[League one relegation watch]

7 minutes ago, JoeB2 said:

Stevenage signed Vadaine Oliver last week.

Hadn't started a game for Bradford this season, and hadn't scored a league goal since Jan 1st 2023.

However, Evans knows exactly what his team is going to do, and what each player in his team is going to do. Oliver fit his profile.

They're in 7th, after promotion last year, with no DoF or equivalent, on sub 5,000 crowds. Evans sets the model. Made me think whether this is an alternative route to success.

Stevenage are also bankrolled by Phil Wallace who is worth £100m and for all Evans making out that they are poor are believed to have a decent players budget (which we won't know until accounts are released) and with a fit for purpose stadium built 23 years ago dont have a lot of our overheads.

 

There aren't many clubs now league 1 and above who don't have DOF, I don't know the facts or the pros and cons of having a DOF, so can't really comment on if best for a club or not.

 

[League one relegation watch]

24 minutes ago, JoeB2 said:

We aren't going to go down.

The more important question is whether the football operators are good enough to take us beyond where our budget will.

Taking a team with the 18th largest budget to 18th isn't much of an achievement. 

We're broadly finishing in line with our average attendance - 5th in 21/22 (4th average attendance), 18th in 22/23 (14th highest), and currently 20th (15th highest).

I guess the question at present is whether Flitcroft has helped us to overperform our budget, which we're going to have to do pretty emphatically if we want to compete in the top 6 of League 1 under the present ownership. We either outperform it by 10-12 places, or we increase our budget fairly substantially.

Whilst Flitcroft hasn't been a disaster to this point, has he done enough to suggest he is helping us to punch above our weight?

I agree.

I guess this year's footballing budget for first team may have been impacted by the pitch and extra academy investment and next seasons may he impacted if we need to sort out training pitches, however the next seasons and season after transfer activity and league positions we should see if any improvements/advancements are being made to being League 1 steady.

 

[League one relegation watch]

It may not be much consolation but looking at the clubs from 12th down and looking at their fans reactions and the player incoming and outgoings on different sites, the following 6 (excluding us) also look weaker after the Jan transfer window:

Fleetwood/ Cheltenham/ Reading/  Burton/ Shrewsbury and Wigan.

This seems to be reflected in the bookies odds who have the following teams in front of Vale for the drop:

Fleetwood/Carlisle/Cheltenham/Reading/Shrewsbury/Burton and Cambridge

With us same odds as Wigan and Wycombe to go down.

Obviouy It all means nothing if we don't win our games, so let's get behind the team and push them on.

On a side note there's been a lot of critiscm about amount of loan players we've bought in (4 both window), looking at teams in league 1 majority have bought in 5, some 6.

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