Kelty Hearts @ Savage Stadium

[+old caley girl]

13 minutes ago, Starscape said:

Yeah, although, we've a threadbare inexperienced squad. With a fuller squad, we were second bottom before the 15 points. Without the penalty, we would be easily in the promotion playoffs. We've been pushing for goals but not managing to score. People have been saying we should be more cautious. They tried but we just don't have enough players to just tinker. Mckay can't score and there is no other strikers. We could try centre backs and wingers. Probably will need to but that's not a real solution. Personally, I feel we should just go back to previous. Yes, we couldn't score but as long as we create chances, we still have a route to 3 points. Playing possession with barely any players is not something ICT can do.

The whole squad, including management, have accumulated more points than we should have expected. Let's stick with what we have been doing. It's part of the game to criticise after a bad show. We've still got a better than evens chance of getting out of this. At the end of the season, let's see get any rightful seething out and then appreciate that finishing one above the play-offs is success after being fined the equivalent of 5 wins.

Totally agree with this especially the last paragraph. When we went into admin would we have taken been where we are today with destiny still in our own hands? Of course we would. For the record that game had 0-0 written all over it if Musa had stayed on. Poor Symion is just not ready and I blame DF for allowing us to start this season (before admin) with one suitable keeper. 

Another issue I need to mention is the negativity and pure self entitlement at end of home games. Players came over at full time yesterday to clap crowd. Dammed if they do and dammed if they don't! Several grown men shouting abuse at players some of whom are still teenagers. I get the frustration but what is this meant to achieve? Can we calming down and get behind the team to get them over the line. Thank goodness we are away next week. Home games seem toxic of late. 

[bdu98196]

Lack of squad depth, lack of ability to change shape and personnel and our inability to break teams down at home again. Everyone in the league comes to us wanting a point so park the bus and time waste where eventually we either give away soft goals or get countered. Again yesterday we saw a repeat of Alloa and Annan where we could play forever and not score. We are too easy to play against at home.

While lack of options especially up front is hurting us, so is no plan B, we continue in the same predictable ways all the time you can see our play becoming more frustrated and ragged. While SK has done a good job, if Savage is expecting promotion next season and not wanting extended league 1 football it will not be lost on him that there is a decision to make around whether SK can bring that even with a better squad.
 

[Yngwie]

1 hour ago, bdu98196 said:

Lack of squad depth, lack of ability to change shape and personnel and our inability to break teams down at home again.

Indeed. 0-2 v Kelty and even worse, the 0-1 home to a threadbare Annan side (that I think had 2 over 40s and another 38yo).
The constant in both those dismal results was our ‘nil’. The loss of Bavidge has left us with a squad devoid of any goal scoring strikers.

[STFU]

1 hour ago, Howdenender said:

I often find myself in agreement with you, but in this case to say the facts show that Kell has done a great job is surely stretching it a little? The recent facts are that Kelty Hearts, who have no money, Montrose, who have no money, and Annan, similarly penniless, have all left Inverness with three points in their pockets! Despite these somewhat desperate performances we may still avoid a relegation playoff, due in large part to the poor standards of others.

I don't think it is stretching it and a quick look at previous managers shows that his PPG is up there with the best and better than many.  John Hughes in 2014/15 is the last time we saw it that high and only in promotion seasons prior was it higher.

I've deliberately not mentioned other factors in this (but others have) because it's tough to quantify and whilst we can't judge his ability to put a squad together etc., we are seeing his ability to get much more out of a squad than his predecessor and many other 'good' managers in our history.

Not denying there hasn't been disappointing performances and results in there too but that's part of football and judging managers on individual games and not overall results during their tenure is a slippery slope.

I think he's already delivered the near impossible by going into the last 3 games with hope of league survival.  When he delivers it that will be the miracle.

I'd be really disappointed if Kell was removed at the end of the season and think it would be unjust.

Weirdly I think he'd be getting less criticism if we hadn't got anywhere near 8th place because people's expectations wouldn't have been raised so high.

The ultimate case of being the victim of your own success?

[Robert]

Unless Alan Savage has had a major change of mind since he announced the terms of his bid, Scott Kellacher is not going anywhere, nor are Billy McKay, Charlie Christie, Andrew Benjamin or Grassa.

He said they would remain part of his team.

Notwithstanding that, there’s no way we should be questioning Kel’s future given how he’s got safety within our own hands. 

Edited Sunday at 12:12 PM by Robert

[big cherly]

2 hours ago, Starscape said:

Yeah, although,

And ifs and buts!   We will certainly see Kells see out the remaining (let’s hope 3) games. No question here and he deserves this for what he’s achieved to date. But let’s not be restricted or blind to ‘more of the same’ of Saturday’s game and tactics against Kelty. As I mentioned earlier (half time), why 11 ICT players in our own 18 yard box for at least a couple of corners? No outlet with at least one striker on the half way line to fight for any clearance (hoof) upfield. Surely that (11 men in box) was not a tactic? If it was then you would hope Kells or Billy would see it wasn’t working and effect a change next time round!
As the game developed it was clear Kelty (a lot better than I expected {or a few here give credit to } in there set up and ability to break quickly), were able to transfer from a defensive position to attacking with players who could run, carry and pass the ball quickly. Danny and Remi whilst good in the air have no speed whatsoever and are exposed when faced with players of pace. 
I get it Kells wanted to go for a win, but it would needed to be an own goal on Saturday for us. Dropping a player behind D&R to lock up shop IMO would (should) have been made as a tactical decision. 
Hindsight’s a great thing and prepared to give Kells the benefit of the doubt here. Won’t be so forgiving if we repeat the same mistakes and don’t learn for the remaining games. 
bc

Edited Sunday at 12:18 PM by big cherly

[CELTIC1CALEY3]

Even Charlie got it wrong this week by being quoted as saying ' Charlie Christie revealed Caley Thistle have already started recruitment and work to shape their squad for PROMOTION next season'.

Until we are safe. history shows showing respect to opponents is the best way out of a crisis. 

[tm4tj]

Maybe he meant promotion from league2

[bishbashbosh]

10 hours ago, STFU said:

The point if my last couple of posts was to say that the facts show Kell has done a great job and the suggestion to the contrary was uncalled for.

You then have 3 paragraphs saying the facts don't show how well Kell is doing and the 10 games from before he took over mean nothing and you then immediately follow it with a comment saying people can't deny how well he is doing.

Yours sincerely,

Mr Confused

What a load of tosh.

where did I say the facts don’t show sk doing well. Apples and oranges I said. If you are going to compare both managers you can’t do it 10 games against 23 games. 

cant deny sk has done well is me talking, I don’t speak for other “people”.

i think you and I will have to agree to disagree. In future I won’t respond to any of your posts so I can’t say anything that is uncalled for.

if I have caused you any distress or hurt I Apologise.

ps…. You forgot the .com after mr confused.

 

[STFU]

The 10 vs 23 games is why I used average PPG.  If you want to go back and include 23 games for Ferguson then his average is even worse and only strengthens the case for Kell.

I don't take anything said online to heart so you can sleep easy and not worry about upsetting me. Feel free to disagree with me any time you like and I will continue to do the same.

[CaleyD]

Do we even know if Scott wants to continue beyond the end of the season?

[CaleyTennis85]

7 hours ago, CaleyD said:

Do we even know if Scott wants to continue beyond the end of the season?

That is actually a good question but I would suspect he will .

[bishbashbosh]

On 4/14/2025 at 3:15 PM, STFU said:

The 10 vs 23 games is why I used average PPG.  If you want to go back and include 23 games for Ferguson then his average is even worse and only strengthens the case for Kell.

I don't take anything said online to heart so you can sleep easy and not worry about upsetting me. Feel free to disagree with me any time you like and I will continue to do the same.

Ok, you hooked me one more time and I bite. 
Kellacher 23 games in league 1. adding 13 CHAMPIONSHIP games to Ferguson to give him 23, well, yet again, comparing apples and oranges.

Too boring now. End of dialogue, from me.

have a nice day.

Edited Wednesday at 03:29 PM by bishbashbosh

[Charles Bannerman]

1 hour ago, bishbashbosh said:

Ok, you hooked me one more time and I bite. 
Kellacher 23 games in league 1. adding 13 CHAMPIONSHIP games to Ferguson to give him 23, well, yet again, comparing apples and oranges.

Too boring now. End of dialogue, from me.

have a nice day.

I think you also need to take into account that Ferguson v Kellacher can’t be a like with like comparison in that all of SK’s games have been with a squad that’s been depleted and impoverished by Administration. Fair enough, some of DF’s games were in the championship, but all 23 of SK’s have been under very constrained circumstances.

[CaleyD]

19 hours ago, bishbashbosh said:

Ok, you hooked me one more time and I bite. 
Kellacher 23 games in league 1. adding 13 CHAMPIONSHIP games to Ferguson to give him 23, well, yet again, comparing apples and oranges.

Too boring now. End of dialogue, from me.

have a nice day.

Out of interest, how would you compare the performance of both managers?

I agree that STFU's method isn't ideal, but I can't think of a method that is better suited, and you are kinda making an argument that says managers can never be compared.  I was once an expert at digging myself into these kinds of holes 

[big cherly]

4 hours ago, CaleyD said:

Out of interest, how would you compare the performance of both managers?

Apples/oranges, what leagues, how long over what period, what injuries/ limitations; endless parameters that allows everyone to be able to come up with an answer that suits their point.
- You add DF time at Forest Green to make his record worse of example. 

Absolutely meaningless for me as any prediction of how we will perform next season (and in what league) cannot /should not be based on DF or SK’s past football results. ICT will have I expect a large turnover of players at the end of this season and will be setting their stall for promotion from that league in one season. 
Looking forward to seeing what emerges at the end of the season from AS on how he proposes to take the club forward. His communications will be vital / important at the outset I feel to provide the fans and any interested investor / business with a clear vision and timetable to join the merry ship ‘AS New Beginnings’.

bc

Edited yesterday at 03:19 PM by big cherly

[Scotty]

The one thing about statistics is that 97% of them can be skewed to prove the point that you are trying to make.

If someone wants to make Duncan Ferguson look like our best manager ever then they might mention that he only lost 9 of 31 games at home and had a positive goal difference, or that he had a 11 game spell where we only lost twice in October 2023 - November 2023 but the full record speaks for itself. 58 games, comprising 17 wins, 21 draws and 20 losses. If you look at the fixture list, it is the draws, and the lacklustre manner of those draws that were the killer. 

Scott on the other hand has now managed 24 games. and has won 12, lost 9 and drawn only 3. We have less draws, but at this early stage he has lost more (percentage wise) than DF. He has also got 12 wins in only 24 games so a win % of 50% which is best of any manager we have had. You could argue any of these statistics to favour Scott or to discredit him. 

 

I quickly threw all the numbers into Excel so they could be compared side-by-side. The numbers take no account of what league we were in, how much money we had or whether we were in admin like now. These are caveats the statisticians can put on any figure to dispute it. I have also ranked the managers based on their percentage of wins, draws, non-wins, non-losses, and PPG figure. It should be noted that the PPG figure is also subjective as I did not have time to deep dive into the record of each manager and see how many of their games were league or cup so I awarded 3pts for a win regardless of competition and 1pt for a draw and simply divided that by total games.

 

After getting those numbers together I ranked each of our managers on their individual career records 1-12 to give them a total number of points based on where they are in the rankings for each column. I then ranked all of the managers based on their rank points in each of those categories to see who finished top. The lower the number of points in this case the better.

Scott Kellacher is currently top based on that small sample of his games, with Robbo and Paterson behind. Richie Foran finishes last with Fergie just behind him. I would argue that this seems to match the sentiment over the years on here and as a new manager SK is likely higher than where he will end up as he will find his level and likely drop down over a larger sample of matches, but its a pretty good start to be fair.

Yes he is not in the Championship or the Premiership like other managers before him, but no-other manager has had the squad constraints for administration so the playing field is as  level as it can be I think. 

 

Like all statistics - you are free to agree, disagree or think they are full of ****

 

 

 

 

[Scotty]

...and in a good example of skewing the numbers ... if I add a ranking for goals per game for and against, as a potential indicator of 'entertainment value', it drops SK down to 2nd= place with Robbo overtaking him and Pele coming up equal. 

 

[big cherly]

1 hour ago, Scotty said:

and in a good example of skewing the numbers ... if I add a ranking for goals per game for and against, as a potential indicator of 'entertainment', it drops SK down to 3rd place with Robbo and Pele overtaking him. 

 

 

What if we get relegated this season? SK’s stats will still show him a super manager. Absolutely meaningless to me but again it proves the point you want to push! 

bc

Edited 23 hours ago by big cherly

[Scotty]

The surprise for me is Billy Dodds. He is higher than I expected on this.  

This is the rank based on the points system i mentioned above and I might have put Dodds lower and Charlie higher had I been doing this in my head but overall its pretty close I think. Brewster's 2nd term harmed his record or he would also have been higher. When I look at them in this order, the biggest stat that looks consistent for them to be in this order is the win %

 

 

[Scotty]

3 minutes ago, big cherly said:

What if we get relegated this season? SK’s stars will still show him a super manager. Absolutely meaningless to me but again it proves the point you want to push! 

bc

I have no point to push. I work with stats every day of the week and the one thing about stats is that, outside of the extremes, you can usually make them say whatever you want. I have no agenda to push for or against SK. I find his press conferences a breath of fresh air. I like that we seem to be winning more games under him, and have clawed back 15 points but I am also concerned that we have seemingly thrown away opportunities to grab points in winnable games without any real explanation why we blew hot one week and so cold the next.   

The stats suggest he is doing as good a job as many other managers, but you are right, it will all be for nought if we are relegated. His stats down a division are also not necessarily likely to be super high as we will have lower quality players in that lower division ... just like as we rise the divisions we have higher quality. Steve Paterson's stats over 325 games were all from the lower divisions, never the Premiership. Robbo had a lot of Premiership games but he also had higher level players. You will NEVER have a completely 'apples for apples' comparison for any team that has faced relegations, promotions, embargoes or any other kind of situation. 

What I personally take from the stats, and you are free to take your own conclusions from them, is that SK has made a good start in several areas but also that it is a small sample size compared to others. Until he reaches say 50 games the stats are open to interpretation.  What does seem apparent however is that Richie Foran (46 games) and Duncan Ferguson (58 games) were by far our worst managers based on multiple KPIs. 

[Yngwie]

1 hour ago, Scotty said:

...and in a good example of skewing the numbers ... if I add a ranking for goals per game for and against, as a potential indicator of 'entertainment value', it drops SK down to 2nd= place with Robbo overtaking him and Pele coming up equal. 

 

Interesting to see all these stats and rankings.

Big Dunc being worst for goals per game is something that we didn’t need any stats for!

[+DoofersDad]

Given that we play all sides twice both home and away, another way of comparing the records of SK and DF is to look at how we did with SK in charge of the corresponding fixtures of the 10 games DF was in charge of at the beginning of the season.  For example, Ist game of the season was a 1-1 draw at Dumbarton, but when we played them away 2nd time round we won 2-0.

So DF's record in his 10 league games this season was: W2, D6, L2, F7, A 7, Pts 12.

In the corresponding fixtures later on, SK's record was:  W5, D2, L3, F14, A 11, Pts 17.

That's probably as good a like for like comparison as we can get, although there will be loads of caveats here as well, no doubt.  You can draw your own conclusions, but I would be very happy to see Scott as the manager next season.

[Charles Bannerman]

3 hours ago, Scotty said:

The one thing about statistics is that 97% of them can be skewed to prove the point that you are trying to make.

If someone wants to make Duncan Ferguson look like our best manager ever then they might mention that he only lost 9 of 31 games at home and had a positive goal difference, or that he had a 11 game spell where we only lost twice in October 2023 - November 2023 but the full record speaks for itself. 58 games, comprising 17 wins, 21 draws and 20 losses. If you look at the fixture list, it is the draws, and the lacklustre manner of those draws that were the killer. 

Scott on the other hand has now managed 24 games. and has won 12, lost 9 and drawn only 3. We have less draws, but at this early stage he has lost more (percentage wise) than DF. He has also got 12 wins in only 24 games so a win % of 50% which is best of any manager we have had. You could argue any of these statistics to favour Scott or to discredit him. 

 

I quickly threw all the numbers into Excel so they could be compared side-by-side. The numbers take no account of what league we were in, how much money we had or whether we were in admin like now. These are caveats the statisticians can put on any figure to dispute it. I have also ranked the managers based on their percentage of wins, draws, non-wins, non-losses, and PPG figure. It should be noted that the PPG figure is also subjective as I did not have time to deep dive into the record of each manager and see how many of their games were league or cup so I awarded 3pts for a win regardless of competition and 1pt for a draw and simply divided that by total games.

 

After getting those numbers together I ranked each of our managers on their individual career records 1-12 to give them a total number of points based on where they are in the rankings for each column. I then ranked all of the managers based on their rank points in each of those categories to see who finished top. The lower the number of points in this case the better.

Scott Kellacher is currently top based on that small sample of his games, with Robbo and Paterson behind. Richie Foran finishes last with Fergie just behind him. I would argue that this seems to match the sentiment over the years on here and as a new manager SK is likely higher than where he will end up as he will find his level and likely drop down over a larger sample of matches, but its a pretty good start to be fair.

Yes he is not in the Championship or the Premiership like other managers before him, but no-other manager has had the squad constraints for administration so the playing field is as  level as it can be I think. 

 

Like all statistics - you are free to agree, disagree or think they are full of ****

 

 

 

 

I think it’s also fair to point out that SK is the only manager who was presented at the start with a squad severely pruned by administrators and with next to no scope to strengthen it.

[Scotty]

back to the age old cliches though ... Over the years, how often have we heard that "On paper we have a great squad" or even here, the assertion that on paper the stats for SK look good. Regardless of this, the game is played on grass (real or fake) and the paper doesn't matter . Lets hope for 3 points in the next game and drawing ever closer to relegation playoff safety.