Inverness Caledonian Thistle administration: How it happened
By Aaron Masterson
By Jack Waddington via Wikimedia Commons
Inverness Caledonian Thistle have announced that they have entered administration after the club failed to secure funding for the immediate future. So, what happened and how did it go wrong for Inverness?
The club’s troubles began when the Scottish League One side announced a £1.2m loss from last season, which was also the number forecast for the current season.
This has resulted in the departures of Club Manager Duncan Ferguson, Assistant Manager Gary Bollan and Goalkeeping Coach Stuart Garden with immediate effect.
Ferguson made a statement after he left which said: "I’ve always tried to support my players behind the scenes, and they all know that. And that’s the most important thing for me.”
Ferguson also said: “There was a plan in the summer, I think, and that plan was getting funded for another 12 months. The board of directors decided not to take that plan.
“They decided to go down a different route and that different route was administration and a 15-point deduction. Which is, the more you think about it, absolutely incredible.”
The club were told on 2 October that to avoid insolvency and survive, they had to raise £200,000 by the end of the month. This led to a GoFundMe page being set up for the club. This page raised around £86,000 and one anonymous donor even donated as much as £20,000. However, this was not enough so the club started finding ways to cut spending, such as scouting possible investors and manager Duncan Ferguson offering to work for free for a short period of time to help the club back on their feet.
Then, on 8 October, Interim Chairman Scott Young told BBC Scotland News: “The hope is that by doing the administrative process we can market the club for someone to come in and takeover.”
On the 22 October, Inverness Caledonian Thistle announced that they would be going into administration and have hired Malcolm Cohen, Shane Crooks and James Stephen of accounting firm BDO to handle the club’s administration process.
A spokesman from the firm said: “The administrators will be in a position to provide further information and their plan to secure the long-term future of the club in due course.”
Ferguson was only in charge for a year at Caley Thistle.
Photo credit – Dan Istitene – Getty Images
Now that the club has been placed into administration, they will face a 15-point deduction for the current season and a 5-point deduction for the 2025/26 season. This leaves them bottom of the Scottish League One, 12 points behind 9th-placed Dumbarton.