Caley would do well to heed wise counsel of Christie
ACTIONS, mainly silly individual errors, played their part in pushing Inverness Caley Thistle ever closer to the Premiership trapdoor in Dingwall on Friday night. It was the words afterwards, though, which showed just what a hollow shambles that club has become. Amateurish, poorly-run and deserving everything that is coming to it.
With every passing week, Richie Foran, unfortunately, provides compelling evidence to back up the claim he should never have been given the manager’s job in the first place.
He was the easy option last summer following the departure of John Hughes, who had been at loggerheads with his largely anonymous chairman Kenny Cameron and the board on issues such as budget and a future vision for the club.
Lacking any kind of managerial experience, Foran being given a four-year deal was as surprising as Hughes’ assistant Brian Rice being kept on to work with him.
What Maurice Malpas is now doing as a third party brought in to sit in the stand is anyone’s guess.
In terms of leadership and decision-making, the club is all over the place — and plunging headlong towards relegation.
Following defeat at Motherwell recently, Foran, probably too honest for his own good, absolved himself of blame and pointed the finger at his players. The same guys he had branded bottle merchants at Hamilton weeks earlier.
In the wake of their 4-0 thumping in the Highland derby, he went even further, stating that he needed ‘real men’ in the dressing room.
When you are reduced to that kind of rhetoric, it is game over. Ideas have made way for insults.
Foran’s admissions that he may have signed the wrong players just makes it all the more difficult for him.
As he issued that sorry call for ‘warriors’ inside the Global Energy Stadium — having started with Ross Draper on the substitutes’ bench — Charlie Christie simply could take no more.
Christie is a legend who helped bring the club up from nothing on a wave of goodwill that has all but evaporated.
Now head of youth development inside this house of cards, his words, issued with measure and purpose in his role as match analyst on national radio, should be used as a catalyst by all those angry punters who travelled across the Kessock Bridge to mobilise and force meaningful change.
‘Richie was thrown in at the deep end,’ said Christie. ‘I feel the reasoning behind it was the wrong reasoning.
‘I don’t really want to talk about warriors and real men. I want football players who can control the ball, pass, get on the end of things, make good runs. That is Richie getting back to the way he played and football is not like that.
‘We are not like that. It is such a big transition from the way we played two years ago.’
Back then, Caley Thistle won the Scottish Cup and came third in the league. Money has been spent on the playing squad since.
What Christie alludes to, though, is that little has been done on the infrastructure of the club. ‘It has been coming and it hurts me to say that,’ he replied when asked about the current plight. ‘I am concerned.’
Christie’s frustration should not see him carpeted by the board. They need to listen to him.
He loves the club, represents it admirably, knows what it should be. Despite his background as player, coach and manager, has he ever been consulted about football-related matters despite being desperate to help?
He should not be accused of disloyalty either. It takes courage in modern football, given its vindictive nature, to speak up about what is going on behind the scenes at any club. Few do.
Consider Friday night’s other big story, with Kenny Miller signing a 12-month extension at Rangers. Turns out manager Pedro Caixinha, who had refused to comment on the matter the previous day, told Miller weeks ago that he wanted him to stay.
That they led everyone such a merry dance for so long is perplexing at a club supposedly now founded upon transparency — and with Caixinha demanding a respectful, two-way relationship with the media.
In contrast, Christie has decided to air some real truths that cut to the heart of everything going wrong at Inverness.
‘I have been told that we are signing boys possibly without seeing them,’ he revealed, pointing out that there is no proper scouting system.
The club is also incapable of attracting new fans. It is badly marketed. Its PR has been hopeless at times. Merchandising is clearly a mess, too.
‘Have you been in the club shop at Inverness Caley Thistle? It is unacceptable for a Premier League club,’ said Christie. ‘A Portakabin?
‘We’ve not stepped up. We won the Scottish Cup. We sold a player for £550,000 (Ryan Christie to Celtic). Where has that gone?
‘We used to run a really tight ship salary-wise. We have changed that ethos grossly and that is not good.’
It may take a spell in the Championship to recover and rebuild. Quite how Caley Thistle choose to reposition themselves remains to be seen.
The club could do much worse, though, than place people such as Christie at the centre of the project.
He may have been ignored during this abysmal season. Men like him should no longer be sidelined.
They built the club. They can sort it out again from the bottom up.