Flitcroft or Clarke

[NorthwoodValiant]

6 minutes ago, Guitar Ray said:

My own view is that he was employed to make footballing decisions that Carol feels she isn’t qualified to make.

The most important thing for people to remember in all this is that Carol is a fan first and foremost.  Inevitably this will affect her decision making to some degree, as it would any of us.  Employing a DoF, or whatever, should, in theory, take some of the emotion out of the decision making process and add a more dispassionate view.

Sure, but who sets the budget.

For example, January was a 'failure', but if Flitcroft was told he is going to get no money to spend, how can he improve the squad? He can't it's impossible.

The best recruitment team in the world can't spend money they don't have.

Carol is a fan and is also an inexperienced owner, she needs to be cut some slack, she's also not a born and bred Port Vale fan, she could easily just decide she doesn't like Port Vale anymore

[Jacko51]

2 minutes ago, NorthwoodValiant said:

Sure, but who sets the budget.

For example, January was a 'failure', but if Flitcroft was told he is going to get no money to spend, how can he improve the squad? He can't it's impossible.

The best recruitment team in the world can't spend money they don't have.

Carol is a fan and is also an inexperienced owner, she needs to be cut some slack, she's also not a born and bred Port Vale fan, she could easily just decide she doesn't like Port Vale anymore

But Flitcroft and his recruitment team spent money he did have and spent it badly. Under Carol’s new structure everything to do with football is down to Flitcroft. Harry Truman had a sign on his desk saying “The buck stops here.”  I bet there isn’t one on Flitcroft’s desk.

Does anyone know for certain if he is even full time - he has a business to run as well?

A lot of appointments have been of his mates according to rumour. 

[NorthwoodValiant]

9 minutes ago, Jacko51 said:

But Flitcroft and his recruitment team spent money he did have and spent it badly. Under Carol’s new structure everything to do with football is down to Flitcroft. Harry Truman had a sign on his desk saying “The buck stops here.”  I bet there isn’t one on Flitcroft’s desk.

Does anyone know for certain if he is even full time - he has a business to run as well?

A lot of appointments have been of his mates according to rumour. 

Which money has been spent badly?

[MBE]

4 minutes ago, NorthwoodValiant said:

Which money has been spent badly?

Exactly - who have we even bought this season except Harrison?

[NorthwoodValiant]

3 minutes ago, MBE said:

Exactly - who have we even bought this season except Harrison?

Massey, but noone was complaining about him when he was signed

[Walka003]

Money spent isn't just buying a player. It's wages too. There's umpteen waste of wages in our squad right now.

[Guitar Ray]

53 minutes ago, NorthwoodValiant said:

Sure, but who sets the budget.

For example, January was a 'failure', but if Flitcroft was told he is going to get no money to spend, how can he improve the squad? He can't it's impossible.

The best recruitment team in the world can't spend money they don't have.

Carol is a fan and is also an inexperienced owner, she needs to be cut some slack, she's also not a born and bred Port Vale fan, she could easily just decide she doesn't like Port Vale anymore

You tell me?  If you’re talking about money generated by the club, we have a board of directors, but we also have a Finance Controller and a Finance Manager, who would normally have some say in setting budgets.  If you’re talking about investment directly out of the owners pocket then it’s obvious.

You don’t know we had no money to spend, in fact we did spend money.  Whether we got value for money is pretty clear to me.  We may have had less money than planned, but we had money.  We failed to recruit adequately with what funds we had and repeated the mistakes of other windows where our loans were pretty much useless.  Despite pitching to several Prem and Champ Academies we turned up nothing of real worth.

Not sure where you’ve been hiding but Carol has been here long enough now to lose the “inexperienced” tag.  Tried to buy the club in 2015, 2017 then succeeded 4 years ago in 2019 so I’d say she’s experienced.  I’d also guess she’ll be here for a while yet, unless she tires of the relentless drone of clowns on social media.

[Old fort]

54 minutes ago, NorthwoodValiant said:

Massey, but noone was complaining about him when he was signed

That's because we were all trusting the Process. 

[NorthwoodValiant]

2 minutes ago, Old fort said:

That's because we were all trusting the Process. 

If any manager or DOF had signed massey at the start of the season you wouldn't have been complaining

[NorthwoodValiant]

11 minutes ago, Guitar Ray said:

You tell me?  If you’re talking about money generated by the club, we have a board of directors, but we also have a Finance Controller and a Finance Manager, who would normally have some say in setting budgets.  If you’re talking about investment directly out of the owners pocket then it’s obvious.

You don’t know we had no money to spend, in fact we did spend money.  Whether we got value for money is pretty clear to me.  We may have had less money than planned, but we had money.  We failed to recruit adequately with what funds we had and repeated the mistakes of other windows where our loans were pretty much useless.  Despite pitching to several Prem and Champ Academies we turned up nothing of real worth.

Not sure where you’ve been hiding but Carol has been here long enough now to lose the “inexperienced” tag.  Tried to buy the club in 2015, 2017 then succeeded 4 years ago in 2019 so I’d say she’s experienced.  I’d also guess she’ll be here for a while yet, unless she tires of the relentless drone of clowns on social media.

How much did we have to spend? 

Is it Carol's first season ever as a league 1 owner, yes or no?

[1]

What an irony that after all Clarke mini-projects the players were more focused on a project to get rid of him.

[Guitar Ray]

20 minutes ago, NorthwoodValiant said:

How much did we have to spend? 

Is it Carol's first season ever as a league 1 owner, yes or no?

How the hell do I know?  What I see is the same as you.  We signed some players, we came into the season a bit light, we didn’t improve where we were weak in January, we failed to recruit adequate replacements for the players that left, our use of the loan market, which many teams at our level and below appear to use so well, is abysmal.  Money isn’t the only factor when we’ve actually managed to get players through the door but found they’re almost to a man nowhere near up to the job.

It may be Carol’s first season at this level but so what?  She’s had enough years in the job now to know the score.  Also you seem to be ignoring the fact she appointed a Director of Football to make the footballing decisions for her.

[Old fort]

46 minutes ago, NorthwoodValiant said:

If any manager or DOF had signed massey at the start of the season you wouldn't have been complaining

I thought it was a great signing,  just shows though, what do us fans know?

[NorthwoodValiant]

4 minutes ago, Old fort said:

I thought it was a great signing,  just shows though, what do us fans know?

We know <ovf censored> all, which is why I find it funny that people can judge

[philpvfc]

1 hour ago, NorthwoodValiant said:

If any manager or DOF had signed massey at the start of the season you wouldn't have been complaining

Don’t think there was any complaints about any signing when they actually happened, even when we brought in Donnelly to replace Hall. There’s so many experts on here who judge a player before they’ve even seen them play but until they have played 3 or 4 games for us nobody knows at this level who is a good player or bad. The 2 signings I had most hope for this season was Forrester, based purely of Stoke fans getting really upset about losing him and Massey, based purely off the fact he played over 30 games for Wigan last season when they got promoted. I’d never seen either kick a ball before and did find out later that most of Massey’s games were as a sub. 
Saying all that, we are just average fans who don’t know a lot about most lower division players, our recruitment team should be experts, yet they have got it wrong a lot more than right in the last 18 months.