Where has it all gone wrong?

[Paul6754]

The start of the season, we were playing this great style of football, flying high up the table. What happened?

 

We weren't paying a great style of football. First match of the season we got hammered by Bradford but by hook or crook they didn't score, second game vs Southend we were truely awful for the first 40 mins until Foley's run and Forresters header. We were then beaten by Carlisle, I could go on.

 

Sure there were one or two games where Vale played well and got a good result but usually we were poor and saved by goal posts/crossbars, spectacular saves by Alnwick, goal line clearances and some fine poaching by Alex Jones.

 

What happened was Smurf played chess and suffered "Fool's Mate" in May/June 2016.

[old sage]

Things really started to go 'pear shape' the day after Wildes left the Club. Since then it's simply been I want better for less from an owner who knows next to nothing and it doesn't work that way.

 

Once in a 'blue moon' a gold nugget is found but I haven't seen one of those moon's in a long while. I think when we do our silly owner will let him go with a derisory new contract offer and so off they scoot to inflict more pain just like Jones did a few days ago.

[JOHNNYAITCH]

Whats the use of paying big money for a manager ,then giving him a miserly playing budget. Would sooner have someone like Browney in charge,and having money to spend on fees/wages for DECENT players.

 

That assumes that the manager is a good judge when it come to identifying decent players..plenty of managers in football have had a decent player budget and s****ed it on what turned out to be useless tat.

[aspin for england]

That assumes that the manager is a good judge when it come to identifying decent players..plenty of managers in football have had a decent player budget and s****ed it on what turned out to be useless tat.[/QUOT

 

Totally agree JOHNNYAITCH, but at least any manager with a good budget has a chance, a miserly budget certainly lessens those chances of success. Smurf has done that with great effect.

[SourceOfTheTrent]

In any organisation it's almost always the case that success and failure come from the top, ie, management and leadership of the organisation. The big decisions have an effect on all functions of the organisation, both positive and negative. Therefore 'where has it all gone wrong' has to start with Smurf's decisions and the way he manages the organisation and I think we all know the space hopper sized b0ll0cks he's dropped, especially this season with the hare brained scheme to employ Bruno and bring in a huge squad of chancers in the hope we'd be getting the Barcelona squad for the price of a squad of office cleaners.

The key now is for Smurf to genuinely learn from this and learn the right lessons. A huge squad rid out is required with retention of the few quality players we have then bring in a sensible number of quality players who will give us a strong balanced matchday squad, which, ironically, probably won't be as (overall) expensive as having an army of pub players who will see us relegated.

I'd love us to stay up and rebuild in L1 but I fear we may have to go back to square one in L2.

[Stevie lad]

Look at it this way at the start of the season teams, didn't know our manager nor the players so it was a case of the unknown for clubs coming to vale, but for me the turning point was when we lost to Coventry at home they sussed us out big time and from there on every team was doing the exact same thing against us and you could see Bruno had no Plan B.

 

We can all sit here and moan about Smurfs having a major clear out, but how many of us were actually sick of seeing the same players season in season out and us going no where? i for sure was, yes this hasn't worked but it takes a brave man to do what smurfs done and if we go down i will still be there supporting my club.

[Mario]

Look at it this way at the start of the season teams, didn't know our manager nor the players so it was a case of the unknown for clubs coming to vale, but for me the turning point was when we lost to Coventry at home they sussed us out big time and from there on every team was doing the exact same thing against us and you could see Bruno had no Plan B.

 

We can all sit here and moan about Smurfs having a major clear out, but how many of us were actually sick of seeing the same players season in season out and us going no where? i for sure was, yes this hasn't worked but it takes a brave man to do what smurfs done and if we go down i will still be there supporting my club.

 

Sorry Stevie, it takes a fool to risk the clubs future like Smurthwaite has done.

[Valiant in Brum]

Things really started to go 'pear shape' the day after Wildes left the Club. Since then it's simply been I want better for less from an owner who knows next to nothing and it doesn't work that way.

 

Once in a 'blue moon' a gold nugget is found but I haven't seen one of those moon's in a long while. I think when we do our silly owner will let him go with a derisory new contract offer and so off they scoot to inflict more pain just like Jones did a few days ago.

Also this habbit of trying to find the next John Rudge. I am afraid John Rudge would not have been able work his magic in this day and age on Port Vales finances. The club needs stop appointing ex players and coaches as managers, we need experience. The only time we have won anything since Rudge was sacked was Horton LDV Vans and Adams 2013 promotion, they had experience.

[Stevie lad]

Sorry Stevie, it takes a fool to risk the clubs future like Smurthwaite has done.

 

Fool perhaps but, it also takes a bit of guts.

[PVFC764]

Where would you start on this. The saga with Page, Bruno duping Smurf, foreign players not making the mark, players not playing for Bruno etc.

 

Then there is money being used to buy quantity rather than quality both on the field and a manager. Staff running the club not pulling their weight either through inexperience, not being bothered or the old saying - it has always been done that way so why change.

[TheSage]

You could argue that it's been going wrong for quite some time but for me the crunch period came at the end of last season when we swept away a moderately successful manager and several experienced, good players at this level, and decided to go for broke with the Bruno experiment.

Running parallel to those shenanigans was the abject failure to run an extended, realistic and imaginative season ticket campaign at a time when we had no manager in place, only half a dozen players and no-one had a clue what was happening and where we were going.

 

Those two events resulted in a loss of over 500 season ticket holders and now the strong possibility of relinquishing our hard won league one status.

 

It went badly wrong last summer.

 

And it's an impossible task to put it right without going through a pre-season, making wholesale changes (again) in the playing staff and trying desperately to win back the lost fans, whose numbers I imagine will increase if/when we do go down. It's a mammoth ask. But untold damage was done last summer, as several of us were warning at the time.

[old sage]

You could argue that it's been going wrong for quite some time but for me the crunch period came at the end of last season when we swept away a moderately successful manager and several experienced, good players at this level, and decided to go for broke with the Bruno experiment.

Running parallel to those shenanigans was the abject failure to run an extended, realistic and imaginative season ticket campaign at a time when we had no manager in place, only half a dozen players and no-one had a clue what was happening and where we were going.

 

Those two events resulted in a loss of over 500 season ticket holders and now the strong possibility of relinquishing our hard won league one status.

 

It went badly wrong last summer.

 

And it's an impossible task to put it right without going through a pre-season, making wholesale changes (again) in the playing staff and trying desperately to win back the lost fans, whose numbers I imagine will increase if/when we do go down. It's a mammoth ask. But untold damage was done last summer, as several of us were warning at the time.

Barring our current owner signing a proven manager and providing a decent budget so a few quality players can be brought into the club then the fans will keep on leaving like rats from a sinking vessel which this club surely is.

Next season the ST sales wont reach 2,000 and the budget will be slashed once again.