Three points deliver great end to difficult week

Three much-needed points came back up the A9 with Caley Thistle at the end of what must have been a difficult week for everybody at the club.

The news that Riccardo Calder had been found guilty of assault in Birmingham came as a major surprise to the club’s fans but I think pretty much everybody feels the club was right to terminate his contract.

There is a sense of disappointment, though, as Calder was viewed by fans as one of our more capable players. His departure leaves a hole that was immediately noticed in Caley Thistle’s inability to find enough men to fill the bench on Saturday. There will be clubs out there already wondering if they should offer Calder a contract. It would be particularly galling but not entirely surprising, if he ended up playing against Caley Thistle before the season was over.

In the circumstances, getting back to winning ways was the perfect response to what had happened but it could very easily have been yet another draw. It wasn’t, though, thanks to a really fine Tom Walsh strike and an equally good Mark Ridgers save from Blair Spittal’s penalty. Ridgers is playing particularly well at the moment and is perhaps the Inverness player that has impressed me most this season.

This defeat saw Partick drop into the relegation play-off place. They are not the first club to struggle after suffering relegation and their supporters will be a little concerned that replacing Alan Archibald with Gary Caldwell has not changed their fortunes.

The new manager may well get things sorted out given time and I was not at all surprised to hear him make positive noises about his team but using words like “magnificent” and “excellent” about their performance did seem to be stretching things a bit too far.