£1.7Million budget is actually on a par.

[werstayinup]

Well the stay away fans can only blame themselves for that one can't they norman?

 

Not really,you will only get fans back by playing exciting football not by saying we will get a certain player in if you come back.....if the player had been brought in for the 50k and was as good as NS says then they would of come back and the 50k would of been recouped,only my opinion of course as i will be there no matter what anyway

[paulvaliant]

Yes but then it was unreasonable of me to look for support for Prem striker and put my hand in my pocket again

 

Fans would have turned out if this supposed prem striker was as good as you made out. Think you need to go back to when you took over the club. You went out and got 2 top class old heads in Lee Hughes and Darren Purse. They improved the team and look what it did to the attendances. (granted being top end of the table helped but the fans came out because they could see you meant business.)

[Burslem Academicals]

Yes but then it was unreasonable of me to look for support for Prem striker and put my hand in my pocket again

 

Is that why we have a cheapo novice apprentice trainee manager doing on the job training unsupervised instead of a real experienced quality manager like say Uwe Rosler......as season ticket sales will show that tragic retained list and no proper manager will cost the club.

[Guppy 4 England]

Any news on an assistant manager ?

[Bucknall Rob]

Fans would have turned out if this supposed prem striker was as good as you made out. Think you need to go back to when you took over the club. You went out and got 2 top class old heads in Lee Hughes and Darren Purse. They improved the team and look what it did to the attendances. (granted being top end of the table helped but the fans came out because they could see you meant business.)

 

Fans came out for the Burton game because it was a tener to get in and for the Northampton game as it was going to be the game to get us promoted. The rest of the games even after signing Hughes and Purse, we had similar attendances. We could never take a chance on signing someone and then hoping fans would turn out.

[Guppy 4 England]

Is that why we have a cheapo novice apprentice trainee manager doing on the job training unsupervised instead of a real experienced quality manager like say Uwe Rosler......as season ticket sales will show that tragic retained list and no proper manager will cost the club.

 

I always find this a stupid post. ask Norwich and Bournemouth what they think about their novice managers Eddie howe and Alex Neill

[Warren]

If we have an average squad of 23 players £1.7 million is nearly £74,000 per player. I assume there may be employer national insurance and other on-costs to account for, but that leaves a reasonable wage level for league 1 in my opinion. Port Vale needs more supporters or more off field income or more TV money or all of those. The attendances are not enough to go much further than we are although of course exceptional management could still get us promoted.

[For Us All]

I always find this a stupid post. ask Norwich and Bournemouth what they think about their novice managers Eddie howe and Alex Neill

 

I'd hardly call Eddie Howe a novice,he's managed 331 games,even Alex Neil's got 93 under his belt?

[Guppy 4 England]

I'd hardly call Eddie Howe a novice,he's managed 331 games,even Alex Neil's got 93 under his belt?

 

They had to start somewhere though ,being my point.

[Burslem Academicals]

I always find this a stupid post. ask Norwich and Bournemouth what they think about their novice managers Eddie howe and Alex Neill

 

How can anyone mention Eddie Howe a genius and future England manager in a discussion of the abject football of Rob Page....although the discussion was disrupted it was actually a question about the merits of the available and local Uwe Rosler and the abject football of Rob Page.

[valerule4ever]

Signing big names on high wages is not the way to go for Vale, look at Leyton Orient they tried this in the summer with signings including the likes of Darius Henderson and how that went! We need a team who all have the same goal as a group rather than individuals who think they are too good for the club but are happy to collect there wage. The only way as a club to improve gates is to plan long term, this will either happen by long term improvement in performances/league positions(not short term fixes) or by some long term off field planning and marketing/schemes on how to actually target improving gates over a number of years by getting new fans and lapsed fans to come and then trying to get them to come back on a more regular basis.

[andy jones]

Let me give you an example of my negotiating stance

 

I recently agreed to purchase a property,just before exchange the seller told me he wanted to renegotiate

I replied surely you do not wish to sell for less

Hope this helps

 

Norman let me give you another example of your negotiating skills. It was suggested to you that perhaps the Vice Presidents admission price which is more than double Lorne Street price for simply getting a view one floor up in the corner of Lorne Street and Bycars was unreasonable and perhaps explained why only a very small percentage of the seats were taken. Your subsequent negotiating skill of simply stating it's too cheap and it's going up next season even more has resulted in an even smaller percentage of those seats being taken next season.

 

If that 'take it or leave it' genuinely is your stance with Pope, O'Connor and Marshall I fear that they will leave and be replaced by players no better than the average we currently have. But I hope that is not your true stance and you are simply laying the ground for those negotiations.

 

A good negotiator Norman is one who makes the deal not breaks it.

[Walter]

How can anyone mention Eddie Howe a genius and future England manager in a discussion of the abject football of Rob Page....although the discussion was disrupted it was actually a question about the merits of the available and local Uwe Rosler and the abject football of Rob Page.

 

I think you have missed the point. all managers have to start somewhere and Eddie Howe was no different, but look where that got Bournemouth.

[valiant_593]

This thread and the replies from Smurf have given me a little more confidence regarding the budget and first team. Its nice to hear that we are on a par around the middle budget wise, as an earlier poster mentioned its how you spend it and I completely agree. Im also happy to hear that the 4/5 signings will be first team, if we kept our key men, marshall, oconnor and Pope (on a smaller wage) then we could have a very interesting side.

 

What worries me is the stance that the offers are non negotiable, but again this could also be a positive. In terms of Marshall, Oconnor and Pope you just have to hope that the offer is good enough for them to stay; looks like that might not be the case for Pope. So in this stance its a negative. However this certainly opens the ***** up to rejecting their offers if they are low so we could actually lose these awful players (williamson and birchall) finally, although it begs the question, why were they even offered them.

 

The one point that sticks out though was the one about williamson, where smurf said without his goals where would we be. I completely loath statements like this as its as if any other striker who plays 40 odd games wouldnt manage those 6 goals. His 6 goals werent key at all, if we had any other striker they would probably get 6 goals. Its like saying we cant release Birchall because he scored a couple of goals and without them we would be down.

 

Anyway more positivity from this thread than before reading it, regarding the budget; my only hope is that we do negotiate with certain players.

[geosname]

Not without a good scouting system.

 

Fair enough