MBE

February 13

Great news game postponed.

It’s been a good day today.

February 11

2 hours ago, valeitup said:

That was in no way a dubious penalty and the team was good for a point yesterday against a team that must be riding very high.

I don't mean to single you out, MBE, but we do need to stop stacking the deck against Flitcroft. He's got a mixed record in his job, and the last few months have been particularly concerning, but he now has an opportunity to get a very big decision right.

Team deserved a point for effort no doubt about it. Watching the replay I stil think it’s dubious decision, think no we got a little luck for once.

Flitcroft has done enough to stack the deck against himself.

I’m only asking to explain what’s happened and put right the wrongs i.e manager and squad.

Wait to see who he brings in.

February 10

I’m firmly in Flitcroft out camp however if he appoints a proper manager, not a head coach with less experience than Crosby, provides resources for the new manager and also explains the last 2 weeks then my stance softens.

He was very lucky today to get a dubious pen decision go our away otherwise it would have been very loud and angry chanting again.

February 8

11 minutes ago, Packmoor_vale said:

In all fairness we have just had a supporters open meeting and a statement from the owner

True. The forum meeting has contradicted actions and the letter is not a communication about those contradictions which is why we have a problem.

February 8

10 minutes ago, PVP said:

Well said, transparency is needed. Tell the fans reality however hard it may be to take. Communication is better than conflict.

I’m part of the Supporters Summit group and it was the very 1st thing highlighted at the 1st meeting.

Don’t bunker down ignore the noise when it’s bad. You have to communicate the why in good and bad times and you bring fans with you.

Sadly its fallen on deaf ears.

February 8

A much lighter read😀

All I need is Flitcroft to show leadership front up and explain the whys what’s and therefore of the past 2 weeks instead of hiding in the shadows.

I couldn’t care less saying this was a mistake or that was a mistake. All I want to hear is why we here are right now. Why we couldn’t get any deals over the line? What was the reasoning behind sacking Crosby after backing him 1 game previously? Are we planning to bring in free agents?

Even if worse case scenario the budget is tight we couldn’t afford to bring players telll us. You have to communicate to fans so we understand constraints and direction we are heading. At that point it does t matter if we agree or not but we know where we stand.

Instead a wall of silence and very ill judged letter.

Leadership from a Director I don’t think is asking too much.

I really hope a club employee reads this and takes it in on board.

February 8

5 minutes ago, valiant_593 said:

Maybe she should try understand why fans aren’t happy? It’s quite a simple decision for her, get rid of Flitcroft and the fans will all be united again. Someone with her business acumen shouldn’t be sending out statements written in that manor and which are so one sided.

It’s not even that for me.

At no point has any of our leadership taken responsibility and accountability for decisions taken over the last week to explain what’s happened, why etc.

February 8

3 minutes ago, Warren said:

I do think Crosby can be aggrieved by the recent window at least. He has been stripped naked! But we now need a manager with a magic wand and he hasn't got one.

Stripped naked 😂😂 my breakfast has just come up at the thought

February 8

1 hour ago, Warren said:

The defeat at Fleetwood was the final straw. The appointment of Crosby was plausible because he had lengthy coaching experience and been successful as caretaker manager in contributing to promotion. It was scary that result, because I thought we had enough in the squad to defeat Fleetwood and move back into mid table. So clearly a crisis arose and action was needed to replace the manager. We need an experienced manager to come in right now whilst the situation can still be arrested.

However, after watching on Tuesday where we got battered by an upper mid table team, the transfer window does come full frontal. Midfield and wing backs, if we are going to play that system, are far too weak. In fact miles off it. Changing to my favoured formations of 433 or 4411 won't help either because that weak midfield elephant will still be in the room. A new manager will need to repurpose some of the players. For example, we lost all the physical battles in midfield and were not tackling the opposition allowing them to look like Man City in possession. Surely a new experienced manager would at least improve resilience.

I have moaned about our strikeforce. But until injury Garrity was doing better than Harrison. Chislett can be made more effective. He's running round doing stuff in midfield trying to compensate for the weaknesses we now have there. The problem with the young player loans and bringing young players through is we don't know they are ready. And what we have now aren't ready for L1 level as mainstays of the side. But going back to Garrity, this injury is a mighty serious blow to him and us. We can't just go out and sign another player who will score his goals return. Yes I expect the budget does come into play.

Things have gone awry. With hindsight better choices could have been made. I was pleased with the open letter. The decision being made now to appoint a new manager and staff is one of the most critical in the club's history. We need to stay in L1 or the economics of the club, difficult anyway, football clubs at our level always are, will, I believe, start to unravel. New ownership or new part ownership will be needed. Because you can't keep pumping money in to make viable what is unviable.

I agree Warren with much of your post about the team but I can’t get past backing a manager, knowing he doesn’t have the players to compete, not recruiting the players required for him and after only 1 game sacking him. Smacks of chaos no planning or process.

It’s piss poor management and the fact the leadership team have we’ve not fronted I find disgusting.

February 8

5 hours ago, PVFC FAN said:

It's a long term investment allowing the team to train hard in the summer and during the week etc. We are getting ahead of our selves. Because we have a plan and we came up to league1 3 years early the facilities that were supposed to be ready for league 1 are not ready yet. So we need to ballance cash out between facilities and players. Just to be clear if these facilities weren't getting built we would have no chance of getting into the championship with the small budget we would have in comparison to other teams. So we need the facilities to get are players better and move players on for more money.

I’ve enjoyed reading the thread and seeing you as a mouthpiece for the club. You’ve held your own against the grain and make some valid points. You should change your username to PVFC Employee.😀

I will pick on one point to elaborate on your others:

Here’s the thing about a plan….. you have to continually re-evaluate where you are to plan, ask yourself:

is it still the right path or do you need to change course?

Are the timescales on target and achievable?

If we achieved promotion early (I firmly we believe we did based on 2 year contracts given to players that season) you have to move your plans. We took a calculated gamble last season (I supported this in recognition of CAPEX investment and hamstrung with L2 player quality contracts) which we just about got away with. Knowing how close we were to relegation last season and the turnaround required in the squad, a gamble on a coach who looked like he had his arm twisted to be manager, surely you reassess the level of CAPEX and say that investment needs to be done over the next X rather than Y. That results in an increase to the 1st team to make sure we are not in the relegation places again.What you don’t do is continue with ambitious CAPEX plans. We simply have not performed that re-evaluation and have been quite arrogant in the player market because we think we can trade alone on an improved reputation. Using we are ahead of schedule in our plan is in no way shape or form an acceptable excuse. We needed to pivot our position.

I agree whole heartedly how we want to be as a club, how we want to develop training areas, facilities , the god awful ticketing, the pitch, academy, the ground etc. but this cannot be to the detriment of achieving the here and now.i.e L1 status.

Look at planning another way, if we are in L2 next season will we carry on with the same amount of CAPEX expenditure even though it’s in our 5 year plan? Of course not because we won’t have the same income. We will have less season tickets, much smaller away followings and all these links to Man UTD,Spurs,Liverpool etc. will be for nothing because I guarantee we won’t be getting U23 PL loans in L2. That would be another change in the plan. Medium and long term plans have to evolve based on short term results.

Flitcroft, Carol too have buried their heads in the sand. Ignored fans concerns for months, then hold a forum backing the manager, insisting they would strengthen key areas, brushing aside fans concerns about relegation and teams toughness yet 2 days after the transfer window without said reinforcements and 1 defeat the manager has been sacked? What is all that about. It’s poor really really poor.

Then we get an open letter giving us a brief history 99.99% of fans already know before trying to tell us how great Flitcroft is. This shows me Carol doesn’t understand why fans are upset and still isn’t listening and that’s a big worry for me.

Overall I have to say I’m really disappointed in the l actions from leadership at the club. I have lost complete faith and trust in Flitcroft and Carol’s letter is tone deaf.

Apologies for the long post.

February 7

2 minutes ago, valiant_593 said:

Connor wickham for me. Just until the end of the season, but I would take any of the above as well.

He’s the standout free agent name but I’d be very concerned about his motivation and fitness.

February 7

As I posted earlier on twitter…..

Carol needs to remember

1/ Points are sanity

2/ Projects are vanity.

Nothing is achieved without 1/ first then 2/ can be accomplished.

I really feel Carol she has still not grasped that point in the last 5 years.

February 7

3 hours ago, TJHValiant said:

“During the pandemic we delivered over half a million meals to local families across Stoke-on-Trent who were trapped in their homes, not because it was easy but because it was the right thing for us to do.”

Please enlighten me on the relevance of this for the current dreadful football and poor decision making?

I’m glad Carol pointed that out I would never have known. Never seen it mentioned anywhere.

When will Carol realise everything starts on the pitch and you use that as your vehicle to do your projects not the other way round.

February 7

4 hours ago, Vtid said:

I’m not on it anymore is the majority the same as on here around that fraud?

There’s a lot of anti Flitcroft for sure.

February 7

What an absolute load of nonsense this letter is.

Nobody and I mean nobody is ungrateful what Carol and Kevin did to save the club, we all know that. We all know about the meals and infrastructure plans but all that means nothing if the 1st team is poor and playing in L2.

Carol has done nothing to highlight or explain why we continued to limp along with Crosby, Flitcroft backing Crosby at the forum, tell us his he’s addressing squad needs in the window. 1 game and 3 days later the manager is sacked. That is really really poor. What’s changed and why?

This letter has addressed nothing.

Flitcroft still sits in the shadows not prepared to front up and demonstrate leadership. He couldn’t even be arsed to speak to the media last night and let Will do it. Shame on you Flitcroft.

<ovf censored> Off

February 7

Personally I’m on X and will post Flitcroft Out on every single tweet by the club.

Judging by the post by the club today it looks like I’m not the only one.

February 7

2 minutes ago, pete vale said:

We may need to take action as supporters again with DF. Can't see where the next point is coming from. We will get battered by Stevenage and Peterboro and lose to Cheltenham. I'm hoping someone says something or something happens before the weekend, ideally DF

I think we just need to keep the pressure on spamming Vale socials and singing for him to leave. We also need to keep the pressure on even after a new man is appointed and we hopefully pick up a few results. We cannot let up.

Its difficult to see where the next goal is coming from but football is a funny game.. you never know.

February 7

1 hour ago, manc_vale said:

In a time of crisis you rally round, roll your sleeves up and get involved. He didn't. He didn't front up to the press, he wasn't involved in the bench. As the man in charge of all footballing matters it's completely clear that the man with the vision was needed last night. He provides the continuity to the players in the training, selection and how they approach the game. The squad and approach are the result of his procurement. There was no evidence of him stepping in, or taking charge, or being visible.

This is it. Leadership. What leadership.

3 people who voted no. I’m honestly astounded.

February 7

We are at the Micheal Brown stage of the season and need a few free agents to boost our extremely thin squad. I'm not sure there is a viable striker out there but a fullback,CM and winger and a change of formation to 4231 I think would give us a good chance of staying up.

Realistic Free Agents

FB Matt Penney

CM Kieran Lee,Josh Onomah

Winger Josh McPake, Junior Hoilett

A couple of free agents will give the whole squad a bit of a lift

February 5

I don’t buy this rubbish from this American lad.

You could guarantee if we thought he was as good as Clint Dempsey we would have done everything to make sure he had the paperwork.

I suspect the lad wasn’t t good enough.

February 5

14 hours ago, Wrex said:

Colin was BD so he had to go.

BD - Before Dave (Flitcroft)

Wrex, I had it on very very good authority at the time Colin was leaving anyway at the end of the season . It was the agreement as part of the club purchase he would stay on to help a smooth transition and pass on his knowledge and experience over a period of time.. It was just was bought forward to facilitate the management restructuring made in the January.

February 5

13 hours ago, smithie said:

I think it's beyond dispute that the owner doesn't identify with Vale fan culture. Our crowd's strength (not always, but sometimes) was to be vociferous and hostile, and making things unpleasant and uncomfortable for visiting teams and fans. Most right-in-the-head people would say that's the essence of home advantage, and some of our best atmospheres have been with a large and noisy away support.

So what do we do? Of course, we kill all that off with the Hamil move and now we're left with an eerie quiet around the ground that is actually embarrassing to be amongst. Ironically, in pursuit of this cuddly family-football crowd they've made it just about as unexciting as it could be for any kids who would probably love the noise and occasional bad language.

I'm not just saying this because of current results but gosh it's dull going to the games these days.

I agree with you Smithie.

I would also add it’s beyond dispute Flitcroft doesn’t relate either.

February 2

10 minutes ago, Vtid said:

Issues with the hamil road toilets & tommy cheadles now! Getting ridiculous this

It’s a bit of a shitter that….

February 2

28 minutes ago, TJHValiant said:

Most players signed in the summer are free agents as they leave when their deals expire.

Exactly. After the windows have closed and the season has started nobody wanted you.

February 2

Now the dust has settled I’m even more perplexed about the lack of striker when you consider we were all set for Uche to join Charlton.

Negligence by Flitcroft. He should be sacked for incompetence.

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