alsy

He assisted Carson's winner at Cappielow in April. That was literally the only meaningful thing he did for us last season, but maybe that was enough for Imrie to take a chance on him. Looks quite tidy on the ball but as @RiG says, he tends to hold onto to long and ends up getting knocked off it or making the wrong decision. Alloa supporters said the same about him when he signed for us last summer. and Dodds doesn't seem to have cured him of it.

Ridgers back and Henderson straight into the team. Line-up looks likely to be: Ridgers Carson Devine Ram Delaney Henderson Hyde Welsh MacKay Doran Mckay On paper that team should carry a decent attacking threat. Possibly a little light through the middle unless Carson and Hyde are swapped - iirc, Hyde has played RB before.

Ah, fair enough; my apologies if I misinterpreted it. I just assumed the phrase 'would-be journos' must a reference to the named supporter associated with the podcast, and by implication those who do it with him, as whether you think he's befitting of the title or not, Paul Chalk is a working journalist with 20 years' experience. No idea if he's a freeloader though.

Yeah, that's correct, but it's a bit of a stretch to say that's purely self-interested, which is what the post I quoted was implying. There's a pretty sizeable group of supporters in the central belt and I suppose the principle behind asking about a bus is that if there was enough demand, then the additional gate money would offset the cost of the bus and bring a tiny bit extra into the club. FWIW, I think that even piloting a scheme like that would be very far down the club's list of priorities and that the focus should be on improving value and the matchday experience to get people from the local area coming back in bigger numbers, but there's no question that the current cost of public transport is reducing the numbers able to travel from further afield, so it's not a completely invalid question.

You're making assumptions and allegations that aren't fair here. I'm a contributor to the same podcast as the supporter you're referring to; I have a season ticket for the club despite living almost 200 miles away and being unable to attend many home games each season, and I bought it because I wanted to support the club financially. Another, much more regular, poster on this thread is similarly a contributor to the podcast and a season-ticket holder despite also living a considerable distance from Inverness. No problem at all with you dismissing or disliking the podcast but making up lies about people you don't know is a shite move.

The original recording pre-edit was around three hours... Yeah, I thought the battery farm stuff sounded really positive - especially where he implied without actually stating it that it should generate enough to see an increase in the playing budget - but you're probably right that it's going to take quite a while for us to see the income from that. We should really have asked him to put some sort of timescale on it, an oversight on our part. Re. the west stand roof, there is a meeting of a working group about that next week, so hopefully that's the start of getting the crowdfunding up and running. Anyone helping out at a kids' party these days would have to have PVG clearance even if they're volunteers. Yesterday I was arranging for someone to come in and talk to a group of eight 17-year-old Media students, and I had to be able to guarantee that an adult with PVG clearance would be in the room with him for every second of the visit as he doesn't have a PVG certificate. It makes organising events far more difficult than it once was but it's necessary, sadly.

There's a new episode of The Wyness Shuffle dropping this lunchtime - it's a 90-minute Q&A with Scot Gardiner, speaking to three of us from the pod, Jen from the Supporters' Trust and Dan from Section 94. He talks (at fairly considerable length) about some of the stuff you've mentioned.

Sean Welsh again, apparently. (And unsurprisingly.)

The mate I was at the game with on Saturday said that exactly the same thing happened when Dan Mackay was injured against Hamilton on Tuesday; he was supported off rather than a stretcher being called for. Can't understand why they'd risk anything that could end up exacerbating an injury, especially something as basic as getting a fucking stretcher onto the park.

Considering half the team we're likely to put out are so young that their bones haven't fully formed, your team of waifs might be safe this week.

That looks about right based on what we have available. Assuming no-one else returns, the one possible difference in starting XI I can foresee is Harper staying the middle alongside Hyde and Matthew Strachan starting at LB - he did well when he came on on Saturday. It depends on whether Dodds thinks it's a bigger gamble to start a boy with almost no first-team experience or to start Welsh when he still might not be ready to play 90 and risk him getting injured again. Thought Welsh, understandably, looked a bit tentative on Saturday. We've had quite a few issues with injuries over the last couple of seasons but I don't remember it ever being as bad as this. Are we training in the car park or something?

Harper played as a 10 in the first half and looked lost, then was dropped back to play alongside Allardice in the second, with Carson moving forward. Harper actually looked far more comfortable in there and it took Carson out of an area where he was a second yellow waiting to happen. Given that that deeper-lying role is Hyde's preferred position though, I do wonder if this is going to be another season where Harper ends up warming the bench for most of it. Delaney at LB was the most positive take-away from the match for me, apart from the three points of course. He was pretty solid defensively, decision-making looked good, and he a couple of really positive attacking contributions - one excellent run that carried him almost into the box and a beautiful cross-field ball late in the second. On the basis of the second half performance we deserved the result, but I feared for us after the first 15-20: another start where we looked nervous at the back and couldn't get much going in an attacking sense. About midway through the first half, though, it looked like we realised Raith weren't going to offer much threat, and we started to play with a bit more confidence.

I expect Raith not just to win but to win well on Saturday. We were absolutely fucking dreadful last night. The defence looked absolutely terrified, and going forward we were non-existent. One shot in 90 minutes; I'm not sure I've ever witnessed a game where we created so little. On Saturday, I expect Duffy will be punted back to the bench and Carson will return to right back, but that just means McGregor dropping back to a deeper midfield role, where he looks completely lost. Obviously we're missing the experience and onfield leadership of Welsh and Broadfoot this season, and Sutherland leaves a bigger hole than I'd anticipated, but I still wonder if some of us - me included - were fooled by last season's late run into thinking that we were a much better team than we were, and I'm starting to wonder whether we weren't just a bang-average side with two players - Chalmers and McAlear - who were capable of pulling out outrageous finishes that saved our arses on several occasions.

Ah well, I guess I'll see for myself on Friday night - assuming, of course, that Dodds goes with the same front four in consecutive games for the first time this season.

Personally I'm sort of grieving the loss of Walsh for the bulk of this season. I know he's probably underperformed for us overall and that he tends to vanish from games, but he is the sort of player who could make a difference; he looked brilliant against Hamilton in the final league game of last season. You're almost certainly right about the transfer business though, especially as Sutherland and Walsh will presumably be back at some point.

Maybe you're right, yeah. Towards the end of the season when Chalmers was starting more, it just seemed to me that Sutherland, Doran and Chalmers would play ahead of Welsh and McAlear, with Sutherland often tucked in to allow Carson to overlap, and Chalmers roving about; so not really like a traditional 4-4-2. But then with so many players in the squad who nominally can play wide, or in the 10, or as a striker, and who do switch during the course of games, the formation never seems that rigid.

Ah right, thanks. I like the sound of that. I just assumed it was a 4-2-3-1, as Dodds tended to use that a lot last season.

Yeah, he was awful against Arbroath, although tbf the conditions weren't helping anyone. Think I agree with @TheScarf though - he's an option to bring on when we need something different, but at the moment I'd prefer to see us stick with Mckay nominally ahead of Mackay, Doran and Samuels, with the greater fluidity that gives us - Samuels can sometimes be the spearhead as Mckay has the game intelligence to play anywhere across that supporting three - or even with Samuels as the 9 ahead of any three from Mackay, Boyd, Doran, McGregor, Sutherland (when fit) and Shaw (although not sure he's a starter). Basically anything that has us playing football from the start rather than falling into the habit of trying to hit a target man. Samuels has definitely proved himself a decent finisher across the playoffs and then again on Saturday.

Genuine question, as I wasn't there on Saturday: I agree about Samuels being more effective centrally, but why do you feel that Oakley starting would strengthen the team?

I think Barrow would certainly be able to pay a bit more than us; there's a bit of money behind them and their crowds are a little better than ours. I'd heard of Cooper before because of all the hype around Forest Green when they went up to the Football League for the first time, but Jackett is definitely a better-known name and Leyton Orient would pay a lot more than us. It would be interesting if it was him; one member of the pod is something of an Orient fan and has been down to see then a few times, I think.

I was intrigued by this too, to the extent that I had a wee dig. Most likely candidate is Mark Cooper. Five years at Forest Green, during which time he took them out of the National League into League Two, so a decent pedigree, appointed to the Barrow job on 28th May, which pretty much fits in with the 'three days before' comment Gardiner made (Dodds was appointed on 1st June), and has subsequently lost that job.

Haven't been in the Craigmonie for donkeys, but I had a meal at the Redcliffe with my folks last year and it was decent enough. Those were the two I thought of specifically because they reminded me of the Chestnuts in Ayr, which the poster referenced - it's my mother-in-law's lunch venue of choice whdn we go to visit her, and it's a similar sort of vibe, much more traditional than Premier Inn-type places.

Closest places to the likes of the Chestnuts, the Abbotsford or the Fairfield Park that I can think of in Inverness are the Craigmonie or the Redcliffe. I've not lived in Inverness for a long time though, so I'm no expert, but probably worth having a look.

Baws, so it was. I blame Dodds for making me too upset to get my facts straight.

The only losing by a single goal thing is becoming tedious. Some of the great humiliations in our history have come in Friday night games - the 5-1 against Morton , the 3-0 against Accies under Foran. These are the sorts of performances we need to emulate if Dodds is going to commit fully to making us embarrassingly shite.