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A Year On: What Really Happened to Port Vale's 'Overseas' Experiment?


eepiegum

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Realistic Notts County fan in peace - we have absolutely nothing to crow about so please be gentle!! :laugh:

 

I came on here last year to make comparisons between Notts County's failed experiment, led by the Dutchman Ricardo Moniz and Vale's decision to appoint Bruno Ribeiro and sign lots of overseas players.

 

Like our try at building a team, comprised largely of overseas players, your season seemed to start well - plus you seemed to sort out the defensive side of things much, much better than we did.

 

So what really happened? Was it that the players couldn't settle in the Potteries? The weather? The physical nature and speed of English lower league football? I know that we were not going to get relegated under Moniz and that we played some great attacking football but we couldn't defend for toffee.

 

When the sh !t hit the fan both yours and our chairman took a real mauling from the fans but part of me was glad that we had tried something different.

 

We've now got rid of every single overseas player off our books and have reverted to a solid, organised, gutsy style of football which is more suited to this league BUT in truth pretty boring ! Where do you find the balance between entertainment and success? I don't know.

 

Any way, all the best for next season and I hope you turn it round. For gawd's sake don't do a Tranmere and go for two successive relegations - we need the extra pennies that come from local derby matches !!:clap:

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Turns out our owner proved himself to be completely incompetent & got conned by the most amateur 'agent' on the planet (he even had an actual Myspace page), who tricked him into thinking he could sign loads of foreign players on the cheap & sell them for millions to the Prem.

 

So many things went wrong during the circus of last season that I'd much prefer to forget about it all & move on, however let's just say that when you talk about success & entertainment, ours consisted of about 7 or 8 decent games (at home), & the rest was absolutely dire.

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There's nothing wrong with signing foreign players and a foreign manager. The problem comes when you try and do it on the cheap.

 

Ultimately 90% of the players simply weren't good enough. If we'd signed loads of English players of the same ability, on the cheap, the result would have been the same.

 

Sent from my CUBOT ECHO using the onevalefan mobile app

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What happened was that the players we signed weren't good enough. The chairman took the approach that if he signed 10 unknown foreign players, at least one of them must be an undiscovered gem who we could sell for millions. Unfortunately, none of them were.

 

I think he must have signed most of them from agents' videos, or even just from agents' recommendations. Some (Tavares, Knopps, etc) were decent but no better than we could have got from the lower leagues over here. Some were way out their depth (Mbamba, Macintosh, Cicilia). He also made the monumental mistake of not signing any recognised strikers, so although we were quite decent defensively, we couldn't hit a barn door up top.

 

Perhaps the only positive, and one player we seem to have thankfully kept, is De Freitas. A French lad, he seems to have a bit of quality about him and I'd like to see him regularly in our starting 11 next year.

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There's nothing wrong with signing foreign players and a foreign manager. The problem comes when you try and do it on the cheap.

 

Ultimately 90% of the players simply weren't good enough. If we'd signed loads of English players of the same ability, on the cheap, the result would have been the same.

 

Sent from my CUBOT ECHO using the onevalefan mobile app

Were they signed on the cheap? Unfortunately I don't think they were.

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Carlos Saleiro - went home after a cameo on the first day of the season, apparently used to be highly talented striker

Miguel Santos - fifth choice stopper

Calvin Mac-Intosch - solid bench warmer, just struggled when he had to come onto the pitch

Sébastien Amoros - anonymous midfielder on the pitch, ridiculously good looking instagram star off the pitch

Rigino Cicilia - NBA star who was put into a professional football team for a Hollywood mockumentary

Kiko - attacking full-back with nowhere near enough defensive ability/experience to succeed in this country

Quentin Pereira - anonymous midfielder

Chris Mbamba - fast winger with no footballing brain, experience or much particular ability

Paulo Tavares - good veteran lower top-flight/second tier Portuguese midfielder completely unsuited for lower league English football

Kjell Knops - decent lower league defender

Anthony de Freitas - potentially decent lower league combatative midfielder

Bruno Ribeiro - Signed a Portuguese clique, unknown input on other signings, clearly some coaching ability to get the start he did with the players he had but his assistant said Ribeiro had back up plans and tactical masterplans - WRONG!

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The short story is that some people in the game saw our chairman coming and persuaded him to employ a lot of other people who were either way out of their depth or just not suited to English lower league football.

 

There's no fool like an old fool and the more and more I hear about Norman and how green he was, the more I actually pity him rather than feel any anger.

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yeh it was the weather

 

no!,it was that idiot father of yours who thought he could make millions, easy peasy and lots of lovely money but he was so blinded by the thought of all that loot that he ignored the golden rule that if it sounds to good to be true then it usually is.

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You know for me the most striking similarity between Vale's and Notts' experiment was the tsunami of optimism that swept through both clubs at the start of the close season. Day after day we both signed a new foreign player that nobody had heard of and yet the majority of us gullible fans were convinced that these unknowns were going to fast track us to the promised land, rather than failure and relegation.

 

I guess us supporting Vale and Notts, rather than Stoke and F*rest, suggests that we are all eternal optimists. Shame the dream couldn't happen to us - just the once hey !

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The short story is that some people in the game saw our chairman coming and persuaded him to employ a lot of other people who were either way out of their depth or just not suited to English lower league football.

 

There's no fool like an old fool and the more and more I hear about Norman and how green he was, the more I actually pity him rather than feel any anger.

 

I can't disagree with that, Santa. Norman thought he was a wheeler dealer and it turned out he was anything but. As you say he has made himself look a bit daft and it's rather a pity. The fact that he has stepped back from his hands on role at the club suggests that he has realised his shortcomings and perhaps he is ready to step away completely?? I'm sure if he decided to do so it would be a lot better for his health and wellbeing.

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