Strange start to the season!

[Doofer]

After playing 5 matches, drawing 3 and lossing 2, its fair to say its not the best start to the season but it could be worse. The funny thing is ICT are the joint top scorers so far but there are more holes in the defence than there are on scotlands golf courses. Fix the defence and the wins will come. Bet Butcher regrets letting Munro and Tokely leave big time!

[IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER]

Missed Duncan and Black today.

[+DoofersDad]

Whilst County remain unbeaten having still failed to score a goal from open play. They have only concended a single goal - and that against Celtic. Strange indeed. The fact that a lot of results have been strange is clearly evidenced by the fact that Doofer's Mum sits proudly on top of the Prediction League.

[lukemackay]

I think Tokelys getting exposed at right back for county, as for Munro I think he's solid but with him in the team were be playing a completely different brand of football, mainly aimless long balls.

Warren and meekings are both very solid centre halfs I'm undecided on king yet. But think all 3 are good centre halfs the issue for me is the full backs, all season (so far) that's the area which has been exposed most.

[Renegade]

I think Tokelys getting exposed at right back for county

Actually, I've heard the complete opposite, with County making sure cover is always provided when he moves forward. He's also been MOTM more than once this season.

[lukemackay]

I think Tokelys getting exposed at right back for county

Actually, I've heard the complete opposite, with County making sure cover is always provided when he moves forward. He's also been MOTM more than once this season.

So You've spoken to some county fans.

I'm going by the one game I seen the Celtic game where izzaguire got past him at will and Tokely was very exposed. If celtics crossing was better then they'd have won that game by going past Tokely. In my opinion of course.

[CaleyD]

Only strange if you didn't follow ICT during the Pele years when our season starts were a carbon copy of what we've seen so far.....keep the faith.

[IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER]

Who now really gives a toss about Tokely, Munro or Tinkerville - we need to sort our feckin selves out - I would have to say again that today was as much about the midfield cover as the defence and the fact that Butcher is infallible.

[Renegade]

So You've spoken to some county fans.

I've heard from people who've been at their games, yes.

I'd have County's current defence over ICT's any day of the week!

Edited September 2, 2012 by Renegade

[PaderbornCaley]

Only strange if you didn't follow ICT during the Pele years when our season starts were a carbon copy of what we've seen so far.....keep the faith.

Was thinking this myself. It's a pretty much standard Caley Thistle start to the season! Under Pele, we were usually still bottom by October and finished in the top half, not that i'm expecting a top half finish this season!!!

Edited September 2, 2012 by CapitalCaley

[BA]

We're usually slow starters but we've never looked so bad at the start of the season, I'll not mention 2 certain footballers but we missed that level of commitment in our back 4, Shinnie had a nightmare against Humphrey but on his day he is the best winger in the league.

Foran looked good until the 3rd went in then he resorted to the old moaning captain.

Our front 4 looked all over the place, especially Doran, they were forever changing positions without letting anyone know they'd moved there, therefore exposing any position they left vacant

[AJS]

I'm staying realistic, if we beat the teams close to us and pull off the odd surprise result here and there it should be enough.

[Council Juice]

Disappointing result. Our defence is utterly mince meat at the moment. Though I'm going to hold off any strong derision as I've only seen 1 game (V Celtic) and it's a completely new back 4. They need time to gel. Maybe more of a reason why we should have kept Tokely.

[CaleyOwl]

I can't comment too much on the performances as I've only seen a single game this season (on the box) however I'm pretty sure more game time will help gel the back 4, though 5 games in we should be seeing an improvement. It is a long season though, and we're only in September. But if I was offered 11th now, I'd take it :D

[bauhaus]

team is more open this season, large part due to our new style of playing like Barca from the back. Unfortunately some one decided to change the shirts this season, and to be honest I think these new shirts are unlucky and would be willing to burn them and go back to our more unique red n blue stripes.

We all moaned about our lack of clean sheets last season, with lack of threat up front. Well now we are scoring, but our goals against ratio is even worse than last year. With Dons, Hibs, Arabs and Tinks coming up we clearly need to sort it out pronto. Ive never wanted the Tinks to win before, but I am looking at the county st J game in three weeks with trepidation.

[bdu98196]

I'm disapointed that we dont have Bobby Mann and Darren Dodds, but I get over this, as I have done Rossco and Granty - yet still they seem to be brought up on every thread. I think a big loss was actually Golobart as a younger player with more potential and looked good last year on several occasions.

We have to move onwards and forget looking back all the time (although I sense on here this isnt possible) ..........if only we hadn't merged *sigh*

We need Hogg back and the new boys that have come in need to adjust to the SPL - its a step up for all of them and they need to get switched on a lot quicker!!!

[Charles Bannerman]

I think Tokelys getting exposed at right back for county.

Is that not as much an offence in Dingwall as it is in Inverness? :lol:

Seriously, though, from what I've seen of them, that County back four looks absolutely rock solid - except when the manager made a conscious decision to rest three of them against Raith Rovers in the Cup and they conceded four goals.

Edited September 3, 2012 by Charles Bannerman

[IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER]

Apologies but tactics, selection and formation - we deffo have the players if we could only get the system sorted out.

[The Mantis]

Apologies but tactics, selection and formation - we deffo have the players if we could only get the system sorted out.

Back in pre-season I never thought we would get the players to compete with C(o)unty but I feel we have some decent players and can only get better. C(o)unty have a settled team and a great unbeaten record, team spirit, etc but I can't see how they can improve on all those 0-0 draws. Promoted teams usually get found out after the first quarter (except ICT of course, we always do it the other way round).

[lukemackay]

I've always thought a 3-5-2 would work for us.

Simon king or foran as sweeper with warren and Hogg in front of them would be quite a formidable back 3, we could push g.shinnie up into a wing back role and have meekings on the right, both have very good energy, draper and owain holding with a.shinnie in front and Shane and billy up top.

The way we are dominating some games I think this would be the way forward but it obviously wouldn't always work.

-------------Esson

--------------foran

-----warren--------Hogg

Meekings-----------------g.shinnie

---------draper--------otj

-------------a.shinnie

---------McKay------sutherland

[Kingsmills]

I am increasingly concerned about how porous and naive our defence are. In my opinion, both Tokely and Munro are much better and more reliable defenders than any ICT have fielded this season.

Maybe our defence will be more composed once Hogg returns whenever that might be.

[ictchris]

We're usually slow starters but we've never looked so bad at the start of the season, I'll not mention 2 certain footballers but we missed that level of commitment in our back 4, Shinnie had a nightmare against Humphrey but on his day he is the best winger in the league.

Foran looked good until the 3rd went in then he resorted to the old moaning captain.

Our front 4 looked all over the place, especially Doran, they were forever changing positions without letting anyone know they'd moved there, therefore exposing any position they left vacant

I like the way that our forward players are fluid and change positions, I think it's a strength. A great way of creating chances is to 'double-team' your opponent, to outnumber them and having players comfortable changing positions is a key way of doing that.

We need to play football in the right areas of the park and push up - against Celtic (albeit I only saw that game on the telly) we sat so deep it meant there was no chance of us doing anything. I'd be interested to see a chart of where our forward players touched the ball in that game - Doran and Andy Shinnie certainly had to drop into their own half to get teh ball on numerous occasions. The first 30 minutes of the Killie game showed how good we can be when we push up and get the ball to Shinnie, Doran etc in the final third of the pitch.

Pushing high is a risk and I can see why defenders lacking in confidence drop deeper but we do so much better further up the pitch it's worth it. Graeme Shinnie is fantastic pushing on, as he showed in the second half of the Hearts game.

[IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER]

Good points but we had Doran and Shinnie dropping deeper and deeper to pick up the ball and Shane dropping deeper to help out G Shinnie - OTJ went missing in action, Draper was holding midfield himself but was often further forward than Shinnie and Doran - we really were crab like in the midfield passing and movement and nearly all balls hit with a forward momentum where aimed at poor Foran. How many times did we actually get behind their central defenders or past their full backs ?