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"The ICT Thread - The Championship Years"


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"His drive to establish the new 10 acre Hub for the ICT Community Trust working with Highland Council, Sport Scotland and the SFA and his input into accessing six figure grants for our Community Trust in particular has gone unseen by almost everyone out with the football club"

 

This seems to me to be quite a legacy. Seems would be the operative word because I know very little about this achievement. Are there any contributors that are able to share their more rounded appraisal of John's work?

Whatever, he has always struck me as a good guy and I wish him well 

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I would like to personally thank Mr. Robertson for winning numerous trophies for The Caley. A good man and I hope he enjoys the next stage of his career.

Also, I hear that Panos Thomas is making a bold play for the Sporting Director role.

Edited by Stephen Malkmus
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On the Robbo subject I just can't hate him for taking a wage that none of us would've turned down. He had a tough few years there lockdown  losing his sister, getting a hip replacement. Can't blame him for wanting to take a job in the background and if it paid over £90k a year he'd be a mug to turn it down. As for the BBC shenigans I gotta laugh at it man, yes he probably should've shown more support and attended more games but at the same time it obviously wasn't in his job description to watch us play every week. It's like being mad at someone for having 2 jobs 🤣 all the work he's done for the club and fans just turned on him. 

Don't get mad at him get mad at the people who hired a "head coach" who couldn't scout.  Get mad at the people who decided to keep Dodds even when Robbo was telling them Dodds isn't good enough to manage us. 

Plenty of times I saw him at mid-week games mostly friendlies that even I couldn't be bothered attending like the Inverness cup win against Clach. The board was just so vague as they normally are over his job and that's where a lot of the animosity came from. 

Saying all that I'm glad he's gone as we cleary don't need a "Sporting director" now that Dodds is away it frees up space in the payroll budget and it keeps fans happy. He hasn't lost any respect from me and he's still a legend in my eyes I wish him all the best. 

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1 hour ago, sophia said:

His touch is sublime and he uses it to wonderful effect to buy space that lesser players don't know exists.

I suspect we will do well to keep a hold of Wotherspoon after January.

 

A class apart from everyone else today.

Should be playing at higher level still.

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24 minutes ago, DonnieMurdo said:

 

I suspect we will do well to keep a hold of Wotherspoon after January.

 

A class apart from everyone else today.

Should be playing at higher level still.

He will be too terrified of Big Dunc to say no to a contract extension. We have nothing to worry about.

Edited by scottbamby
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1 hour ago, SReplay said:

What’s the general opinion of John Robertson as a manager in these parts? Just asking for a friend…

First time round he was obviously a resounding success. I’ll leave someone more knowledgable to speak on that stint.

The job he did for us in his spell from 2017 is seriously underrated. We were an absolute omnishambles on and off the park following relegation. We barely had a squad to start the season, were running an unsustainable deficit and had to slash budgets or face extinction. He managed to steady the ship after an understandably difficult start before building some very good squads. His recruitment overall was very good, he has a real eye for a player and good contacts. He really did get the best out of some really average players - he earned Coll Donaldson a move to the Premiership for example (miracle worker). He can also be credited for a major role in the success of Shaun Rooney. I for one was gutted when he had to step away from the role, rate him really highly as a manager and a person.

Some may contend he never got us back up and we underachieved considering some of the talent we had. There were some obvious limitations, for example we had a really poor record in big league games under him IIRC. From what I remember, he loved a big man up top and we played some pretty good football at times.

Unfortunately, his time with us has been tainted somewhat by his spell as “Sporting Director”. It’s unclear which signings were his/Billy Dodds’ during this time but some of them (especially last season) were terrible. Steven Boyd stands out for me as one of the most bizarre signings we’ve made in a long time, was clearly never going to be good enough from the start. What he was actually doing in his day to day was a well guarded secret. Instead of watching us every week as you’d expect, he was moonlighting and watching County for sportsound on a weekend which rightly caused serious consternation among our support. Overall, I hope our support can see past the latter spell and focus on the significant contributions he has made to our club. I would wish him well wherever he ends up 

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On 12/11/2023 at 22:51, scottbamby said:

First time round he was obviously a resounding success. I’ll leave someone more knowledgable to speak on that stint.

The job he did for us in his spell from 2017 is seriously underrated. We were an absolute omnishambles on and off the park following relegation. We barely had a squad to start the season, were running an unsustainable deficit and had to slash budgets or face extinction. He managed to steady the ship after an understandably difficult start before building some very good squads. His recruitment overall was very good, he has a real eye for a player and good contacts. He really did get the best out of some really average players - he earned Coll Donaldson a move to the Premiership for example (miracle worker). He can also be credited for a major role in the success of Shaun Rooney. I for one was gutted when he had to step away from the role, rate him really highly as a manager and a person.

 

Robbo was first manager from 2002 to 2004 and he was a huge success.  He took over from Steve Paterson, who had taken us to the top of the table with an excellent, exciting side brimming with attacking talent.  Barry Robson and Dennis Wyness were probably two of the best attacking players in the league at that time and we also had Paul Ritchie, a goal machine.  However, we fell off the pace in the first season, maybe that was inevitable given the nature of our team and how we played.  Teams like Falkirk, St Johnstone and Clyde were a bit more solid and experienced than we were.  In the cup, we beat Celtic to reach the semi-finals for the first time - a huge achievement given that Celtic team were the one who reached the UEFA Cup final.

Next year Robbo made some excelletn signings, bringing in David Bingham and Barry Wilson and remodelling how we played.  We generally played a 4-3-3 with a really settled back five of Brown, Tokely, Mann, McCaffrey and Golabek - all of whom started pretty much every game.  We were also solid in the middle of the park with Russell Duncan and Roy McBain again taking starring roles.  These were all players who were there when Robbo took over but he made significant improvements during his time - in 03/04 we conceded 33 goals, in 02/03 we conceded 45 with pretty much the same players.

He left pretty early in our first SPL season but the signings he made in that close season were good - he signed Darren Dods, Graham Bayne, Richard Hastings, Ian Black and Juanjo.  All were good contributors that season with Dods, Bayne, Black and Hastings becoming key players for several years.

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