Advert
Advert
smithie
-
Posts
5,483 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
17
Posts posted by smithie
-
-
1 hour ago, MBE said:
I really feel for her to be honest. She's ploughed literally millions into the club, heart and soul, entrusted Flitcroft with the football side and she's been badly let down by his mismanagement.
I keep coming back to it but the senior players he has signed ( except Garrity) have been a disgrace to the profession. The players and the families have been well looked after by Carol and this is the thanks she has had.
She has been let down but I felt from the outset that she had unrealistic optimism for growing the attendances. Although it was great to see the enthusiasm and ambition, history shows we've struggled to break the 7-8k barrier even when an established Div 2 (ie Championship) side.
Without ridiculous levels of spending, we were always going to (and probably needed to) stabilise in the third tier. What she maybe didn't twig was that there's no great appetite for mid-table football season in, season out.
I feel sorry for her, but I'm sure she's got her exit route in mind. We're here for life.
-
3
-
-
2 hours ago, MBE said:
All good however the plan gets blown up because this years playing budget has been squandered on poor senior pros and not addressing glaring needs in a squad for 2 transfer windows.
Look at the potential of L1 next season and the revenue opportunities . Stoke,Sheffield Wed,Stockport,Crewe,Wrexham.
Bare minimum 1 million financial black hole which will have very serious consequences for all of your points and probably some job losses.
Honestly, if I was Carol I would be in front of the players and lay on the line exactly what relegation would mean for her and our club.
Would it work, would they give a hoot?
I don't know but I doubt I'd be able to contain my frustration at the state of things currently.
Unfortunately, it seems she's more likely to thank them profusely for coming to play for us.
I wonder if her emotional demeanour on Saturday was triggered by the shouts from the terraces at full-time. Heaven knows where her head is at right now.
-
3
-
1
-
-
15 minutes ago, Wrex said:
Based on what? Three games to Nathan Smith's 388?
Despite his goal, Smith was overshadowed by Lopata at Cheltenham. Not only that but Lopata has shown more leadership and organisational ability than anyone else at the back.
-
8
-
-
1 hour ago, Hoppers said:
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣They really cant win can they - you lot 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Three games in WTF 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
It's not too surprising that selections are being questioned because we're running out of time and we don't have any margin for error. For me Lopata is the first name on the team sheet in defence, and I'm astonished that any manager of any length of tenure would think any different. He's head and shoulders above any other option there.
-
2
-
-
46 minutes ago, Santa said:
The worry for me is that Moore could well turn out to be a disastrous appointment and were too busy blaming the players and the poor recruitment to notice it. A bit like the free pass that Michael Brown got.
Carol can't believe he came to little Port Vale. Little Port Vale with XL contracts.
-
6
-
-
He should have called Smith's mess-up for what it was... utter fxcking stupidity. Instead he called it a "bizarre" goal.
-
4
-
-
4 hours ago, valefan16 said:
MK battered us that game on sky, we were terrible but got a penalty which we missed but got lucky with the rebound.
Was such a frustrating one, what cost us was an injury time equaliser from Gillingham deep into injury time in the February time against us, we went down by a point on them and they'd have gone instead had we held on!
I was there. They sent on a bloke about 9ft tall and we left him unmarked.
-
Last word on last night - Dan Jones passing was bloody awful! The stats for his completed passes would make alarming reading. Hope Doctor Data (or whatever they call these people) was watching and noting it.
-
2
-
1
-
-
37 minutes ago, Granville said:
He told my son that sometimes they have to generate lots of material
So basically a lot of padding out with not much substance.
I just see it as a waste of time to be honest - players and manager politely entertaining fluffy questions.
-
1
-
-
10 minutes ago, Granville said:
Not really true is it? Got to maintain a relationship with the people he's interviewing, and he does ask those questions that people want asking, for instance when Crosby went through his period of not playing strikers he asked him. He asked him if he was under pressure in his job. Sorry, but I know Phil and he puts a lot of time and effort into striking a balance between asking questions and being fair. He can't just go in and ask "why is Ryan Loft <ovf censored>?" because he'll be told not to come back again.
If you think he's bad, listen to the bloke who covers Stoke or McGarry at Crewe who want to be their manager's best mate.
Maybe that's the problem - McGarry has probably been his inspiration.
I think the problem is the interviews/pally chats go on far too long - 10 minutes when two would do. So much waffle and labouring of points, and questions (?) like "You must be delighted with a win/clean sheet" etc.
What do we learn from that kind of stuff?
-
1
-
1
-
-
12 minutes ago, Vale1995 said:
Wheres dan gore 😂
Aka Dan Gone
-
1
-
1
-
-
40 minutes ago, Vtid said:
Prioritise the season ticket holders & sod everyone else. My point being it should have been made to anyone purchasing a ticket if they want boost the numbers
It's not too late to email or call the club with your idea.
-
1
-
-
40 minutes ago, Railwayman said:
The quickest way to increase revenue is to have a successful and entertaining product on the pitch this increases attendances,Merchandise,advertising etc which then gives you the funds to improve infrastructure not the other way round.
I applaud Carol & the board for their long term vision and agree with them ( apart from the style of play which is boring ) but we have to get our priorities in the right order.
We did have a good "product" (hate that phrase) last season until Christmas but we didn't see any bigger gates...and the gates we had were swelled by the free/virtually free tickets issued post-promotion.
Low attendances at Vale are nothing new....we had plenty of 6000 gates under Rudgie in the Second Division.
-
2
-
-
44 minutes ago, valiant_593 said:
Id Start walters and mighten after Saturday. Wilson and Massey have to be dropped for this
The time must be coming when we withdraw the contract on offer to Rhys Walters. You'd think we were trying to sign a world-class player, not a kid with everything to prove.
-
2 minutes ago, robf said:
I may be being overly simplistic but I see it as:
- Infrastructure improvements - great to have
- A competitive, balanced first-team squad - must have
In order of priority:
1) First-team squad
2) InfrastructureI'm also surprised that when other clubs in similar positions were clearly able to bring in experienced strikers (Lyle Taylor to Cambridge say, or Mo Eisa to Exeter) these moves appeared to raise no alarm bells and no change of plan.
The club seemed to stay in its bubble of - let's wait and see what happens / wait till bigger clubs make signings and get their offcasts / look at the PL2 market / wait till deadline day - almost as if adding another striker was a nice thing to have, not an absolute essential.
Where were the alarm bells once Uche had been injured? Why, if these other clubs are paying over the odds for Taylor, Eisa etc, did we not react and see if we could move some of the budget from other things to the playing budget and pay over the odds to ensure we get the right player in? Perhaps there was no budget to move, but the attitude after failing to sign anyone seems to be for the club to have shrugged its shoulders and say "Oh well, we missed out on some targets" as if it's a slight mishap rather than something that could seal relegation.
Why does the club appear to not have learnt any lessons from the previous transfer windows? This is a club that on the 1st August had one senior striker in Ellis Harrison. A club who started the previous season with one fit, senior striker in Jamie Proctor. A club who waited till the very final day in January 2023 to add an injured striker despite us having no fit strikers at the start of the year.
Yes, we all get it's difficult to get a striker in. We realise there's a load of factors to getting someone in - but other clubs seemed to manage to do so.
You won't get very far if you continually repeat the same mistakes every window.
I could read 1000 posts and it couldn't be put better.
-
1
-
3 minutes ago, valiant_593 said:
I’ve been anfield a number of times and always thought it was great.
It is, just not on matchdays.
-
1
-
-
1 minute ago, valiant_593 said:
Anfield suffers from poor atmosphere. I’ve read some mind boggling things on here but this is right up there.
And I've read enough to believe that, Champions League nights apart, their famous atmosphere is a myth. You've only got to see the crowd - tourists more interested in taking pictures than making an atmosphere. That's what happens when locals are priced out and the club don't care who buys the tickets as long as they pay up, sit down and shut up.
Even Klopp has referred to it more than once - is he wrong?
-
1
-
-
31 minutes ago, nodge said:
This is it, we can't seem to generate an atmosphere at home as the product on the pitch has been so poor, but it's never been more important to get behind the lads.
Our supporters are a brilliant bunch, we really travel well even when the chips are down, crying out for something to cheer about now
Got everything crossed we can get something from the next 3 games and then breathe a bit of life back into the terraces
It's interesting to me how football clubs and fans differ across England.
Liverpool and Man City are probably great to watch but both grounds suffer from poor atmosphere. Exeter in Division Three have a reliably-noisy home end and Cheltenham was noisier on Saturday than grounds 5 times their capacity. Accrington have an Ultras section, MK Dons is as lame as they come, Gas are decent.
Our support is somewhere between but we were like mice on Saturday.
-
1
-
-
7 minutes ago, JoeB2 said:
Optimism post as I cannot hack the despair:
There is a route to safety for us.
We still have to play:
Reading away
Burton away
Fleetwood home
Shrewsbury home
Exeter home
Cambridge home
There is a route out for us. We need 19 points from 16 games. 5 wins and a few draws.
Priorities:
- sort the back line out. 1 clean sheet in 10 is absolutely horrendous. Tighten things up. Clark at RWB over Massey is a huge upgrade. We need a fairly rapid improvement in this respect. It really needs a back to basics approach. Lopata, Smith, Debrah, Yak, Lowe - there has to be a competent combination somewhere. Pick one and don't chop and change.
- Garrity back in the middle. Garrity and Chislett are our only goal threat. Having them together actually gives us some threat going forward.
- Take a punt on a free agent forward. We have no one who can hold the ball up. Just pay the going rate and pray they can plunder 5 by May.
- Start playing Mighten. We don't have any pace. He's the only player. Figure out a system that gets him the ball.
- Get Gore fit. We haven't seen him but he's the exact profile we're missing - energy and battle in the middle.
The point total we need is really not outlandish - it's mid-table form and would play out as 54 points over a 46 game season. Moore needs to transform a very, very poor side (the worst in the league by a considerable margin since Christmas) into a fairly competent mid-table one - which is pretty much the job DC has done at Cheltenham. Martin Paterson similarly at Burton. Harris at Cambridge. You'd assume a manager who last put up 96 points at this level could handle that - otherwise, why appoint him?
Even with how awful we've been, the Fleetwood result was the only aberration since New Year - a draw with Charlton, a very narrow loss via a penalty to the champions-elect, Fleetwood, a loss to in-form Orient with a youth team manager on a half hour's notice, a draw with top 6 Stevenage, a 1 goal loss to a very, very decent Cheltenham side under DC. Fleetwood and Carlisle are the only disasters since Shrews away in November.
I don't think it's a miracle great escape job. We only have 4 games against the top 6, and one of those is Oxford who are not the same side under Buckingham that they were under Manning. We've got a load of games against mid-table teams like Wigan, Northampton, Lincoln, Cambridge, Exeter, Burton, Rovers, and Orient - teams we have taken points from under Crosby.
Moore's basically got to make us a mid-table side. He has Garrity and Clark fit very soon. Gore and Plant soon thereafter. If he tightens up the backline, we get a forward in, and these players get back in the starting lineup, we have a fixture-list which isn't overly tricky. 19 points is very doable.
Carlisle and Fleetwood are probably gone. It's 2 more of us, Charlton, Cheltenham, Reading (watch out for more points deductions), Shrewsbury, and imo Burton. I think Cheltenham will be fine. Shrews and Burton are both pretty poor teams with some of the worst underlying numbers in the league. Nathan Jones is known for either being brilliant at Luton or truly apocalyptic everywhere else.
I know how dismal it has been recently, but we're really not down and out yet. We have to start winning games very soon at a mid-table rate, but I don't think it's overly harsh to say that is what is expected from a manager like Moore. He has key players returning and a reasonable fixture list.
Very doable job, this. It will genuinely be disappointing if Moore can't put up 19 points. Into these.
Thank the Lord someone can offer something other than unrelenting misery and pessimism.
There's a long long way to go yet.
-
4
-
-
2 hours ago, Rockape99 said:
My team for Tuesday
Ripley
Sang Pole Debroah Grant
OJO Walters
Chislett Weir Wilson
loft
if Ben can do 45 in for Walters
The Pole is called Lopata and he's the pick of our defence at the moment.
-
6
-
-
For what it's worth it's an absolute scandal that we are having to go back there after the protest and I cannot believe the club have so meekly accepted it. We'll have virtually no support thanks to it being replayed midweek.
It should have been played at a neutral venue or behind closed doors at Reading.
-
5
-
-
12 minutes ago, davehartshill said:
We will lead 1-0 or 2-1 but ultimately still lose the game.
We are moving into “must win” territory and our record against teams around us is AWFUL.
It's not much better against the top teams!
0 from 12 against Pompey and Barnsley, lost to Posh and Bolton.
-
1
-
-
16 minutes ago, blackdog said:
It isn't as though Devine and Blaster got us in the top 6 we were losing games with them here, and when they went on international duty it gave us fixture congestion so I would argue would we have been better off not having them in the first place ? yes it was good to see Blaster on full throttle but in real terms where has it got us ? Just giving other clubs players game time ?
I said at the time what an absolute nonsense it was to postpone important fixtures for international kids games. All it's done is make these postponements pressure fixtures while Arblaster and Devine are long gone. I don't ever want to see that nonsense again.
-
6
-
-
I wonder how many will take up the option of going to see him face to face?
-
3
-
League one relegation watch
in Port Vale present
Posted
Some of our fans would want oysters and champagne on-board and an overnight stay before even considering it.