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SACK THE BOARD


TopSix

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On 02/01/2017 at 10:00 AM, Gringo said:

With all this calling for manager and board heads it kind of makes our 'new' badge with 'Pride of the Highlands' on it seem rather silly now. :blink:

To add my thoughts on the issues, I feel there is a factor here behind the scenes involving cash. when isn't there? The issues surrounding the exit of Yogi and the appointment of the 'cheaper option' in appointing Richie get me thinking there is a cost saving issue here. 

^spot on post, especially about the 'pride of the Highlands' now appearing on the official club badge. Can we stretch to resigning Shane Sutherland? Prolific form. 

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41 minutes ago, ictchris said:

 

Say what you like about Roy McGregor, he knows that it's very difficult to run a full time football team outside the top flight in Scotland so when County look like they are in trouble he makes sure hsi team stays up. 

£1.2 and £1.4million losses in consecutive years using Roy's money may be admirable but not sustainable.However you are correct money = success in football and ICTFC ain't got any! 

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1 hour ago, ictchris said:

Say what you like about Roy McGregor, he knows that it's very difficult to run a full time football team outside the top flight in Scotland so when County look like they are in trouble he makes sure hsi team stays up.  We are going to downsize our way into being the next St Mirren or Dunfermline, both clubs who were established in the top flight but have busted out.  I don't have much confidence in us managing to change the squad in the window either, maybe this guy we've signed from the Leinester Mens Sunday League (corner flag and goalnets cost extra) will shoot us to safety.

Spot on post. Will the board step up to prevent our ominous looking relegation situation? 

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17 minutes ago, ictchris said:

Obviously County aren't sustainable and I'm not saying that they are anything for us to follow.  The point is that relegation could be catastrophic for us and we need to be utterly, completely focused on stopping it.

Absolutely agree. Concerning that some fans think that 'a season in the Championship would be a good thing' (or something along those lines). It would be disastrous. We have to stay in the Premiership. It may be dull but in Scottish Football it is the only place to be.

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I am on the imperative we stay up side, relegation, would be disastrous. I believe Richie can keep the Club up but he is going to need all the support ;he can get.

I said at the outset of his ' reign' that we would have to keep cool heads and that there would be hard times ahead, well these hard times are here now so get your cool heads on, give the Team all the backing you can, this includes the board they are there to ensure the club prospers in every sense of the word.

It is now all down to the players management and supporters

Whatever it takes, even if it is a spell in debt this the time to act, we must not go down.

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57 minutes ago, TopSix said:

What fans use to buy tickets, merchandise and play the centenary club. I believe it's called money. 

The next logical question in what could be a very long, drawn out exchange would appear to be "And where is that suddenly going to come from?" But to cut a long exchange short, I would imagine you would propose some means of deriving more cash from tickets, merchandise and the centenary club and also wealthy individuals gifting the club money in order to subsidise what are otherwise fundamentally loss making activities.

In the first category, I am in little doubt that the Board has already been doing all within its power to maximise these and other sources of earned income. I'm just not sure where the magic wand is going to come from suddenly to create hike in this. The market has probably already been drawn upon to the maximum extent possible. And we've visited the latter case already. The expectation that wealthy individuals will or should subsidise football activities from their own funds simply is not a reasonable one and would not happen in any other line of business. But still, this does happen in football, although such arrangements are positively Faustian. Principally they only last for as long as the benefactor is prepared to keep throwing money at the situation and when that dries up, the consequences are devastating. I need only mention Gretna, Rangers and Nairn County for starters. But yet, to date, Caley Thistle's fundamentally loss making status over the years has indeed been alleviated at some points in this way. These include interventions by Ian Fraser, Tullochs and also the six figure sum donated more recently by the Muirfield Mills group. One other solvency measure has been the sale of the Social Club. However you always get back to the situation the club is again at. The overwhelming reason, as is the case across the game, is that the player market is so crazily inflated (a process encouraged by large donations) that wages are hugely out of proportion with their recipients' true market value. That is the absolutely fundamental anomaly of professional football.... the elephant in the dressing room.

So what do you do? Cut the wage bill to balance the books? The system then responds by leaving you only with players who will ensure a fall down the leagues and further reductions in earnings. Cut ticket prices to get more people into your ground? The system then responds with an insufficiently elastic demand which at best means no increase in ticket revenues but more likely a decrease, so again you are worse off. It's a bit like the Battle of the Atlantic during WW2. There's a big area in the middle which your defence forces can't reach rom either side and ICT, despite the Board's best endeavours, is looking right into it at the moment.

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You have overlooked some factors Charles.

•There is no rent to pay for the stadiums, this frees up additional cash.

•Having the ground as collateral opens doors for funding ( not really a necessity just now but an option all the same)

If all the other teams around us are playing out of their skins then we need to worry but they aren't. Fans of other clubs have also been asking questions of their managers and their backers at some stage or another. It's now swung round to our club and it's just one to take on the chin and get on with things.

The players need something to play for whether it's the manager, the club, the fans, family, pride or even their job, they have to play for something. Not with a sense of desperation but with tenacity and strength. The teams around us are beatable and they will be beaten. Doing the homework on the opponent's, their tactics and their players would help as we are getting caught out.( Might be a job for the media team, looking for the weaknesses in other teams, if it doesn't happen already, with input from the injured players) :tongueincheek:

We have a good team, if the team can believe that then we are half way there.

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Sorry, but can't agree that the board are doing a good job. We have had probably had the best 5 years in our history yet over this period we have stagnated. If ever there was a time for investment and for us to push on this was it. Players contracts have woefully been mismanaged, with highly marketable players leaving for nothing  being a common occurrence. Unfortunately off the field has seen little investment  during the last 12 years either, we are still using a portakabin as a ticket office and club shop albeit a club shop that has no official merchandise to sell. The least said about the shambles that  is JD sports and the contract we signed the better. 

With crowds now hovering below 3000 these are worrying times and I believe  new ideas are needed.  

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9 hours ago, 12th Man said:

You have overlooked some factors Charles.

•There is no rent to pay for the stadiums, this frees up additional cash.

•Having the ground as collateral opens doors for funding ( not really a necessity just now but an option all the same)

 

12th Man... I've taken that into account but what we are talking about here is finance to help stave off relegation within the next four or five months. The Tulloch offer to donate the three stands to the club is still no more than an offer. All we know about so far is a single, exploratory meeting between the parties. So, unless actual events are way ahead of the public record, any agreement to transfer, IF there's going to be an agreement, never mind physical transfer and discontinuation of the rent, would appear to be some way away yet. The reason for my capital IF is simply a brief, throw away remark at the AGM (I think from Kenny) which seemed to hint that the accountants may be suggesting that the move may not be as unqualified a benefit as it seems. There is, however, the potential at some point in the future for a transfer to secure annual cost savings possibly in the ballpark of £100,000, or more than 2% of turnover.

Regarding the possible "collateral" road you mention, these stands may actually be what you meant by "the ground". So I think we should clarify that this offer appears only to be of the bricks and mortar of the North, South and Main Stands. The market value of these structures in terms of collateral against any borrowing is quite unclear, but some time ago David Sutherland was quoted as suggesting that the market value of the fabric of a football stadium was unlikely to be very great. However the big question here is how prudent it would be to go back down the road of building up a debt which, 17 years ago, nearly closed the club down. What the Tulloch offer conspicuously DOESN'T mention is the land. That belongs to the Common Good Fund who have leased it out until 2093. I am not at all clear as to who actually holds that lease. Conventional wisdom originally suggested it was the ICT Charitable Trust. However that theory needs a second visit, now that it emerges that the Main Stand is also Tullochs' to give away and not the property of the Trust, which appeared to acquire it around 2001 as part of the deal which absolved the club of that earlier debt.

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10 hours ago, 12th Man said:

You have overlooked some factors Charles.

•There is no rent to pay for the stadiums, this frees up additional cash.

•Having the ground as collateral opens doors for funding ( not really a necessity just now but an option all the same)

If all the other teams around us are playing out of their skins then we need to worry but they aren't. Fans of other clubs have also been asking questions of their managers and their backers at some stage or another. It's now swung round to our club and it's just one to take on the chin and get on with things.

The players need something to play for whether it's the manager, the club, the fans, family, pride or even their job, they have to play for something. Not with a sense of desperation but with tenacity and strength. The teams around us are beatable and they will be beaten. Doing the homework on the opponent's, their tactics and their players would help as we are getting caught out.( Might be a job for the media team, looking for the weaknesses in other teams, if it doesn't happen already, with input from the injured players) :tongueincheek:

We have a good team, if the team can believe that then we are half way there.

Having the ground as collateral, even if that were the case, would not open up any additional avenues for funding. Long gone are the days when Scottish football clubs could borrow commercially, whether they are offer security or not. No bad thing in my view, forcing clubs to live within their means which is something our board has proved adept at all our history with the exception of the grossly overspending regime under Doug McGillivray which brought us within days of administration or worse.

Yes, it's imperative we do what we can to turn things around and remain in the Premiership but not at the expense of prejudicing the long term future of the club.

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If the team wasn't sitting bottom of the league I'm positive there wouldn't be the same furore surrounding the performance of the board.

It's very easy to argue that over a 4 year period where we managed successive top 6 finishes, two cup finals, one Scottish Cup win and European qualification we were really punching above our weight in terms of club infrastructure, fan base, budget etc etc. Surely this comes down to good work on both management and board sides. Terry Butcher had a very good model for player recruitment and left behind an excellent core for Yogi.

Now obviously we consistently suffered from losing players due to contracts running down and therefore not being able to maximise revenue from that. Partly the board has to take responsibility in terms of contract length and structure but often it's down to the players not wanting to talk, or the manager wanting players to earn new contracts, which in itself produces good performances which attracts interest. 

Over the last 12 months several players have been signed on or rewarded with new longer deals. But now the players aren't really performing, so their value isn't maximised. So the board, have moved to rectify one issue (with what I'm sure would be approved and encouraged by the manager) and in doing so have possibly created a different issue. They can't really win. 

I'm under no illusions that last season showed that we are very much a team in transition now. I said as much at the time. We've lost a sizeable amount of key players (Shinnie, Mckay, Watkins for starters), others will leave this summer and others are probably needing to move on anyway. 

Frankly it shows what a good job Terry Butcher and his team were able to do season on season with player recruitment after losing Hayes, Rooney etc. They're boldness in moving players like Munro and Tokely on, both unpopular moves at the time but allowed us to move upwards. 

I think there does need to be a sense of realism around the club. We will peak and trough. Ebb and flow. Our size and budgetary confinement dictate that. Even big clubs struggle to replace a golden generation of players.

The vast majority of match day revenue I'm sure goes towards game running costs and club costs. Wages etc. There will be very little left after day to day expenses. Whether the club are able to maximise merch and sponsorship revenue any more is a different question but one I do not know the answer to. Considering the league body went over a year without a sponsor shows that in general marketing within the Scottish game isn't that easy and I suspect it's hard to get a big deal for a club with a fan base of 3000. That's small fry to most advertisers. They also probably don't really see us as a crowd puller in terms of TV viewing so that has an impact also. Sky used to put out some embarrassing viewing figures for Scottish games when they had the most live coverage, some involving us. Sponsors see that. 

So are the board perfect, no. But I don't think they've done a terrible job. I'm sure other businessmen could do better. But they're not forming an orderly queue. And it stands to reason they're probably looking at bigger things than ICT

Is the manager doing a great job? No. Let's be honest. We're bottom of the league and his selection is sometimes questionable, however I think he's working hard to turn things around and he's been very unfortunate with injuries in a small squad and questionable decisions haven't helped. He's new to management and needs help. 

Are the players doing their bit? Some are, some have been poor. But that's not surprising when you're bottom. Confidence will not be high. That too has an impact. It will take a bit of magic or luck to change that along with hard graft. Are all players willing to do that?Remains to be seen.

What can the fans do? Continue to attend, buy merch, play lottery etc. Club needs the money more than ever. Get behind the team. For a small community club we can be incredibly hostile at times. Stop looking for people to blame. Unless you have a solution. It doesn't help.

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21 minutes ago, iamthecaptain1 said:

Frankly it shows what a good job Terry Butcher and his team were able to do season on season with player recruitment after losing Hayes, Rooney etc.

Another very good post Captain and I'll highlight just the quoted passage. It has become increasingly apparent that much of the success of the Butcher era, which had enough momentum to provide Yogi with a team that reached Europe and won the Scottish Cup, was a result of the quality of the players he recruited - despite the constraints of a budget which was as generous as the Board could afford but was still pretty small by Premiership standards. The anomalous figure here is Steve Marsela who appeared to be given the credit for much of the recruitment but who, notwithstanding, had the reputation of being quite a destabilising and disruptive influence within the club. I know that a number of fans thought he was wonderful, but speak to better informed sources and you would be given a radically different picture. I am sure Butcher's contacts must have been very influential here, but we also have this seemingly hugely influential role played by an extremely controversial figure. It's a strange one.

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A small community club, sorry but to my mind that is doing ourselves a massive injustice. We are an established top tier club and should think of ourselves as one.

If we accept second best that's what we will get. The balls up with JD Sports and Carbrini was amateurish and I wonder if it was either Motherwell or St Johnstone in our position the outcome would have been the same.  

 

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10 minutes ago, forresjags said:

 

A small community club, sorry but to my mind that is doing ourselves a massive injustice. We are an established top tier club and should think of ourselves as one.

If we accept second best that's what we will get. The balls up with JD Sports and Carbrini was amateurish and I wonder if it was either Motherwell or St Johnstone in our position the outcome would have been the same.  

 

The situation with JD was not unique to ICTFC....it was every club they supply.

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