Worst Vale XI - nominate the manager

[Coyney Valiant]

It’s got to be Glover way out of his depth tactically , team selection a joke playing his lad was crazy and to make things even worse stood on the side in his special ones suit 

[Brian]

We really are spoilt for choice.

Horton was the first one that I can remember making Vale hard to watch, despite having some decent players.

Brown and Glover: noticeably both have failed to get back on the merry go round after falling off it at VP.

Gannon and Ribeiro both just seem like a bad dream

Aspin. Don’t know what went wrong: after a decent start, the players seemed to lose faith in him.

Adams second spell just didn’t work, and team was awful to watch. 

Among proper managers, I’d vote for Horton. Otherwise Glover.

 

[Jacko51]

15 minutes ago, Brian said:

Adams second spell just didn’t work, and team was awful to watch.

 

We won promotion in his second spell??

[TJHValiant]

22 minutes ago, Brian said:

We really are spoilt for choice.

Horton was the first one that I can remember making Vale hard to watch, despite having some decent players.

Brown and Glover: noticeably both have failed to get back on the merry go round after falling off it at VP.

Gannon and Ribeiro both just seem like a bad dream

Aspin. Don’t know what went wrong: after a decent start, the players seemed to lose faith in him.

Adams second spell just didn’t work, and team was awful to watch. 

Among proper managers, I’d vote for Horton. Otherwise Glover.

 

Horton? We won arguably our most prestigious trophy under the guy and had a promotion push season under him in league 1!  I actually think Horton, given what followed was a golden age. Kept us a solid league 1 club.

Adams should not be mentioned either. His 2nd spell saw a promotion and while things got a bit grim at the end, I put that down to Smurfwaite starting to cause issues. 

[TheSage]

4 hours ago, Jacko51 said:

The obvious choice is Gannon but he was like Delgado - decent elsewhere but complete rubbish at Vale.  I would also like to nominate Denis Butler who was the football management what Boris Johnson is to the concept of celibacy.

I'd agree with those two: Butler and Gannon.

[JRC]

3 hours ago, Jacko51 said:

The obvious choice is Gannon but he was like Delgado - decent elsewhere but complete rubbish at Vale.  I would also like to nominate Denis Butler who was the football management what Boris Johnson is to the concept of celibacy.

Dennis Butler by a country mile. The others in the list came in when the club lacked funds to spend. Butler not only built a poor side - he spent money to create a poor side!

Gannon will win the popular vote but people I know from in the club said Gary Roberts was a constant source of tension prior to the new manager. Gannon was never going to be a character who would manage Roberts at his most self destructive. 

A common theme with a lot of managers on the list is they were expected to work with existing coaching staff. Not sure that is ever going to ensure a positive outcome. 

[geosname]

Tongue firmly in cheek...... I would nominate Sir John of the cap.

He produced excellent teams, players and results showing us what could be.... everything that followed was a let down and disappointment. 

On a more serious note I would nominate Smurf, not manager in name but manager in actions.

[Essex Vale]

28 minutes ago, JRC said:

Dennis Butler by a country mile. The others in the list came in when the club lacked funds to spend. Butler not only built a poor side - he spent money to create a poor side!

Gannon will win the popular vote but people I know from in the club said Gary Roberts was a constant source of tension prior to the new manager. Gannon was never going to be a character who would manage Roberts at his most self destructive. 

A common theme with a lot of managers on the list is they were expected to work with existing coaching staff. Not sure that is ever going to ensure a positive outcome. 

Only older fans will remember Butler.  Recent memory suggests Jim Gannon.  Gannon was not a bad manager technically, his big mistake at Vale was failing to supress his superiority complex.  His approach quickly left him with no one on the staff to support him.  His error was around behaviour and personality.

In terms of sheer incompetence and ineptitude Dennis Butler stands alone. However, the Board at the time allowed him to spend lots of money, by Port Vale standards of the day, significant amounts of money, breaking our transfer record a few times over. A measure of his incompetence should come from looking at the list of players nominated for worse ever in their position, and there are plenty, all Butler signings:  Kevin Tully, Kenny Todd, Bob Delgado, Peter Farrell, Andy Proudlove.  He got rid of Terry Bailey, Ken Beamish and John Ridley.  Although he sold the late John Ridley for a club record selling fee, he then spent all of that fee plus another third on signing Delgado and Farrell.   He more than doubled the wage bill then led us to our lowest league finish.

He also called the supporters a bunch of yobs.

His record of ineptitude is truly beyond compare.

[Santa]

4 hours ago, RailwayRowdy said:

Plus his insistence on re-writing history at some distant away mid week match when a poor performance became a good one several weeks later when he thought the few who were there would have forgotten. We didn’t. 

0-4 at Cambridge during the September 2000 petrol crisis.

Gannon was an intelligent guy, a good technical coach but by all accounts a terrible man manager and borderline sociopath. My daily lockdown walk takes me round by Old Trafford and his Arnold Clark garage.

How the hell do you put Brown and Ribeiro in order? I remember Tosh (RIP) saying that when Brown took over the asylum it took us a while to work out if he was a doctor or one of the patients. He bought himself time by forcing out the more egregious clowns of the Bruno summer, but only ended up replacing them with players who were slightly more subtle at being terrible.

[Jacko51]

3 hours ago, TJHValiant said:

Horton? We won arguably our most prestigious trophy under the guy and had a promotion push season under him in league 1!

But he had to get us relegated to achieve those!

[ginge]

Has to be Michael Brown with Gannon in close second.

[Joe B]

Torn between Brown and Gannon.

I'll go with Brown, simply as he had a relegation on his CV (probably avoidable if he wasn't such a poor manager), scoring 1 goal in 8 games in the run in to said relegation, and being one of what must be very few managers who have taken the Vale to 92nd of out 92.

Gannon was awful/comical but he came in mid-season, replacing a massive figure like Micky, as V2001 collapses around him.

[Joe B]

Bruno rounds off the top 3; that run towards the top of the table was largely down to Alnwick performing heroics and Jones scoring at an unsustainable rate. We very, very rarely played well and won in that time, often getting very lucky with penalties (MK Dons on the telly, for example).

The bloke vanished and handed the reigns over to Andy Smith. The proper turgid signings of that summer (Pereira, Saleiro, Mbamba et al) are on his back. The decision to task Bruno with an overhaul of that magnitude was stupid, even if he could semi-organise a defence. The appointment of Bruno kickstarted our decline which came perilously close to liquidation in the summer of 2019.

Worst - Brown

2nd worst - Gannon

3rd - Bruno

[ollyandpatch]

Gannon, Butler, Brown.

[Andy Proctor]

1st Gannon 

2nd brown 

3rd Aspin