Alan Vit

A taxi driver who will do Norton to a football club in inner London for £150??? Please share the number.

LS, It is easy to wipe out the WUM ... 🙂 You've chosen to ignore content by Killersrevenge44.

Ben Garrity - in a word, "heart". Baylee Dipepa - young player of the year, if Rob decides to offer a second poll. Took every challenge, including international appearances, in his stride and excelled beyond all expectations. I just hope we can see some seasons from Baylee in a Vale shirt before he moves to a top-level club.

Well logically if a big percentage of the budget was spent in just paying off under contract players it wouldn't be a competitive budget, would it? What I took away from the Q&A was that Darren and his staff would have a budget that would enable creation of a competitive squad, after all pay-offs, retentions and incomings have been completed.

… success with PVFC within the next 60-odd months. I certainly believe that Carol means what she says with Darren’s 5.5 year contract. Please don’t misunderstand, we can all see that Darren and his staff are committed to a massive improvement in footballing performance in the coming season. But it’s not a make or break season, bar the unthinkable threatening.

I only had time yesterday evening to watch a few minutes of the evening live, but I've now been able to watch the recording through. Well done to Darren and Matt for an excellent Q&A and giving straight answers to all of the questions. It's left me really keen to know the further answers they couldn't yet give, about new players incoming, and about the pre-season friendlies they've arranged for next season, and about the new on-field and off-field captains. As other posters have commented, it seems clear that last season Darren was compelled to tread gently with the existing squad, to try and coax some performances out of them, but is now able to be much more direct and blunt about what is required from each of them, if they want to have any future at the club. My impression is that the outcome of the evening is to make the supporters much more upbeat and hopeful for the coming season. UTV

Then you could offer constructive criticism and leave out the thread of personal abuse which runs through many of your comments, not only towards Carol but also towards your fellow Vale supporters.. @TJHValiant From your glib remarks, I'm sure that you have never run a business of any size, let alone a business trying to operate in a marketplace as difficult and often irrational as football, which is what Carol and her colleagues are doing. Supporters who have longer memories than you choose to have are still aware that the only reason we now have our club taking part in the Football League (rather than following Bury and the other former League clubs down the pyramid) is that five years ago Carol and Kevin rescued our club from the clutches of Smurthwaite and then invested further massive sums of money to start the process of building the club back up. That five years has had a mix of success and failure - promotion before we could have expected it and then relegation when it was readily possible to stay up with even a very few more competent footballing performances. So the first team is currently on a downer after an atrocious season and it's to be hoped that the (remaining and new) players and the new coaching staff under Darren turn on a much better next season for the long-suffering supporters. Elsewhere in the footballing side of the club, the Football Academy has shone, producing lots of fine young prospects, which can only be good for the future. And a lot of the footballing infrastructure has been replaced or renewed to a higher standard. So the fair-minded picture of the club includes both the plusses and the minuses. From my point of view, the biggest plus is that we have genuine owners in Carol and Kevin, and that they show the resilience to ignore abuse from supporters who speak before they think, and still carry on working to better our club. And the second biggest plus is that they have appointed a manager and his coaching staff (at further large cost) who I think have the ability to revitalise the playing side and get us promoted again. Please have a think about these views before replying further.

Your stream of unpleasant comments about Carol Shanahan leads me to wonder if you have some personal grudge against her?

A "structured arrangement" to spend upwards of £40 million, for which you haven't identified any source(s) of funding, and for which you haven't identified any cost-benefit(s) of your proposal. Please would you explain what you mean by a "structured arrangement" which addresses both of those points - source(s) of funding, and cost-benefit(s) of your proposal?

Website playing silly beggars 🙂

Not meaning to be negative, but I just don’t see the cost-benefit of your proposal. £30 million upwards to build the new stadium. £10 million upwards to convert the ground to include training pitches and to build a new hotel as part of the complex. The only new revenue stream this produces is the hotel, and Vale are located in a town in which long-standing hotels already struggle to make any profit.

Stoke's best period was the 1960s-early 1970s under Tony Waddington when playing at the Victoria Ground, which was a proper footballing cockpit. Moving grounds isn't new, but it makes no sense at all for Vale for the reasons previously stated.

We can find out reasonably accurately what would be the cost of a new stadium - "Posh are aiming to build a 17,000 capacity stadium on the city's Embankment by 2023. The new facility is expected to cost £30-£50m." "After being in construction for almost three years, Brentford Community Stadium was officially opened on 1 September 2020. The stadium, which has been built at a cost of just over £70million" "AFC Wimbledon – Plough Lane Wimbledon made a return to the Plough Lane after the new stadium was officially opened on 3 November 2020. This new stadium, which cost just over £30 million, is built just a few hundred yards from the site where the original Plough Lane, which was the original home of Wimbledon FC for more than 80 years, stood. The construction on the new stadium started in 2015. It has a capacity of just over 9,000." So anything from £30 million upwards. Which would have to be funded in its entirety, since I believe there is some sort of legal / council planning restriction which means Vale Park can only ever be used for sports activities, so could not be redeveloped as houses for instance to offset the cost of a new stadium. In my view a new stadium is a complete non-starter. The necessary renovations to bring Vale Park up to scratch would cost a small fraction of that amount. Plus Vale Park is our home. You only have to look at the south of the city to see what happens when a club sells its soul, gets rid of a historic stadium steeped in atmosphere and moves to a sterile Meccano-built box.

… to do well.

No, I want to judge Darren on what he can achieve at the Vale when he and his coaching staff have been able to sign their own players and then work with them. Because Vale have committed to Darren and he is the Vale manager for the foreseeable future. So, if we want our club to enjoy success again, we have to get behind Darren and his coaching staff and will them and their chosen players on do well.

“I understand” in this instance means “Someone at the club told me, but off the record, so I can’t just plainly say that it’s factual”. Mike Baggaley has a good reputation going back decades in journalism, and isn’t going to risk it by making up things.

DazFred, We can begin to judge sensibly next season, when Darren and his staff have had the chance to bring in and work with their own choice of players.

Get theself darn there, youth. 🙂

If you look back to the posts which started this discussion, I said - “The best guess I can come up with, based on various unofficial sources on the net, is that Vale's budget comes in around 18th-19th of the 24 clubs in this season's EFL 1. So, if that is accurate, then by definition it would be a League 1 budget.” It’s just guesswork for the purpose of discussing whether or not Vale had a “League 1 budget” for this season. (Spoiler alert - They did. 🙂) But I think it likely that Mike Baggaley’s assessment has its basis in official club information, even if provided off the record.

WV valeparklife posted Mike Baggaley’s Valiant piece a couple of posts after you asked. Here’s another one - /static/images/photos/capology-social-league-one.jpg 2023-2024 League One Payrolls WWW.CAPOLOGY.COM There are more sites which reckon to know, if you search.

Spot on. I still think back fondly to players like David Healy and Chris Killen and earlier still Neville Southall who graced the Vale shirt on loan.

You are not correct about Uche - he would not have come to Vale for a contract that wasn't above £100K p.a. And you seem to be mixing up two different things. 1. The standard of the players who were signed to make up the squad - on this we are agreed; a number of them weren't good enough and got us relegated, when even a fractionally better performance overall would have kept us up, in a season when the safety mark was low. 2. The budget for the players who were signed to make up the squad - on this we are not agreed; neither of us knows the actual budget figure, or how it compares to other clubs in League 1. The best guess I can come up with, based on various unofficial sources on the net, is that Vale's budget comes in around 18th-19th of the 24 clubs in this season's EFL 1. So, if that is accurate, then by definition it would be a League 1 budget.

TJH, You have previously claimed this about the budget, and previously been unable to provide any evidence for your claim when challenged. After the squad had already been put together for the start of this League 1 season, the boat was pushed out further last October to sign Uche Ikpeazu. I'm not arguing about the standard of achievement of the squad which was assembled but, with respect, I think you are mistaken to claim that a League 2 budget was provided when it was clearly a League 1 budget.