valiant steve

We all wanted a better transfer window than January 2023. We got an even worse one! If DM can turn this team around and get enough points to keep us up, he will have performed a miracle!

The long term plan includes three completely flawed ideologies: a) All youth players up for sale. b) Loans in to develop young players for other clubs. c) An "Identity" (we play one way only) This is nonsense. We should be developing our own young players, keeping hold of the best ones and bringing them through when the time is right. Loans are almost always awful and have no long term benefit to PVFC. Arblaster and Devine were very good players but brought their own issues. (Unavailable when kids international duty was on and recalled early when their parent clubs realised it had gone really well for the players) Always playing one way, one system, makes us so predictable. If you have better players than the opposition all over the pitch, fair enough. We don't! All the other teams in this division have strikers that cause our defenders problems and defenders that easily cope with our strikers. Our biggest issue though, d) Rucruitment of players! Carol has, in my opinion, lost sight of what PVFC is. We're a football club. We need to have a football team that the supporters (and the local community) are proud of. Look at how much good the promotion season and the Wembly trip did for everyone in the area! L1 is very poor this season and, if recruitment had been better, we'd be comfortably in mid table now and planning how to strengthen further in the summer. I don't want to overspend on players, but I'd rather have a team of players that can play every game. We've got players like Grant, Cass, Jones, Wilson, Uche, Clarke, etc... who are all injury prone and are only available for a small percentage of the time. Our "back three" must have been chopped and changed more than any other teams defence! We play a different combination every single match and change it several times every game because of injury! If recruitment is an issue, if we're constantly missing our targets, then we're not competitive on wages. The playing budget needs to be a higher priority than many of the things going on in the background. We can get the facilities "Championship-ready" in the summer following our promotion to that level! We're going to have the best ground in L2 next season. Dozens of away fans will be impressed by our fancy scoreboard!

I don't think any Vale Fan sees DM as the issue, but we're not allowed to say what/who the issue is with. It's football. There's no place for sentiment. AC got the sack when DM became available and DF went and got him. I feel very sorry for AC as I think he genuinely did care about the results. He wasn't backed in the transfer market, leaving us with a wafer-thin, unbalanced squad of mainly poor players. CSs biggest mistake so far was her open letter that was patronising to the supporters who love this club and care far more about PVFC than the majority of the "employees" ever will. I'll calm down after this latest pathetic defeat after a few days. I'm not sure how long it's going to take me to calm down from the shambles that was the January transfer window!

Open message for you Carol. I don't trust the process! The "Championship-ready" statement about our infrastructure, backroom team and community initiatives, Robbie Williams Suite, new scoreboard, new training facilites and offices... it's all pointless if the First Team is <ovf censored> and never wins football matches. The last two January transfer windows have been shambolic. You haven't learned the lesson from January 2023 that nearly cost us our L1 status. January 2024 was actually even worse that 2023, and this squad of players lacks the strength, courage, leadership, character, fight, determination, passion (all the things that you can't see on a laptop screen of statistics about players when recruiting) You've asked us not to protest at matches and to keep our feelings to ourselves when we can see a major issue with the internal structure of our football club and the flaws in our recruitment process, so I'll be protesting with my wallet and keeping it shut come May when it's time to renew our three season tickets. I'm absolutely fuming! Every single team that we've played this season has better players than us. How can we possibly compete at L1 level when we've only got three players who are genuinely of the required standard? I hope the players hurt as much as us supporters, but sadly doubt that they do! If DM can keep this shower up, I'll be truly impressed!

We needed better players in January, not a new manager in February! If recruitment isn't DFs fault, it must be CSs fault.

Yet another team (the powerhouse that is Cheltenham Town) with better players than us. I hope DM is allowed to bring his own players in this summer.

We're going to miss Ojo!

FFS!

Thank god for Chiz!

Wilson has been anonymous today. Get him off for Dipepa or that loan winger!

We've won 8 league games out of 30 with this formation and, for the majority of those games, its been Massey and Grant as the "wingbacks". We're getting battered again by a team from the bottom three.

I like the wingback formation, but we don't have any wingbacks!

Only a matter of time until we concede again. Is Moore going to change it?

Hopefully this will be the last time we see this awful formation. Has Wilson had a touch today yet?

It makes the decision to call games off in the Autumn for "international call-ups" look extremely stupid now!

The recruitment, the January transfer window 2024, has been shambolic. That is either the fault of DF for being incompetent, or the fault of CS for not providing the necessary funds to compete with the likes of Fleetwood, Cheltenham, Carlisle, Cambridge, etc... for players of the required standard. L1 is very weak this season and, while I've not seen many good sides visit VP, I've also not seen many sides as weak as we are. We're weak in defence and toothless in attack. We did have a very strong midfield before Christmas. We lost Ojo, Garrity, Arblaster and Devine in January. Hopefully getting OJo back can be our catalyst for improvement! 🤞 CSs open letter, defending DF, leaves me wondering if it's the lack of funds for a competitive budget that is the problem. For me, if we had one "decent" manager, we could get rid of several other backroom staff and free up some funds for a couple of players. A striker and a couple of full backs might be a start! I don't like to critise Carol, her and Kevin saved our club from NS and almost certain oblivion. However, the balance on spending between the stadium and community projects, vs the first team, needs to be reviewed and redressed!

Time to go! DF get out of our club!

Wrong man sacked. Ainsworth please.

24 hours to go. Not great so far, in fact pretty awful. Will I still be saying that this time tomorrow? I really hope not! UTV!

Signings in the summer that were excellent: Ripley, Chislett, Arblaster, Devine. Signings in the summer that have been decent: Iacovitti, Lowe, Sang Not a bad summer really. We need to add a left sided player and a striker in this window. Plus, we need to replace with better anyone that leaves. Strong rumours that Conlon, Cass and Walters are going to leave. I'd be amazed if we can get better than Arblaster, so we need to strengthen other areas, especially strikers. (Unless Loft and Uche start to produce) UTV!

This time last year, we'd played 24 games and sat 9th in the league with 35 points! Our goal difference was -5 and we had a 13 point cushion (and a game in hand) over Burton who sat in 21st position. Burton were the only team in the relegation zone to escape. From our 24 games so far this season, we currently sit 15th with 29 points. Goal difference is -10. We're 6 points above Exeter who are in the relegation zone in 21st place. Bottom team Fleetwood are 11 points behind us. We can't afford another rubbish January window, otherwise we'll likely be getting relegated come the end of this season. The defeat against Carlisle was a terrible result and the team need to respond with a win today.

The first week of the transfer window has seen many of the rival teams in our fight against relegation strengthen their squads or even change their manager. We've had no ins or outs as yet this week. We're significantly weaker since Arblaster was recalled. From what I've seen, around 80 to 90% of loan signings are rubbish and have very little impact. The odd one that is decent leave after a few short successful months anyway. I'd much rather see us developing our own youth players. Arblaster and Devine have been the exceptions, but we must surely be able to find our own youth team players that are equal to (or hopefully better than) the likes of Balmer, Mipo, Mcarron, Small, etc... The last time I saw Walters play (was it in the first half against Barnsley?) I thought that the rest of the team noticeably bypassed him and didn't pass to him at all. Did anyone else think that? I really hope that our club learn from previous January windows! UTV!

When was the last time we had a stronger team and squad following a January transfer window? Promotion season maybe? (Under Smurthwaite and Mickey Adams!)

I've just listened to ACs latest mard arse interview full of excuses. Did Carlisle not play any games over the last few weeks? When we played with the young wing backs, we kept a clean sheet. When he put the awful GM and CG back on, we conceded two goals. Grant and Massey may be experienced but they're also f***ing sh**!

...and take the captaincy off Smith, he's not captain material. Give it to the Yak or Lowe.