STFU

11 minutes ago, forresjags said:

Cannot afford McKay to be playing 2 yard sideways passes. 

No idea why he has dropped so deep been doing it for weeks and it's so f***ing frustrating.

 

Ferguson in the P&J this week saying that's where he's being played so Billy is doing as he's instructed.

If even a fraction of the chat about the state of our finances is true then we'll be needing every penny to pay wages at the end of the month.

We've had some of our better games/results against teams who've come at us and Hamilton seem like the kind of team who'll do that.

Bring it on!

5 hours ago, IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER said:

What team would YOU start at Hamilton?

The women's team.

4 hours ago, old caley girl said:

It's to prevent abuse of system sadly

Are we the only club who does this?

1 hour ago, Satan said:

FTFY.

It didn't need fixing as I was deliberately avoiding the 'we can't afford to replace them' or 'well who else is going to do it' merry-go-round which gets in the way of anything happening.

Doing nothing means nothing changes.

One question for those trying to defend or excuse those who've overseen the running of the club the last few years.

Regardless of where it started and who's to blame, do you trust or think that Morrison and Gardiner are capable of digging the club out of the mess it is in right now?

I think it's more important that the team turn up than the fans.

2 hours ago, snorbens_caleyman said:

The point was that once you are outside of the top flight and don't have a well-connected big name like Butcher, then, certainly in Inverness, football revenue alone is nowhere near enough to get back into the top flight.  So money has to be found elsewhere.

Do you have any constructive ideas for recovery?

We've managed promotion to the top flight twice before without battery farms and the like.

Since 2017 we have amassed losses in the region of £3 million (not including what is being hidden on the 2022/23 accounts yet to be filed and whatever it is for 2023/24 - it could easily be topping £5 Million in total to date) chasing that for a third time.

If that level of spending can't even keep us comfortably in the Championship then I would constructively suggest that the first thing we need to do is change the leadership.

12 hours ago, ictchris said:

I don't think you can pinpoint an exact moment where it all went wrong but I think it's somewhere around 2012.  We got relegated in 2009, maybe slightly unfortunately with a record points total at that time, and then we gave Butcher leeway to rebuild and he did a great job.  He then built more and created the cup winning squad that Yogi inherited, the zenith of the club up to this point.

However, during those years when we had regular SPL football, a manageable financial situation (easily recoverable losses, external investment, cup runs, Europe money, transfer fees, money for managers etc) what investments did we make off the park?  What improvements were made to the infrastructure of the club, both in terms of facilities for the fans and players?  None.  We still train at Fort George as far as I can see, the ground hasn't been touched or improved in years, and is now starting to fall apart.  We don't have any facilities at our ground like a proper bar or decent food or excellent hospitality. 

You can extend this to off the pitch too and this is one reason why I don't entirely blame Morrison and Gardiner for what's happened to the club.  We generally operated OK in the top flight, the losses were coverable when they happened and some years we made money.  However, we didn't do anything to generate off the pitch revenue, something that coudl safeguard the clubs future.  Gardiner and Morrison have taken a lot of stick for the concerts and the battery farm but they've had to do this because there was nothing there before.  We didn't even control the land that the stadium is on, IIRC, and were paying money to another company for it.  Eventually every club of our size gets relegated and we completely failed to plan for that in any sense - on the pitch, financially, from a business standpoint.

If  people remember the summer after we went down it was chaos, we had three different Chairmen, we were releasing players via social media, putting our press releases every day (Twitter account liked porn - statement, Duncan Shearer released by text - statement).  It was clear no-one know what to do and really no-one has known what to do since.

Everything that's happened to the club since stems from that failure.  The Chairman and the CEO are trying to do positive things but failing because they are hamstrung by issues out of their control as well as their own incompetence.  In the meantime the club throws huge money on players and managers, makes massive losses but is at the same time massively penny pinching.  Watching the Montrose game via their stream I recall the Covid season where we had one of the worst streaming offerings in the entire league.  other clubs have kept streaming and probably make a trickle of cash from it but we huffily insisted ours was fine and now don't do it at all.

The only way I can see this improving is if an outside party buys the club and is willing to invest proper money in it, which I can't see happening or the current backers underwrite another few million quid and we finally manage to claw our way out of the situation we are in, we flukily get a managerial appointment spot on.  I can't see either happening to be honest - I fully expect to be relegated and to spend a few years in League One.

So those who kept the club operating on a fairly firm financial footing and delivered the club's greatest successes are the villains?

Those who thought they could do better and squeezed their predecessors out before delivering the biggest losses the club has ever seen with no plan or means to underwrite the various high risk schemes and who have threatened the very existence of the club are to be pitied for it?

The current regime have talked a lot about how vital it is for us to be playing in the top flight in order to balance the books but have put more focus on chasing various failed off field ventures.  They even managed to totally screw up the concerts which had previously been a huge success for the club.  By trying to chase it all they have failed on every front and brought the club to it's lowest point ever.  We are a mess on the park, financially and are more detached from the fanbase than ever.

1 hour ago, Fraz said:

Ferguson's musings on the game tomorrow. 

Getting the excuses in early about the plastic pitch.

2 minutes ago, IBM said:

Robby I just copied the info from the email I got from the club to clarify it for you.  As far as I remember our season tickets have not covered us for cup games or playoff games.

I don't think they ever have but that's a club rule and not an SPFL rule on this occasion 

12 minutes ago, robbylad said:

Only for premiership/championship playoffs

It would seem that the club are talking bollocks then.  Maybe confused by the rules from our participation in previous play offs at the other end of the table and thought as I did.

22 minutes ago, robbylad said:

For our home tie the club states as per spfl rules, season tickets aren't valid. I wonder if someone could clarify this as, if you check Hamiltons website,  they say season tickets are valid for their play off game.

Like cup competitions the ticket income is pulled into a pot and split (I don't recall how the split is done).  Any club offering free entry for season ticket holders will have to pay an amount equal to what they would have taken from sales into the pot.

Links Park is a football stadium in Montrose, Scotland. It has been the home ground of Montrose F.C. since 1887. Links Park was opened in 1887 on land rented from the 'Auld Kirk'. To help finance the new ground, Montrose F.C. rented the pitch out for circuses and livestock grazing.

-------------------

We've tried everything else at our place maybe this is worth a go?

6 minutes ago, Yngwie said:

Never been to Links Park. It’s an artificial pitch isn’t it?

Yup 4G

6 hours ago, DoofersDad said:

A surprisingly large crowd for this game.  Brilliant vocal support from all the youngsters in section D too.  But where the f**k have you been all season?

Priced out of attending every other week and took advantage of the £5 ticket offer?

5 hours ago, DoofersDad said:

I think what we deserve is to stay in the Championship.  When big Dunc arrived at the club, we had played 6 games in the league and had only 1 point.  If the league table had started when he arrived, then we would have finished 5th.  Given the number of injuries we have had over the season, that's not too bad a record overall.  I've said before that Ferguson's style of play has often been a pretty hard watch, but if we can just find a bit of spark up front, then there is no reason why we can't be competitive and entertaining in the Championship next year.  If we do go down, then I think we have the potential to bounce straight back under Ferguson.   I do think we have enough to get through the play-offs though and hopefully we will do so with a good support at the home games.

It will be interesting to see how many Season Ticket holders will shell out for tickets for the play offs.

7 hours ago, Yngwie said:

The opposite is true. The best seasons in our history occurred when Muirfield Mills were active and putting money in, from 2012 to 2019. We’ve been declining ever since.

They bought £250k of shares in 2012 but were pretty much dormant until 2015 when they then started making moves to take control of the club once it was apparent that something special was afoot that season.

The remainder of their 'investments' came in the form of covering the substantial losses they oversaw between 2017 and 2019.

So I stand by my view that their appearance/involvement marked the beginning of our decline.

1 hour ago, buckett said:

Wasn't Airdrie that frcked us. We did a pretty good job of that ourselves over the season.

 

This!

1 hour ago, ICTPaisley said:

Where does everyone think it went wrong then? 

This season?  It went wrong when we started with Dodds in charge and never looked like improving much when we chose to chase the headlines with his 'big name' replacement.

Before that the clubs decline on and off the park seems to coincide with Muirfield Mills appearing on the scene.

Plans for a battery storage facility at Essich.  Blows a bit of a hole in the argument that Fairways was the only site available locally where they could get access to the grid.

2 minutes ago, The Mantis said:

Just watched this. Not sure why he thinks it’s out of our hands. I’ve been looking for highlights as I’d like to see some of those saves from Dabrowski again, but no joy. Can’t make the next two games so that’s the end of the season for me if we finish 8th, but easily one of the best performances of the season I’ve witnessed and certainly the best at home.

It was out of our hands at the time of the interview.  Results on the Saturday went in our favour putting it back in our hands again.

42 minutes ago, buckett said:

I agree with your vision and see Div 1 as a great opportunity to blood the youngsters and form a squad of mostly Highlanders, hopefully capable of promotion to the Championship and beyond.

Trouble is, for most of them, the Championship is just a level too high so Div 1 is a better opportunity for 1st team football.

There's something awfully false about following a team of Englishmen, foreigners and Central-belters, supposedly representing your town, when your own town/area can't produce a team capable of playing at that level. Just look at the cup-winning squad of 2015 - how many Invernessians were in that team? How many Scotsmen?

I'm not so sure it's just to do with having a squad full of local born players or not.  The guys from that cup winning squad were mostly committed to the club/area and many of the non indigenous players still live locally so there's an obvious affinity.  Two of them are at the club now.

Fans also felt far more connected as they had greater opportunity to meet and spend time with them.