Flitcroft Interview in Baggers' 'The Valiant'

[CAVALIER]

Never accepts responsibility. Time to stand up Flitters. 

[PV1993]

My main issue with the philosophy is once you’ve got one every team is trying to work out how to stop it.

Has Pep kept the same 4-2-3-1 system he started with at City? No. He’s changed it over the years. You don’t need to be Man City to be able to switch between a back four and five, depending on the opponent, or switch it up up top.

You need some brains, of which we have none.

[TJHValiant]

3 hours ago, CAVALIER said:

He's got us heading into protest territory if we aren't careful

The interview demonstrates to me that getting rid of the manager won’t make much difference. Flitcroft needs to go, his whole ethos is flawed. I do agree we don’t have the big money, but Flitcroft has not made any clever choices to mitigate that. No real pursuit on youth, resources wasted on duff signings like Loft, a style of play that doesn’t at all fit the signings made. Loft suits a direct style of play with a lot of high balls, yet we don’t play at all like that. Some players, like Devine do thrive in a high possession style but most don’t. 
 

Actually our biggest issue is that we somehow have a high possession team but a very low tempo. That makes it very hard to actually break opposition teams down as they can easily manage their shape. That’s one reason why we have seen so few goals. Teams can simply watch us with the ball and never get opened up. 
 

Flitcroft seems not to have noticed! 

[rayzer]

He said that the strikers we were after are playing in the Championship. He said the same last season and I did try to check all the transfers and couldn't find any that moved to a Championship club. If it is true then Flitcroft needs to name names.

[Guest]

Just read 90 per cent of that interview and generally he is spot on .

The bit about the academy players coming through well I agree with that 

We have to produce our own players to be sold on to survive and to move forwards .

Seemed to me like there working on solutions to the non scoring more than often Vale team .

Long ball game does not get anyone interested in buying your players .

I'll agree with him it's nice see Vale pass the ball now just put the ball in the net more regularly to keep your fans happy 

UTV 

[CAVALIER]

He goes on about Rudge’s success and developing to move players on at a profit. That was only part of Rudge’s success. He also brought in quality that remained for years. We’ve currently done neither. 

[robf]

14 hours ago, Emile said:

thinks AC was the one to bring Plant into the first team - Clarke gave him his debut two games before AC. 

To be fair Flitcroft doesn't say that. He says Crosby gave Plant his full debut at Ipswich, which he did.

He may be wrong on other things but not that one.

[robf]

35 minutes ago, rayzer said:

He said that the strikers we were after are playing in the Championship. He said the same last season and I did try to check all the transfers and couldn't find any that moved to a Championship club. If it is true then Flitcroft needs to name names.

Hudlin and Harratt perhaps? He did say the players  hadn't been that successful at that level... 🧐

[Warren]

14 hours ago, Powerline said:

I also was a bit concerned. I agree with the academy stuff, but he seemed to think Crosby was doing ok and doesn’t sound like he’s going to be sacked any time soon. 

Is this the deadly 'vote of confidence'? In the public domain. What we are keen to see is the 'staff appraisal'. I'm sorry but everyone, and I mean everyone amongst supporters, is dissatisfied with attacking and defending. Radical improvement is needed. The main stat being ignored is we've lost game after game and mostly scored nil in the league for nearly 3 months. 

Edited December 9, 2023 by Warren

[smithie]

9 minutes ago, Warren said:

Is this the deadly 'vote of confidence'? In the public domain. What we are keen to see is the 'staff appraisal'. I'm sorry but everyone, and I mean everyone amongst supporters, is dissatisfied with attacking and defending. Radical improvement is needed. The main stat being ignored is we've lost game after game and mostly scored nil in the league for nearly 3 months. 

For the sake of accuracy, we've had 3  Saturday League postponements in that time and two Saturdays have been FA Cup weekends. 

I'm not for one moment saying we're on anything less than a bad run but it's only fair to get it straight. 

[Brian Johnson]

1 hour ago, rayzer said:

He said that the strikers we were after are playing in the Championship. He said the same last season and I did try to check all the transfers and couldn't find any that moved to a Championship club. If it is true then Flitcroft needs to name names.

Dear @rayzer you are one of the most respected Vale fans, what is your view on the current set football wise,, Flickers, AC etc

[Warren]

We are now at the point where we can still climb back to mid table if our overdue run of form comes. It would be a welcome surprise if that actually happens. But winning today could kick it off. Otherwise we are headed for the 5 team mini league where 4 get relegated. 

[valeparklife]

I like a lot of what Flitcroft has done so far, but feel he could do with 'reading the room' sometimes.

I don't think Vale fans buy into this slow, possession game. They seem to prefer a bit more of an "up and at 'em" approach.

Page played a similar brand of football to what we're doing now, backwards and sideways, and people got fed up and bored.

Whereas under Clarke and Adams (our 2 most popular managers this millennia), we still played good football, but were more direct in getting at teams more.

Reading the interview, it feels like what we're seeing in the Prem with someone like Burnley - they're trying to play like Man City, but on a fraction of the budget.

We can't play like Portsmouth and Bolton, because we don't have the money to buy the kind of players that play for Portsmouth and Bolton.

Like I say, I like a lot of what Flitcroft has done so far, but there were a couple of quotes that genuinely shocked me:

• "We have to see those good performances turn into good results" - Good performances?!
• "Where it was different with Darrell, we were running out of time, the games were running out and we were losing against the worst teams in the league and performances had dipped" - We lost to Cheltenham who were bottom of the league and didn't score for the first 11 games! Crosby is now on a worse run than we sacked Clarke for!

Lastly, it's a great article and I would recommend any Vale fan to subscribe to Mike's articles - it's only £10 for the year and always a great read, with more to come I imagine!

[Packmoor_vale]

At least we got transparency now and a plan going forward 👍

 

[Sam Kelly's Left Boot]

14 hours ago, rob1983 said:

Crosby isn't going anywhere by the sounds of that.

It's going to get very toxic very fast.