mr.hobblesworth

Thanks for that, both the write up and for trying to get us out of this horrendous situation. I know you can't come on here and disclose specific details of your conversations but do you get the sense that there is any appreciation (at the top) of our concerns re Flitcroft?

Huh?

TBF I did edit my response before I saw you'd written this, it didn't really have any bearing on your post so I apologise. I try not to engage in Vale-related social media (the odd newsy twitter account aside), I think it's pretty foul and almost all of the people I speak to in person feel quite proud of the community side of things. Its the football stuff that's an embarrassment. I've said on here before but I don't feel it's an either/ or kind of thing - we're not a tedious side because we're also feeding vulnerable families. If we stopped the foodbank, the staff wouldn't be drafted over to the recruitment 'team'. If you now differently, I'd be genuinely interested in hearing it but I see the community side as the one speck of gold in the <ovf censored> at the moment.

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I didn't say it wasn't.

How do you know what the average fan thinks?

Yes, I think she is. I remember her saying that one of the reasons they bought the Vale was so that they could use the club's massive kitchens to help feed vulnerable families. Football is understandably the priority for the majority of the fanbase but there is a much larger picture and I think that's what the family are looking at when they talk about the campus and a legacy. The club and Burslem at large have a symbiotic relationship and, if managed well, both will prosper and benefit each other.

Clearly been an influx of trolls.

The exasperating thing is that we made exactly the same mistakes last season. Went in to the season with an incomplete squad, Flitcroft gambling on some stupid shortcut (2 cheapo keepers rather than spending some money on arguably the most important player in the team), ended up playing games without any forwards and sank down the table. I remember us limping out of the league cup due to having nothing up front and the usuals all bleating that it was fine, we never did well in that competition anyway. Then bleating that we were saving our budget in January so we could splurge on decent players in the close season, and that recruitment was poor because we had a short pre-season and "no League One muscle memory" (FFS). I don't mind gambles and mistakes, so long as you learn from them. DF clearly isn't. For all his list of players that we missed out on in January, it all comes back to his decision during the summer that we weren't going to invest in a strikeforce. He seemed to think he was quite clever when he announced that last year.

For those who are hoping that the Shanahans spend a load more of their money on the Vale, how would they do this? We'd still be stuck with only being able to spend 60ish % of income on the football side, wouldn't we? We can't even hope for some dodgy MCFC style OTT sponsorship deal now that Synectics is sold.

Wouldn't blame the Shanahans if they <ovf censored> off and left us to it. If my mum/ wife/ daughter was Carol I'd be begging her to walk out of the club and never come back.

Flitcroft needs to resign but why would he? It's not like anyone else would want him.

Ah, right. TBF, both camps are pretty idiotic.

Which ones? Those mindlessly parroting the official club line and backing something which was clearly going off the rails, or the wally going on about sacking Moore?

It was neither trolling nor spouting random crap. You're a repeatedly banned poster who lives (or at least was living) abroad and often spoke of their 'love' for LFC. There was a thread on here about a year or so ago, with screenshots, of you posting on another forum 'supporting' spurs. You rejoined this forum about a year ago and have posted almost entirely negative messages, most recently slating our longest serving player and the best owner we've had in living memory. At least VFIA is consistent and attends games. I'll leave it there and put you on ignore.

I'll ask again. Are you the person who used to post as Beechy? A simple yes or no will suffice.

So you're not the poster who used to go by the name of Beechy then?

There was a thread on here about it when you were posting on there. You can't even keep your Premier League team consistent. What happened to your 'love' of Liverpool, Beechy? My toys aren't out of the pram, I'm very concerned with the way the club's heading and have been vocal in my criticisms of Flitcroft. Just think reactionary threads coming from a game player like you are a bit galling.

What would you know? Weren't you posting on a different forum as a spurs fan not so long ago? You don't go to any games, you pop up in numerous guises, consistently get banned for your adolescent insults and then pop up a year or so later under another psuedonym acting like some expert on all things Vale. The nerve of someone like you slating Carol.

Maybe if Flitcroft hadn't decided back in the summer that he'd found a cheat mode for squad building, didn't need to bother with buying a striker and could depend on goals from midfield instead, he wouldn't have had to approach (and get turned down by) 174 players this January.

Agreed. We weren't always like this though, were we? Earlier this season, under Crosby and with largely the same set of players, there was a vast majority of fans praising the football we were playing. Maybe that weird run of wins was flukey but the football was generally entertaining even if we weren't exactly scoring for fun. What's changed? Obviously having a paper thin squad due to back-ups not being very good and first teamers injured hasn't helped, but it's odd to see how wretched we are now compared with us playing relatively well earlier in the season. Have we just been found out? General malaise around the club? I dunno...

He was all over a Tottenham forum a few months back , saying what a huge fan he was of them - there was a thread on here about it. Just ignore him.

Agree with everything you've written but I do wonder if it's a case of one or the other though? I presumed they were prety much separate projects. I don't know if we can blame things like the campus, 'championship ready' infrastructure and the like on us not having a complete squad. Won't they be different budgets, staff etc?

Wanting a complete squad and for us to have the players where we can actually compete against the likes of Carlisle, Fleetwood and Cheltenham are not unrealistic expectations.