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I very nearly put a thread on yesterday after looking through League 1 and Championship accounts. The blunt reality is you largely need to be losing £4m+ to compete at the top end of League 1 - only Plymouth are an outlier and in real danger of an immediate return. 7 of the top 8 lost at least £4m in 22/23 with far larger turnover than us, which really illustrates the discrepancy in wage budget. Posh and Pompey each spent around £8m on wages last season - neither went up. Ipswich spent nearly £13m on wages alone. You need to be losing £15m to then just stay in the Championship, spending £20-30m on wages alone. If we ever fluked it, we’re back down within 2 seasons. You get the very odd exception, but clubs who don’t lose £15m a year in the Championship come down - Wycombe, Blackpool, and Rotherham being the most obvious examples. There is absolutely no doubt that the club has horrendously spent in the last 18 months, and 3.4m is hefty loss to finish 18th (around the second or third highest of teams who finished in the bottom half), but we cannot take for granted that Carol is effectively happy to write off millions per annum to keep PVFC afloat. Only one club didn’t lose money in 22/23 and that was Cheltenham, who are likely down this year. Burton didn’t lose much, and are in danger of the drop this year. Same for Shrewsbury. Otherwise, it’s losses of 1m+ I’ve been very vocal in my critical of decision-making, but I’m finding some of the stick Carol is getting absolutely ludicrous. Her intentions are good and she’s probably our best option of having an owner who is happy to plug the financial gap that the system demands of owners without having ulterior motives.

Or toilets

It’s an expensive one , if that’s the case. I don’t know of too many vanity projects with a yearly loss of £3.4M.

Why aren't the FA doing something about this. If every team is losing millions chasing success while the Prem makes billions then something is seriously wrong with football. When the likes of Man City can buy a 100 players for the youth policy of which most will be cast aside instead of being blooded at a lower level, it smacks of pure greed. Football is shot, it is an awful industry.

I'd see that as a bonus not as a problem 😉

Reminds me a little bit of Cricket going off to pay TV to chase the money; in the longer term it suffered from lack of fan interest and engagement in the local game. Football is obviously a different kettle of fish but I think there's some comparison there. With games being on iFollow it was very easy to stay engaged whether home or away (I've personally haven't felt closer thanks to it). Now if you're a fan and can't go to either at all, you've got very little (no choice) and quite likely the non-local fan will lapse especially in a cost of living crisis. A really disappointing move by the EFL all around. I'm devastated, especially at the prospect of not being able to watch the away games on a stream.

This is just modern football. Nearly every single club loses money, every season, and has to be subsidised by an owner. 3.4m is a larger loss than what most of the other clubs saw who finished in the bottom half of League 1 in 22/23. The league was effectively split in two with 3M+ loss finishing top half and <3M loss finishing bottom half - bar us and Oxford, who lost 6m. Its clear that mistakes have been made, but it’s also clear that even if we’d been more efficient with spending we are likely to have lost £2m just staying in the division. I think it’s daft to understate that not many folk would be happy losing 3m just to keep Port Vale in League 1 - whilst wrongs need to be righted we’re still very lucky that Carol is effectively spending her kid’s inheritance covering our losses.

First off ... they paid well over the odds to keep our club in existence and no an alternative Fairy Godmother was not standing in the wings. Secondly ... in addition to buying the club the Shanahan's provided the finance to take us into league 1. Thirdly ... the investment to ensure the club could and can play at Vale Park has been £11M Finally Someone who put nothing into Vale and took everything out ... Flitcroft is the culprit and Carol's mistake was to Trust him. Perhaps we need to show support not belittle.

At least nobody can say Vale can’t buy a Wynne now.

My view too. We are so far inferior to Posh that it’s embarrassing. If that shot doesn’t double-deflect in half-time, we go in 0-0 and it’s completely different. Sometimes things go against you. I have found it startling to see the players accused of bottling it, cowardice etc. I thought they all worked pretty hard. They just aren’t very good!

I think the emoji in my post says it all. As a respected (sometimes) forum operator I clearly cannot condone such behaviour. But I bet the Vale will be happier to receive a tenner each (well, their cut of the tenner) from fans who otherwise wouldn't be there than receive nothing at all from fans not in attendance.

Pointless asking Jesus, he may have turned water into wine but he even he won't turn Jones into a consistently fit footballer !!

Four games to get more points than Burton and Cheltenham do. Come on Vale!

Loft and Uche up top may as well stick Ant and Dec up front instead

Why not - id love see Big Uche and Lofty have a game together - hell, none of our previous forward line ups have scored anyway so we cant be worse off with this pairing - Lofty runs his knackers off, and Big Uche, well, chaos, just chaos - I love watching him 💗💗💗💗

If that means ppl with dodgy firesticks can’t watch, then great. Personally I’m happy with the desperate and witty comments provided by all the commentators on OVF, far more entertaining. I’d describe it as our own Gogglebox.

1000%. Not my problem that some simpletons completely fall for it and think the sun shines out of her arse.

I certainly hope so . As bad as Vale are , I still look forward to Saturday/Tuesday every season.

What did you think covered the £3.4m loss? What on Earth are you going on about?

He’s just bitter cause of 87/88.

All loans too carol and or related companies are interest free, according to the notes. So none of the losses relate to interest owed to Carol or her kids.

When earned, absolutely.

It has to question how the club is run. Smurfwaite was a horrible man, yet I don’t think the club racked up these sort of debts under him. Certainly the rubbish football under his ownership was a cheaper form of rubbish football for similar outcomes so far…

Peterborough are only £5 million more in debt than we are, but guess what? If they get to the champ they will pay that off while ours will increase or worse in LG2. It pays to spend money on a good squad.

Although I don't have any sort of accountancy qualifications the fact that we now pay 319 people instead of 79 jumps out at me ! Some will be minimum wage and some will be well paid, but an average of say 25k a year equates to £6 million !

The gulf between the haves and have nots in league 1 is enormous now. The standard is also way higher. As is the level of unrealistic expectation (begging) of money they expect an owner to spend from their own pockets on the club. The Shanahans have invested way more than the sum of all owners in the clubs history.

Negative Person. I think there will be nearer 7000 than 6000 to be honest & we will loud to see us over the line . 3 poor teams one stays us !

Think that's bit pathetic Stamford. When we have an owner who, for the very first time in my memory (1957 started watching) who has actually invested in the club rather than shafting it that is poor mate. £11,000,000 is it at the last count? If it was me and you were a typical fan I would just say 'uk you'. Are you going to fill the gap? The Shanahan's (particularly Carol) deserve our support at the minute IMHO

Last night's performance was one of the worst vale performances I've ever seen. We basically showed no ambition at all to get forward and even try score a goal and win the game. We let Peterborough have the ball all match and they had 75% if the ball and when you give good players at this level the amount of ball we did then there bound score against us at some point. In the end we ended up with our only decent shot in the match coming right at the end when we were 3 nil down. If it hadn't been for Ripley then it would have been 6 or 7 nil. I think pretty much all of us expected to lose this game it's just the fact we showed no ambition in the game, it was basically like vale were San Marino and Peterborough were England.

The club have released the accounts for the year ending June 2023, Kieran Maguire usually does a deep dive on club accounts so that might be out later today but the highlights (or lowlights) include: 1) Total losses for the year - £3,396,024 2) Cash balances dropped by £635,737 to £185,931 3) Monies owed to the Shanahans or there related companies up £2,899,240 to £8,451,296 4) Average number of employees up by 73 to 319 people 5) Loans and other borrowing owed to bank up slightly to 121k

The sad fact is had it not been for the fans protesting over Flitcroft, he would still be at the club. You know it.. I know it!!

How embarrassing 🙈

Accepted relegation weeks ago? We have just as much chance of survival as Burton and Cheltenham. We’re <ovf censored>, everyone knows it. But saying you have accepted relegation when we’re only in the relegation zone on goal difference is a load of <ovf censored>.

Vanity project springs to mind with our Carol!

Carols kids will never starve due to her starting a massive company that’s been sold for huge amounts of money of which she is putting a lot more than she already has put in But don’t let that stop u with your sarcastic <ovf censored> braindead comments

Bore off, clown.

A lot of agency match day staff like stewards have all been brought in house to save money, I would imagine that is the reason behind the increase. Sent from my SM-A520F using onevalefan mobile app

The debt is mostly interest-free to Carol! We have a bank loan of 5 grand ffs. Why are we making up that we’re in interest-charged debt to banks. Absolute nonsense. Port Vale FC is, like 89/92 football teams, an insolvent company reliant on the goodwill of an owner to write off losses via directors loans.

Defo agree on Planty playing as an attacking midfielder he's wasted playing as LWB , the lad can score goals and he's got a bit of pace stick him up the pitch

319 staff seem a lot?

I think it's good to give wholehearted support to your own football team. Whichever that might be.

No offence meant here but do you actually ever say anything positive about the club or players?

They’re operating in a completely different financial climate. Folk comparing the club’s losses under her with Smurthwaite’s, when the financial landscape of football has shifted so drastically in the last 12 years. Club’s have to lose over a million to survive, and several million to compete in League One. We simply can’t overlook that. I’d much rather have Carol making mistakes and dutifully plugging the shortfall with good intentions, than I would a hedge fund on a leveraged buyout who would scarper when the losses exceeded a certain threshold.

That’s the grimmest bit. Last season was actually fairly successful in terms of gates etc. God knows what the money has gone on because it wasn’t on a top class squad.

Really not pretty reading. Divide the losses by the ticket price then 23 league games .... we need to increase attendance by 6152 just to breakeven. We didn't get 12000 gates under Rudge!

That sounds different to her awful letter a few months ago. Wasn’t league 1 survival like number 11 on her list of priorities?

Just going give you a insight into why I think the way I do V Bristol Rovers Debrah was hurling long throws into the opposition box yet in the 3 away games I'm not sure whether we did launch 1 into the box ,.he didn't play v. Wigan and Peterborough I know we could have used his throw plus in his younger days he was a forward so try him I find it quite strange really . There's a few things which don't add up for me there seems no great effort to get back into games when concede first for 1 whys that someone just enlighten me . Are the players not desperate to win football games if they are you could have fooled me at no point did them scoring first hurt the players into a response at any point . Moore speaks more about the fans on his pre match thing than the players. All the encouraging in the world won't change a thing if you sub like for like . At no point has he tried Uche /Loft . Mightens disappeared Lopacos disappeared ,Gore has never appeared. Chisletts lost his way whys that Moore he is quality help him find his way again by showing videos of all his goals and tell him you believe in him cause I do . Have a go at me if you like but why were 3 players marking 1 forward Randall and how come he had a free shot with 2 seconds of first half remaining whoevers man he was gave Peterborough lift off . Moore what's with having every Vale player back at oppositions corners have you heard of a quick counter to score well law of averages say someones going switch off a -28 goal difference tells you that resoundedly that's the case far too often this season . Exeter are a very good team Vale will need be a 1000 times more braver than Wed to win Only the brave will survive now

I would agree with that. The biggest problem from last night is we didn’t engage higher up the pitch. And I don’t mean engaging in a press up to the halfway line as a team, but engage somewhere around 35 yards from your own goal, instead of setting up tents 20 yards out. It was an embarrassing watch for a professional football club against same league opposition.

I agree we are & have been awful for the majority of the season but we’re level on points with burton who are even worse than us if not just as bad. 4 games to play & the next 2 at home, it’s certainly not over that’s a fact. Why on earth would a Vale fan wish us to get relegated anyway 🤔

I’ve said this before but she’s lost in power and fame. She walked into our club as Elizabeth from Keeping Up Appearances. Shes morphed into Hyacinth.