Wrex

If that's the case then fair enough, got us a lot more then PVFCFAN or whatever the name is

"I am convinced that this man will go down as the worst Port Vale manager in our ENTIRE history. FROM. DAY. ONE. No actual reasoning was given, before a ball was kicked, and a manager with Premier League and Championship experience - with experience of winning promotion from League One - is said to be the worst manager in the club's history. Why? This is just one crank off the internet rather than a significant portion of the fanbase, and everyone else has responded by saying he is in the wrong, but "Nobody has brought up Darren Moore’s race once". Well, the poster hinted at it by saying "Remember when we were racist for calling him fat? He shouldn't have been allowed inside Port Vale."

Maybe Norman was right when he said some Vale fans weren't ready for a manager like Jimmy Floyd Hasselbank...

Well, at least matchdays seem special for them now. I dunno it sounded like <ovf censored> at the time but what do I know?

He won Premier League Manager of the Month taking West Brom from 10 points from safety to a more respectable five points from safety. He took Sheffield Wednesday from six points from safety to relegated by a three point margin. Huddersfield were drifting towards a relegation battle when he got sacked a few weeks ago. Yet to be concluded under their new manager. So yeah, his relegation battles have been creditable failures, which is no doubt what will happen here.

Mighten gets his start. Good to see Garrity on the bench

<ovf censored> me, after years of having to put up with Rampant Zebra constantly making digs at Clarke we finally get a break from it, just as you start up on about Moore!

He returned to Nottingham Forest on 10 January 2023 having played 14 times and scoring two goals, at times playing out of position at wing-back and centre-forward.[24][25] Wednesday decided to end the loan as they were contributing a significant portion of the player's wages, much to Forest manager Steve Cooper's frustration.[26][27] As Mighten had already played for Forest and Wednesday in the 2022–23 season, this left him unable to join another club on loan and gametime for Forest in the Premier League was an unreaslitic prospect.[28][29] Wednesday manager Darren Moore said that "it was one of the hardest decisions that I have had to make since becoming a manager".[30] Bet he was thrilled when Moore was appointed

Bell had Rudge as manager, bringing in millions of pounds of revenue and operating on a shoestring budget whilst also doing the work of ten men. I'm not sure Bell spent the money as well as he could have, though fair enough he wasn't wealthy enough to pump money into the club himself and kept us solvent... until he didn't.

If the top four go up in League Two as it stands then there shouldn't be anyone to worry about too much. Only thing is that anyone is a worry to us at the moment, and also less big clubs means less gate revenue.

I do think such doom mongering is OTT, but then look at Forest Green Rovers. Had a top manager, good players, got promoted out of League One ahead of us. Then the manager and the best players left, daft decisions from the boardroom for a couple of years and they're currently firmly rooted in the League Two relegation zone. If good decisions are made in the summer then we can be promoted straight back up. But equally, we can be down with the deadmen is poor decisions are made and we have a fourth consecutive bad transfer window.

Yes not a great example. But my point is that having a high quality academy benefits the club, no doubt about that, but it's another one of those things where perhaps the money would be better invested elsewhere seen as we only have a limited amount of funds.

They get the first pick of the best talent though. It's like saying that Eton is the best school in England and makes huge profits so a school in Burslem should copy them

There isn't really much you can do if a youth player wants to sign with a Premier League academy. The rules are set. We get a small compensation fee. Nothing we can do about that. However, that does beg the question of why bother pumping money into an academy? We're surrounded by massive clubs, multi-million pound academy operations, including the experts up the road at Crewe. Why would any bright prospect choose us? Even if we do everything right. Of course the best talent we get will leave us. So what does that leave us? Lads at 16/17/18 that were passed up by the top academies at 8 years old, at 10 years old, 12 years old? Still not good enough. Not wanted at 13, no thanks at 14. They were aware of them at 15 but weren't interested. That leaves us with thin gruel in terms of relatively late developers. Personally I'd go with the Brentford, Accrington, Wycombe etc approach and sacking off youth development and putting that money into the first-team and a B/reserve team of 17-24 year olds who've been spat out from academies but can still be those late developers.

The postponements were the one mistake Flitcroft actually owned up to (probably means they were Crosby's idea)

Ah, you mean like Father Ted's A Song for Europe? It all makes sense now, all that talk of is being promoted "too early" and how much it cost us to go up. We're trying to get relegated to save money!

Told to sign a striker?

Say what you like about Flitcroft, but he is certainly the best and worst director of football we've ever had.

Doesn't really mesh with the image they were portraying of him being the busiest man at the football club does it? But yeah, it's part of the job description to waffle on talking a load of <ovf censored>, so we'll let him off for that one. His sales pitch likely helped us to bring Devine, Arblaster and Darren Moore to the club. So you can't lay into him too much for talking a good game when results on the pitch are poor. He's also the man tasked with putting Carol's "Championship ready" vision into action and he has done a lot of genuinely good stuff, even if a lot of it is behind the scenes that we don't see. His explanation of what went wrong in the January transfer window. Well that's how it goes sometimes. It's good to hear an explanation at least. Fact is the striker situation is a shambles, but I'm sure the recruitment team worked as hard as any other manager / sporting director in the country. We failed, but hey, maybe if we'd have got that ex-Championship or top six PL2 striker and he hit a few goals then we wouldn't be sitting here with Darren Moore on a five year contract.

Here is the form table

17 points from 21 games. We have gained 15 points from our last 21 league games.

As things stand we're going down. The team we need to catch are Charlton, managed by... Nathan Jones. Even if he did us another favour then Cheltenham will certainly overtake us. Their manager? Darrell Clarke. Doesn't seem that difficult does it, this appointing decent manager lark?

Doesn't make me feel any better about our relegation knowing that if I was a betting man then I'd have made nearly a grand off a £100 sure thing.

Glad we didn't go in for him

Colin was BD so he had to go. BD - Before Dave (Flitcroft)