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totally agree on robbo but we need a new mngt philosyphy based on entertainment We still have the midfield to play some serious attacking football - till the end of the season, at least - and as long as we can decide on a striker or two and stick with them, find a decent formation that's efficient and get that spirit back, there has to be hope. The utterly gut-wrenching, demoralising thing has been to see a side which always had fight and spirit and ran everything to the last fecking second and played for each other, to see the spirit leeched out of that and to see apathy and the wheels fall off after a goal was conceded. Some people have suspected from the start where the fault lay, many have come across recently and the suspected cause of the malaise has been removed. The key question now is, who will the players best respond to, immediately, without any introductions? It sounds like the removal of the training regime alone will be a breath of fresh air, but of all the candidates who's going to get a point at Tynecastle? Robbo watches every home game - there's your caretaker.

Our normal viewing rate is about 10-15,000 page views per day. Over the last month or two I would say that this has steadily increased in parallel with the discontent the fans are displaying. Over the last few days it has peaked at around 30-35,000 per day. Our new registrations since January 1st have also been at a higher rate than normal (250 from Sep-Nov, 151 in Dec, and 196 so far in Jan). We are now seeing somewhere between 600 and 700 of our 1627 registered (and active*) users logging on every day and a fair proportion of the rest logging in every few days. We might not represent the majority of the fans, but our userbase is pretty sizeable ...... for a club of our size [*active: if a user has not logged on in 90 days they are classed as inactive and not included in our "active member" total. If they fail to logon for a further 90 days, the account is deleted so our membership level is not bloated like some other forums with users who havent been seen for years !!!] Now, there's lies, damn lies, and... :thumb04: I just think we're navel-gazing if we believe that letting off steam/venting spleen on here constitutes direct action or has done anything beyond reflect what the granny in the row in front is getting from her son and telling her friends.

Sorry to be a lazy fekker and not research this, but Scotty's online and can no doubt clear it up in a minute - how is the board appointed and what's the likelihood (as if I didn't know) of change being forced by anyone other than the Capo di Tulloch? I appointed them. You got a problem, like? Brought to you courtesy of Matthew Gloag & Son Only finding out where you live and organising a mob, like :thumb04:

Sorry to be a lazy fekker and not research this, but Scotty's online and can no doubt clear it up in a minute - how is the board appointed and what's the likelihood (as if I didn't know) of change being forced by anyone other than the Capo di Tulloch?

Thank you for attempting to answer my questions..... So glad you're enjoying all this! Sorry Johnboy, I'm high on the 'umm'-free air. I'd prefer the board to be getting on with finding a new manager to them telling everyone that they're getting on with finding a new manager. Whether they are or not is sort of a Schrodinger's Cat job.

You're right. They can't see that relegation is a real danger and have just sacked Brewster for a laugh. From what I've heard, they've all gone on holiday to the Carribbean, which is why they're not attending any press conferences. What an utter disgrace. I agree with your sarcasm Absolutely. Why aren't they going round town knocking on doors to explain themselves in person ("Har har Caley, ahm a Cellic fan, Bennet yer windows are sh!te"), or walking round with a handcart shouting "Bring out your managers!"? At the very least they could be camped out on Paul Chalk's doorstep, shouting updates through his letterbox. Amateurs.

Scotty, your last statement is the important one! The 'getting rid' element, on here, has now got their way - the most important part now, is the recruitment of the correct, for ICT, manager. We are an unusual club (family feeling, with this being our first sacking of a manager for instance) and our feelings were normally focused on the end result, with little personal criticism of the players/ managers/ board. Now that the power of attack, via this type of medium has been experienced, I fear the future will not reflect the past! A bad result, in someones view, will result in a verbal attack on here, with the managers past life, wifes past, grannies past, all being posted and used as ammunition and of course, 'and he's lost the dressing room' and this will result in pages of 'I knew this before we signed him' 'We could have done better' Hope I'm wrong But..........! Sorry, but I think you are. I hope you are. This site has always, as far as I can remember, carried a minority of people who'd mump and grump about managers, players. This is our pressure valve, after all, those of us who blow off from time to time. Scotty or Don may know different but I doubt you can even say that a majority of the support log on here and take a look. Old Sneck is still a village dressed as a city and there's a lot more goes on in pubs, offices and sewing circles to contribute to the herd direction than is said on these boards. What's unusual about this time is the breadth of agreement on this site alone that something was going horribly wrong, and all pointing in the same direction. When you get a lot of people who usually fight like cat and dog mostly saying the same thing, the chances are that opinion has been re-inforced by what they're hearing from friends and colleagues and family. That's why I think what's been said on here and at the Trust meeting has been no more than a weather-vane for a more widespread unrest. I just can't see truth in the idea that a few folk voicing discontent on here or organising a meeting would influence what's essentially a closed shop; what sounds more credible is the idea that the board have been hearing for some time, from a majority of people they know, that Brewster is taking the club down and they're daft for doing nothing. That that sentiment should be echoed on here is obvious, because we mostly talk to people in the same community, and I'd be interested to see the ratio of ex-pats to still-locals who opposed Brew's sacking. Bottom line, I think these have been extraordinary circumstances and I doubt we'll see their like again in the near future, including the sustained singling-out of a club employee for grief. We're better than that, and hopefully still good enough for the SPL. Peace love fitba.

Elvis Costello's PUMP IT UP rip off - like others though it gets better with a few listens but wouldn't say it is a classic.... God no, Elevation was a good tune to re-announce yourselves with: this is poor, another Zooropa flirtation of the kind Clayton claimed everyone but Bono hated because they just didn't get it. Duran Duran meets Garbage and Iron Maiden - help! Ahem, anyway, sitting at work wondering how to organise a decent network of programmers in the north, speculating gloomily on the Downadup boom and wondering whether putting in a summer holiday request was just an act of hopeless optimism - then came the text at 12.25, confirmed by a look at the BBC site, and a wee ray of sunshine pierced the gathering clouds. We might all be living hand-to-mouth come August, but there's a chance, at least, now, that we might still be following a team in the SPL.

Terrible, terrible piece, though not alone among BBC blog-style articles from contributors of a certain age - I've seen a number which approach the genre (ugh) in the same way Wogan approaches, well, pretty much everything. To be fair Traynor, too, tonight sounded rather baffled about the baying for Brew's blood, so it may just be a general failure to understand the sort of despair which had crept through the support during months of watching a side losing its spirit faster than Chick Young's drinks cabinet. Charlie B put him right.

Interesting sentiments, and laudable, but that's about all there is. I paid my membership to the Supporters Trust the first time round but, despite my regard for DJS and the rest, I can't see this making a difference with a very small core support (about 1900 was it, today?). I do however have a lot of respect for the driving instructors, council workers, businesswomen and all the rest who give of their spare time - on top of the time and money the rest of the regular fans put in - to do this sort of thing. It's easy enough to sit here and type a few paragraphs in support of the manager or against him, but it's a step beyond to get off your erse and do something about it. We know fine that there's no divine right held by ICT or any other team to stay in the SPL - we removed that, if you remember, the season we won promotion - but I cannot see any reason why the core of a team which was working as a well-drilled unit, 'grinding out results' as the pundits have it and showing the effort and enthusiasm which made us a nightmare fixture, why that should have fallen apart when Brewster and Thompson returned, unless they're the problem. As for enjoyment, you may enjoy seeing players out of position, the defence losing the plot, a toothless strike force completely uninspired by Brewster, watching your side lose while playing mostly sh!te football, and the rest. I do not. There was a time when I would watch us lose a goal and think 'now we'll score three'; these days I can more readily see us conceding another two. That is not my fault. That is not the fault of the people around me. That is not the fault of the Supporters' Trust. Something has changed at this club, and all the rah-rah-rah cheerleading for Brewster and boo-boo-booing of those trying to address the problems will make not a whit of difference, except to take us further from reality and closer to the first division. Wake up.

He speaks Lithuanian as well as Latvian ? (according to Wikipedia (I know ! I know !) the two languages are not "mutually intelligible" which is a phrase I must save for a better day :thumb04: Hence the wink and the Monty Python quote - is your usual sharpness buried in Canadian permafrost, o wise one? :018:

Source for that please, Marty? Never mind, just realised it's the Herald article I hadn't read

Whatever happened to Paatelainen? is he still here or did we release him? Markus was released two or three months ago - he'd been recuperating and training in Finland and wanted to stay there, and the club agreed to it.

This is all you get from the club: http://www.fkventspils.lv/?p=players&id=27 The og was here http://www.baltictimes.com/news/articles/11369/ Very little info at all. Maybe someone should head up the Heathmount with a Lithuanian phrasebook My hovercraft is full of eels!

The way we're playing at the moment Llanelli would be a big challenge. Plus he scored a goal, once. In his own net, so I suppose 'once' is a compliment. Besides, maybe he just needs the right boss to bring out the best in him...

It's like Chinese water torture on here these days. Well no harm in trying to be a little positive ! If only they'd do away with second halfs to games :thumb04: I agree with the sentiment - First Division football was a feck of a lot more enjoyable than what we're seeing just now. It was a 'we're going to score one more than you' attitude which made for some great spectacles. As long as you're not dicing with relegation to the Second (and that seems to be fairly easy to bounce back from) it's tailor-made for crowd-pleasing footy. But it's a bugger of a league to win. You'd get worse odds on Shergar making a come-back than on us bouncing straight back to the SPL. A number of factors, on the pitch and off it - not least Tulloch and their chairman - came together at just the right time to get us there by the skin of our teeth. That perfect alignment might not come for another ten years, if it ever does. Part-time football at the Bught is breathing down your neck. If there's anything to be done to avoid it - and there are clearly some things which can be done - then now is the time.

Monty Python's Isn't It Awfully Nice To Have A ***** (for a boss)

Three players would get us out of the sh!te, and you know fine what they are, and they should have been in place at the start of the season. 1. Replacement for Dods. 2. Replacement for Wyness/Bayne/Dargo. 3. Replacement for Wilson. While you can't blame Brew for taking Dods with him to Tannadice, you can cast a glance over the rest of the list and start to ask questions - unless you have a majority shareholding/seat on the board/sawdust for brains, that is.

No, it's fine, he was just getting rid of the dead wood at Tannadice, and he's doing the same here. It'll be fine. There's no place like home... there's no place like home...

No where near harsh enough. Dumbassery. I think this would be a great thread for the Anything Goes forum but at the risk of becoming a total hypocrite (Black leaving thread) I think we should keep posting suggestions here. (Only because we know this thread is being watched ) Really... that's just pure brewsumptiousness and craigfoolery.

Good post, but I think whatever the method fans mattered if whatever period unless of course you now support ICT Not sure what you're saying there. It appears to be that fans don't matter to ICT - which I'd agree with 102% (just to be ahead of those 101% guys who can't can and do count past 100). My point really is that a guy of Jimmy's age and hue should know fine that, where possible, fans have been shunted to the erse-end of the pecking-order over the last couple of decades, and that slinking to Brewster's aid with what boils down to Brew's own 'Fans are morons' argument just makes him look daft, and isn't likely to endear him to his own fractious crowd. Maybe there's a point of saturation in daftness, as in sun-tan lotion, beyond which you cannot go.

I may be getting all misty-eyed but, by my reckoning, if anything, fans had more influence in the past than they have today. Once upon a time, before sponsorship (and players' wages, and the PFA) really took off, it was the gate that paid the wages and the bills, made up where necessary by a whip-round among the directors. If a factory or yard or pit had problems then the club - as part of the community - did too, and if the support stayed away it wouldn't be long before the folk in charge asked why. The frustrating thing is that it's not long since that was true: there's no wee lad in cloth cap and breeks here, running down the cobbles to the New World Symphony; my dad remembers it well; I remember going round putting up seats after the game as a nipper, with dropped coins going into a pot for the kitty, and sitting on the dressing room floor, singeing my face on a two-bar fire while the the envelopes were passed out. This was lower-league football, getting on thirty years ago. Not long. And the fans were what it was all about. Supporters' Trusts haven't been established as some massive innovation or in response to a deep, untapped need which has only just surfaced; they've come about to address a problem, because some clubs have ended up run by mercenary pillocks who've forgotten whatever interest or roots - if any - they once had in the community and are more interested in schmoozing corporate sponsors to pay daft wage bills than they are in the supporters. The Chelseas, Celtics and Cardiff Citys (umm...) are never going to get back to that community focus, because the communities have changed beyond recognition, but after all the acrimony this outfit went through to become a possible alternative to Dad's Favourite Team (what's *your* religion? ), you'd think reaching out to the supporters would be top priority. Instead what happens? CaleyD gets a Stewardcide Squad sent to stand in front of him for ten minutes, for sitting there with a cardboard sign reading 'Brewster Must Go'. Anyway, Brew's Man in Aberdeen can take comfort from the fact that his pal is now bankrolled and secure until we hit the SFL and his side returns to being the only one in the North that other teams dread playing (cos it's such a long way to go).

Goals, apparently, are the only thing we're lacking. In the words of the next generation, "Duh". When you strip all the experience from the squad you can expect a lean period till the side knits together again (under someone like Craig Levein, possibly) - the only problem is, if you're Hibs or Killie, say, you can get away with it for a while; we can't. It may be that we get some amazing signings in the transfer window and that none of the doom-mongering will have any bearing on our season. Anyway, I'm away to clear that flock of flying pigs off my car.

Mm, I've always thought we'd be better off with Simon Mayo, or maybe even DLT.

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