marketed by JD Sport. Its JD Sports who are calling all the shots and JD Sports who have never managed to hold onto a club for more than a couple of seasons. My understanding is that a number of manufacturers produce goods to JD's spec in the same way as supermarkets negotiate deals for own brand labelled goods. What I do wonder is who the manufacturers are, what countries they operate in and do JD support the FareTrade mark.

On ‎8‎/‎22‎/‎2016 at 0:38 PM, DoofersDad said:

Spot on, Charles.  

An interesting point here is the question of which country athletes would choose to represent in the event of independence.  It is interesting that in the Scots heroes tally, both Andy Murray and Heather Stanning are well to the fore, but whilst Murray was born in Scotland, he lives in London, and Stanning lives in Lossie but was born in England,  Both are claimed by the Scottish media to be Scottish. Large numbers of people would presumably have dual nationality and top athletes may well choose not to represent  Scotland if they felt they had a better chance of success by being in the team GB set up.

Things could be very complicated indeed.  Best just to stick as part of Team GB, both in sport and other aspects of life, and to celebrate the success that folk from all parts of the UK can achieve when given the opportunity to work together.

Who do they choose to represent for Commonwealth Games?

5 hours ago, 12th Man said:

I think we all know the answer to the question. Will Celtic be priced as a category A or B match.

Regarding away travel. It's really handy for Virgin trains to encourage all supporters to attend more away games for the cost of £20. Using trains perhaps?

Which to me shines a light over CJT who with a far smaller budget and far less competition for buses can also provide travel throughout Scotland and still cap it at £20

Price per adult for St Johnstone bus to Inverness £8. I don't know who subsidises it though.

As for the Virgin trains offer.....doesn't help Scottish fans.

Two before wed http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/transfer-news-live-latest-rumours-8681061

5 hours ago, Moogthurso said:

l understand that he needs games and this will help his development but thought he might be needed with josh and kevin injuries. I believe ali and him have a real chance of making' it after seeing 4 preseason games.

Any opinion or how long it will take Aaron Doran to get back to first team level. ?

What Josh injury? Wasn't injured when he scored yesterday. Doran is also back and on bench. Who should we drop to allow him a start?

A lot has been made of the St Johnstone model of running a business. In fact its very much like ours. They have similar revenue and slightly higher wage bills. Generally when clubs wage bills are publicised its the overall figure that's discussed. Players and staff. Figures that were published by STV for 2010/11 season showed our wages as 2.03 million and St J as 2.7 million. At that time St J had a turnover of 4.1 million where ours was around 3 million. (If memory serves correct) St J may have a similar sized playing squad to us but they have a lot more full time staff. They run a very successful restaurant business that employs kitchen and waiting staff and is a seven day a week operation. Another advantage they have is that their ground is owned outright and therefore they have no rental or loan costs associated with it. They also have 3G training pitches that are frequently rented out and they are not competing with another Premiership team for sponsorship or advertising revenue

Not yet our worst start to a season. That was 07/08 with six straight defeats. Not been to a game yet but what I'm hearing is we have no defense. Plenty possession and we are going forward and refraining from the pass backs. I'm hopeful that we just haven't gelled yet. We're playing a different system. We've a few new players and some returning from long term injury all needing to be fitted in and relearn each other. One win to boost confidence and we could go on a spree

10 hours ago, Yngwie said:

Can't blame them, that's a helluva price for a Partick match.

I thought exactly like you Yngwie so checked distances. Parkhead to Firhill 4.7 miles. Parkhead to Ibrox 7.5 miles. Yep it is a helluva lot for a Celtic Partick game