TJHValiant

I agree with him, but will he? Why not before? I mean I totally agree with currying his favour and think it is a good move but I think we will be disappointed. I think, over the years, the Vale have given him far more than he has put in. He gets free games and lords it up in a box named after him. He was allowed to use the club for a charity gig which was to fulfil his personal ambition to play at Vale Park, yet he left the pitch in a right state. Yet the greatest manager in the history of the club has to write a book to pay for his own statue! Sounds totally unfair to me and Robbie will probably get a statue at Vale before Rudgie. I just think Carol is a bit of a Robbie fan and the whole thing is a big celebration of him.

I hope that is a plan. I can’t blame the club for wanting that. Only time will tell. Trouble is, it will mean Robbie will have to be on board more than he has been and 30 years of him being our star fan has amounted to not really that much in the past.

I don’t get it either and wheeling out Robbie at the end of January with a ceremonial “ President Role” was a bit unexpected and seemed a bit of a desperate way to drum up a bit of positive news.

So the academy sales don’t actually generate any additional income for the club…they just self fund an academy? Seems a bit pointless if that is the case. It may have made a £1 million loss for promotion, but that was 2 seasons ago now, without also paying off Smurfwaite. Added to that being in league 1 alone adds more than £1 million in revenue. So yeah, I would be asking where the money is, because it certainly isn’t on the squad!

Well yeah, but that’s what football is about.

I’m not quite so sure. The likes of Dicko, Remi Streete, Jak Alnwick, Michael Brown, Michael O’Connor etc were all very high quality players. Alnwick and Streete were both signed from Newcastle and were great pros.

I thought that last season and was in that very camp. Instead we cut back and no decent strikers were signed all summer.

This is nail on head territory. Absolutely spot on. Where has the money gone? I see a Smurfwaite standard squad that we had on 4K gates. People rave on about the money on the ground, but the club shop was probably the biggest development project since Lorne Street.

Yes, he has been amazing has Lucas. Showing that he was a great buy and that his discipline issues were all that let him down. Really sad.

He is 21. Garrity isn’t a striker and yes he has more goals but then he has more goals than Dan Gore too. I have seen him play previous and yes, anyone who has would see that he has strong potential to be an excellent player who will be worth a lot of money in future. That’s why I raise him and it is why Oxford have bought him. Obviously the money of Harris is big, but Flitcroft talking about Scandinavia and other pie in the sky stuff avoids the reality. There are league 1 strikers out there, but the money isn’t.

Who are these 'great strikers' that you think we should spunk our money on with guaranteed success? Clarke Harris, 550k of guaranteed greatness who would be worth every penny. On a lower value note, Will Goodwin who went from Cheltenham to Oxford will be an absolutely great signing as a striker. Only 21. We should have been in there👌

Oh it all sounded desperate. Where has the money gone? This Vale Park campus sounds lovely but won’t be going ahead in league 2 and frankly I think we be wasted on a motley crew of bargain bin signings and loans. This January is turning into a Smurfwaite “sweetie jar” special. “Look Vale fans, let me spoil you with all these loans that I am not paying for”. Then he has the cheek to try and fool, admittedly very effectively in some cases, people who think we are a “special” club who were scouted to take on these precious talents from Prem clubs. The only reason these guys are here is because Flitcroft can say, well we don’t have anyone better, so of course they will get games. Most managers at other clubs would be wary of making such promises to unproven players, but Crosby has no choice.

Rot. Every club wants to buy low and sell high. That isn’t a model of anything, that’s what the club has always done. As others have said, Peterborough and Brighton spent money. We got some hopefully talented lads from somewhere else on loan. Not developing anything our own. I just think it was all hot air. If the Liverpool and United prem lads are a success then they will simply leave the club and back to square one. I don’t think they should not be here, they have a part to play, but they should be supporting a structure of decent players coming through, not be seen as big stars who will keep us up. Cut through the bull from Flitcroft and we are left still needing a decent striker, which he reckons is out there in Sweden for some reason, probably because he got Rudgie’s book for Christmas. Forgetting we have Loft for another 18 months thanks to him and have kept Uche thanks to Charlton not wanting to go through with a deal. We all know there are great strikers out there, the elephant in the room is that they cost money. That’s what’s really missing here, the money, not the quality strikers.

Me too and yes not great but to be fair we certainly didn’t contribute to the entertainment of those games.

Stevenage have made great signings all season long. The outcome? Pushing for the championship

I tend to suggest my mindset will be heavily influenced by results over the next few weeks…as will everyone else’s.

We have had two excellent loan players in Arblaster and Devine. That’s it. I can’t recall any loan player being critical of the club in the past. Even Alex Jones, after being sold to Bradford warmly praised us, after if we listen to what was to be believed, had basically been nurtured by us on a diet of old Wrights pies that Smurfwaite could not shift from matchdays. I just find this idea that we are proven destination for developing young players to be completely wide of the mark, yet. It was only 12 months ago our highest profile loan was a crocked, past it, Matty Taylor. Balmer was a flop, Josh Thomas never really made much of an impact, but was good against Charlton…that’s pretty typical of most loans. Some good, some bad.

I like the optimism, but this idea we were “scouted” because of our abilities as a club that can nurture talent is a load of bull that Flitcroft has spun us for. I hope it works, but I will take his ability to talk well with a huge pinch of salt. Man United currently have numerous players on loan at a range of clubs as follows: 44MF ENGDan Gore (at Port Vale)[231 ]48DF ENGWill Fish (at Hibernian)[232 ]52FW ENGJoe Hugill (at Burton Albion)[ 233]66DF ENGRhys Bennett (at Stockport County)[234 ]68MF POLMaxi Oyedele (at Forest Green Rovers)[235] Liverpool 28FW PORFábio Carvalho (at Hull City until 30 June 2024)[149] 45GK BRAMarcelo Pitaluga (at St Patrick's Athletic until 30 November 2024)[150 ]46DF ENGRhys Williams (at Port Vale until 30 June 2024)[151] 72DF NEDSepp van den Berg (at Mainz 05until 30 June 2024)[152] Not really the mega coup being touted about. Are all these other clubs, Burton, Forest Green, Stockport all specially selected? In fact, all of his peers are on loan at a level below or equal to us. So the idea we have become a pull for a load of Championship level youngsters isn’t true. They are u23 players in teams we often stuff in paint point games. There is no special “scouting magic” that has made us more appealing. We used to get players in from Nottingham Forest quite often under Askey in league 2, it just happens that now we are in league 1, the youngsters can now come from the Prem. The only reason any Prem team would be keen to loan their youth players is for games. The reason we can offer them guaranteed football is because we have a glaring shortage of quality in first team areas as we have not bought our own guys in. Anything else is just Flitcroft fairy tales and decent PR spin. I admit we are far better at that these days.

You do have a point. We have seen us play teams of u23 Prem sides and we have blown them away. His experience of league football is limited and the evidence for it working out is based on the exceptional Arblaster and good, but occasionally less impressive Devine. I really hope it works and it looks like it will be a solid addition but even with the successes of Arblaster and Devine, Flitcroft is in no place to be boasting about Vale as a success story for nurturing talent after half a season of two good loan deals. It isn’t even our talent, in fact it is the big clubs doing the nurturing as they just want their players to get games. It all looks a bit dubious, begging around, seeing if we can scrounge any young prospect at a big club needing a game. It isn’t a strategy that is likely to see much stability and despite all of Flitcroft’s self congratulatory approach, we are still 18th in the league and I’m looking nervously down the table rather than up it. At the time of writing Exeter and Reading are winning.

Reading are still paying to use their under soil heating! If they can’t pay the players but they can stick the under soil on, albeit for a limited period, that’s just dreadful financial management. I have little sympathy for a club that has way overreached itself relying on sugar daddies. Reading implement drastic cost-cutting measures as financial crisis deepens | Reading | The Guardian WWW.THEGUARDIAN.COM

I think the reality is, Charlton, unlike us in the summer who appeared to solely chase Loft, had a number of decent options and a better one has paid off, so Uche will stay put. I also think it was a bit of gamesmanship on Charlton’s part to destabilise us who are rivals in the league. Not only does Uche get his head turned but we end up spending our time looking for a replacement in an area we may have felt was covered. One bit of clever man management from the club, which has to be acknowledged is that the decision to let him talk to clubs has helped to ensure Uche does not feel resentment or demotivated at being refused. He may be grateful and be with Vale motivated. My only fear now is the classic scenario of him still being on the market, getting sold and then the window closes with no chance of getting in a decent replacement. We will see.

1.) She did, that’s not in dispute. 2.) Pointless argument. No fans, no club. It isn’t Carol’s private fiefdom. 3.) You need a certain amount of cash. No club anywhere, ever in the modern age has survived in goodwill and selling their better players every single January. The January window is becoming an annual fire sale.

Entitlement? Give over. Asking for the club to be funded to a reasonable degree to compete in the third division isn’t an inflated sense of entitlement. What do you think we are entitled to? League 2 football? Conference level stuff? Sod that. May as well have stuck with Smurfwaite. I don’t know why so many people try to compare the sacrifice of the average fan with what Carol has put in. She chose to buy the club, so the least she can do is stick some money in. It is more realistically to compare it to buying the Rover group. All the workers at longbridge cheered on John Towers for saving the company. Just one problem, they had no money. So they couldn’t develop any new models and the one they did, the Cityrover, was rubbish nobody wanted to buy. Nobody wanted them, sales dwindled and the company went bust. Carol is John Towers, our squad is the City Rover and our fans are the customers who will leave in droves. The rest writes itself.

What kind of billionaire puts £200m into a club to then use the land for “investment purposes”, that is a pretty lousy investment. Simply put he just wants out and hopes the club gets wound up as a business because a bankruptcy charge for a foreign billionaire means little to him.

It’s actually true. He did put in over £200m. In fact he put so much money in, they were done for financial fair play rules previously!