Port Vale appoint Dean Glover as the club’s chief scout
The Valiants have announced the make-up of their backroom team and one surprise is that coach and former manager Dean Glover moves into a chief scout role.
Rob Page has restructured his coaching staff following the departure of Mark Grew. Assistant manager Paul Bodin, performance coach John Harbin and goalkeeping coach Dave Timmins have all been recruited.
Veteran Michael Brown is also employed as a player-coach and will work closely with youngsters to pass the benefit of his experience on.
However, the surprising news is the move from youth team coach to chief scout for Dean Glover.
Glover was widely expected to remain in the youth team coaching staff but instead moves to a chief scout role. Critics will point to a less than illustrious spell as first-team manager in 2008 and will no doubt question his credentials for such a key scouting role.
Glover signings Dave Brammer, Kevin Gall, Neil McKenzie and Scott Brown did not enjoy the best of spells with the club and Glover was removed from the manager’s role in 2009 after fans’ dissatisfaction led to plummeting season ticket sales.
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No doubt many fans will view the coaching changes as “two steps forward and one step back.”
For some years now there has been a growing conviction among fans that the Vale backroom staff contains a cosy clique of former players. It was argued that the club was too eager to appoint from within when there were better candidates outside the club.
Rob Page has sought to rectify this with the appointments of three coaches with no previous Vale connection, but many fans will question Dean Glover’s credentials to be the new chief scout.
Many fans will argue that they would be far happier with the backroom team if there had been a complete clean sweep of new faces brought in.
Perhaps Glover will prove everyone wrong and as a Vale fan I hope that’s the case but if not, many fans will be entitled to say “I told you so…”
Rob Fielding