Captain confident ICT can sparkle on the pitch next season
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RICHIE Foran is confident that the style of football John Hughes wants to impose can make Caley Thistle one of the Scottish Premiership’s most attractive teams next season.
Hughes has endured mixed results since taking over as Inverness manager last December, winning nine, drawing nine and losing 12 of the 30 games he has been in charge for.
This inconsistency, however, owed much to Hughes wanting to try and implement a style of quick, passing football, with the emphasis in trying to retain possession for longer periods.
A hectic schedule of games between February and April limited the time Hughes had to spend on the training pitch with his players, but that will not be the case when Caley Thistle’s first-team squad return to begin pre-season on Thursday 26th June.
With the new Scottish Premiership season scheduled to begin on Saturday 9th August, Hughes will have just over six weeks to fine tune how he wants his team to play.
Foran sat out the final two months of last season after undergoing a clean up operation on his knee, but could see glimpses of the way forward under Hughes.
Now, with pre-season looming, Caley Thistle’s captain believes it is the perfect opportunity for the players to finally bring together everything they have learnt. If that happens, Foran is certain it will make Inverness very pleasing on the eye.
"Unfortunately, I watched too many games from the stands towards the end of last season, but the team played a lot of good football and I really enjoyed it," he said.
"With every game that went by, the boys were passing it and keeping the ball better, which is what the manager wants.
"The lads have had to change the way they play a little bit, but you could see they were getting more confident, so it’s definitely working.
"We’ve now got six, seven weeks when we come back for pre-season to really work on things, but I’m confident that next season we will be a great team to watch."
Foran’s confidence would seem justified, especially as unlike several other clubs in Scotland’s top flight, Caley Thistle will enter the new campaign with virtually the same squad of players that have taken the club to consecutive top six finishes and a first-ever national cup final over the last two season’s.
These achievements are, according to the 33-year-old, not only convincing those within the current first-team set-up to prolong their stays in the Highland capital by signing contract extensions, but also it is attracting unprecedented interest from further afield — a stark turn around from only a few years ago when Foran insists it was difficult to tempt interested players to even make the move to the north of Scotland.
"I think it’s fantastic that we’ll go into next season with the same group of players as we’ve had for a couple of season’s now," he said. "It’s going so, so well.
"When I first joined the club, we had boys coming up here on-loan or on short-term deals and not staying too long.
"Now, we’ve got players knocking on the chairman’s door looking to sign contract extensions. That just show you how much this club has really taken off over the last few years.
"The style of football we play, the results we’ve been getting, plus the fact we’re on TV quite a bit is attracting players to come here.
"There are players now asking to come to the club and that was not happening two or three years ago."
