David Flitcroft Out

[robf]

10 minutes ago, Bobnewtonian said:

Your post will get a zillion likes but it probably is over simplistic. Undoubtedly mistakes have been made in the transfer window, however lets take a look at what has gone before (albeit a simplistic one) and we can see  why the new owners wanted to do things in a different way with more emphasis on the infra structure than in previous years...

 

We've had a successful local business man as an owner with success on the pitch : end result though we couldn't pay our tax bill and went into administration.

We've had a fans consortium as owners (myself and and others lost thousands of pounds trying to back this event) end result was zero success on the pitch and administration.

We've had a non local successful business man as an owner end result was zero success on the pitch (almost ended up in non league) and threats that he was going to put us into administration.

 

Its hardly surprising then that the new owners (quite rightly in my opinion) wanted to take the club in a different direction. Improve infra structure and community work, improve pitch, change our playing style to a possession based game to help attract better youngsters and to sell players on at a profit rather than ending up in a financial mess. They have also tried to increase our fan base by the introduction of youth and community teams and raising  the profile of the club by having RW as president. Without increasing our fan base we will always be between top half of league 2 and middle of league 1. On 16th Dec we were in all the cup competitions (including a league cup quarter final) and a reasonable league position having been involved in some decent games, yet we still got less that 6000 home fans through the gate on a Saturday. This isnt enough to progress without the owners dipping more into their pockets and makes the development and sale of players even more important than it would be for a club with a larger fan base.

Its the execution of this change that isn't currently going to plan but I think that the owners require some credit for understanding and at least trying to execute that change.

But of course it is a result's business and better signatures as you describe in January would have gone some way to improve our results no doubt. But we ve just paid big money for probably the biggest named manager out there so lets hope he can get a couple of home wins and get a bit of momentum going as we go into the last 10 games.

Never give up.

 

I never said in my post that the things they wanted to do were wrong. Far from it, I actually said the infrastructure changes would be "great to have" and I think some of them sound amazing. I admire the long-term thinking (but the key words in that sentence are "long" and "term").

As my post says, it's the order of things that I think is wrong.

Get the first-team picture right (and we saw that for spells under Billy Bell) and that success allows you the leeway to make gradual infrastructure changes as well. Arguably Bell's reign came to an end when rather than smaller scale, sustainable projects he took away a load of the first-team budget to start the LS work. In that he also tried to run before he could walk.

 

 

[Railwayman]

12 minutes ago, Bobnewtonian said:

Your post will get a zillion likes but it probably is over simplistic. Undoubtedly mistakes have been made in the transfer window, however lets take a look at what has gone before (albeit a simplistic one) and we can see  why the new owners wanted to do things in a different way with more emphasis on the infra structure than in previous years...

 

We've had a successful local business man as an owner with success on the pitch : end result though we couldn't pay our tax bill and went into administration.

We've had a fans consortium as owners (myself and and others lost thousands of pounds trying to back this event) end result was zero success on the pitch and administration.

We've had a non local successful business man as an owner end result was zero success on the pitch (almost ended up in non league) and threats that he was going to put us into administration.

 

Its hardly surprising then that the new owners (quite rightly in my opinion) wanted to take the club in a different direction. Improve infra structure and community work, improve pitch, change our playing style to a possession based game to help attract better youngsters and to sell players on at a profit rather than ending up in a financial mess. They have also tried to increase our fan base by the introduction of youth and community teams and raising  the profile of the club by having RW as president. Without increasing our fan base we will always be between top half of league 2 and middle of league 1. On 16th Dec we were in all the cup competitions (including a league cup quarter final) and a reasonable league position having been involved in some decent games, yet we still got less that 6000 home fans through the gate on a Saturday. This isnt enough to progress without the owners dipping more into their pockets and makes the development and sale of players even more important than it would be for a club with a larger fan base.

Its the execution of this change that isn't currently going to plan but I think that the owners require some credit for understanding and at least trying to execute that change.

But of course it is a result's business and better signatures as you describe in January would have gone some way to improve our results no doubt. But we ve just paid big money for probably the biggest named manager out there so lets hope he can get a couple of home wins and get a bit of momentum going as we go into the last 10 games.

Never give up.

 

The quickest way to increase revenue is to have a successful and entertaining product on the pitch this increases attendances,Merchandise,advertising etc which then gives you the funds to improve infrastructure not the other way round.

I applaud Carol & the board for their long term vision and agree with them ( apart from the style of play which is boring ) but we have to get our priorities in the right order.

[robf]

3 minutes ago, Railwayman said:

The quickest way to increase revenue is to have a successful and entertaining product on the pitch this increases attendances,Merchandise,advertising etc which then gives you the funds to improve infrastructure not the other way round.

I applaud Carol & the board for their long term vision and agree with them ( apart from the style of play which is boring ) but we have to get our priorities in the right order.

100% agree. 

[Shent]

8 minutes ago, robf said:

I never said in my post that the things they wanted to do were wrong. Far from it, I actually said the infrastructure changes would be "great to have" and I think some of them sound amazing. I admire the long-term thinking (but the key words in that sentence are "long" and "term").

As my post says, it's the order of things that I think is wrong.

Get the first-team picture right (and we saw that for spells under Billy Bell) and that success allows you the leeway to make gradual infrastructure changes as well. Arguably Bell's reign came to an end when rather than smaller scale, sustainable projects he took away a load of the first-team budget to start the LS work. In that he also tried to run before he could walk.

 

 

No matter what happens we aren’t going to get carol or the rest of the board to agree with us. Unfortunately DF is here to stay 

[robf]

On a different tact, I also think the contract lengths given out are a real cause for concern and something that the club needs to get right in the future.

To explain...we all think this summer will be a crucial one for the club to strengthen. To do that we surely need to wheel and deal. 

However, the following players are all contracted until the end of next season - Conor Grant, Alex Iacovitti, Jason Lowe, Ryan Loft and Dan Jones. Arguably some of those would be released if not under contract.

There's also some players you probably would want to keep who are under contract to the end of next season (and beyond) - Nathan Smith, Funso Ojo, Connor Ripley, Ben Garrity and Ethan Chislett.

There's also Mitch Clark, Tom Sang, Jesse Debrah, James Plant (and the graduates from the youth team) under contract until at least the end of next season. 

Right now, I think the only players out of contract will be Jayson Leutwiler, Gavin Massey (not certain as he signed when the club didn't disclose contract lengths)  and James Wilson (possibly Uche if he exercises a release clause).

That really ties our hands in what we can do in the summer as ideally you'd like to do what we did in 2021 and do a clear out following by a number of new signings. However, what we have is the majority of this squad - 15 out of 18 senior players (I'm not including the youth team graduates) - that will not be moving in the summer unless we decide on a mutual termination and/or someone makes a bid. 

So, if you think the squad isn't up to it this season - well, surprise, surprise, most of them are likely to be around next season too!

Where does this contract problem lie - again, for me, it's with the recruitment team. 

Unless the playing budget increases, we're going to find it really difficult to do anything radical in the summer if there's only three players released at the end of their contracts. For instance, should Wilson and Uche both leave in the summer, which is not unreasonable, it could be another striker-less Groundhog Day in August 2024.

[smithie]

40 minutes ago, Railwayman said:

The quickest way to increase revenue is to have a successful and entertaining product on the pitch this increases attendances,Merchandise,advertising etc which then gives you the funds to improve infrastructure not the other way round.

I applaud Carol & the board for their long term vision and agree with them ( apart from the style of play which is boring ) but we have to get our priorities in the right order.

We did have a good "product" (hate that phrase) last season until Christmas but we didn't see any bigger gates...and the gates we had were swelled by the free/virtually free tickets issued post-promotion. 

Low attendances at Vale are nothing new....we had plenty of 6000 gates under Rudgie in the Second Division.

 

[JoeB2]

We effectively tried to revolutionise the club in an 18 month spell, with absolutely no one at the club having any experience of successfully doing a similar thing elsewhere. 

There were no dissenting voices, and the entire decision-making structure was Shanahan Family, Synectics, and Flitcroft (until Hancock was promoted recently), with Garlick and a lot of the pre-Carol staff removed (rightly or wrongly). The man pulling most of the strings was on a 2-3 day week until a few weeks ago.

It isn't really a surprise they've got it wrong. I don't think anyone is suggesting that their intentions were bad, but they were trying something fairly large, fairly quickly, without anything to guide them and without anyone stopping any of the daft stuff.

The transition they were talking of, of data, play-style, pitches, facilities etc, should have taken place incrementally over 5-10 years, always balancing results on the pitch and being prepared to invest more on the playing side if things looked dicey. They also perhaps should have identified the key bits of the identity of PVFC (hard-working, aggressive) and retained those amidst the change.

Alas, lessons learned I hope. I sincerely hope we're in League 1 to right the wrongs, as it will be significantly more tricky on a League 2 revenue.

Edited February 19 by JoeB2

[Bobnewtonian]

21 minutes ago, smithie said:

We did have a good "product" (hate that phrase) last season until Christmas but we didn't see any bigger gates...and the gates we had were swelled by the free/virtually free tickets issued post-promotion. 

Low attendances at Vale are nothing new....we had plenty of 6000 gates under Rudgie in the Second Division.

 

Correct and we ended up in administration… so something has to change if we want to progress beyond our current natural league 2 / league 1 position… and that is what the new owners are trying to do.

[JoeB2]

3 minutes ago, Bobnewtonian said:

Correct and we ended up in administration… so something has to change if we want to progress beyond our current natural league 2 / league 1 position… and that is what the new owners are trying to do.

I think most agree that things had to change, but most also believe they did it far too quickly and didn't pay enough attention to the here and now + the experience of the paying diehard.

Both things can be, and are, true.

Edited February 19 by JoeB2

[Bobnewtonian]

1 hour ago, robf said:

I never said in my post that the things they wanted to do were wrong. Far from it, I actually said the infrastructure changes would be "great to have" and I think some of them sound amazing. I admire the long-term thinking (but the key words in that sentence are "long" and "term").

As my post says, it's the order of things that I think is wrong.

Get the first-team picture right (and we saw that for spells under Billy Bell) and that success allows you the leeway to make gradual infrastructure changes as well. Arguably Bell's reign came to an end when rather than smaller scale, sustainable projects he took away a load of the first-team budget to start the LS work. In that he also tried to run before he could walk.

 

 

Not sure… if we class Bells tenure as getting the “first team picture right” even then we ended up in administration. So having things right on the pitch without the infra structure in place isn’t the way to go.?

[JoeB2]

1 minute ago, Bobnewtonian said:

Not sure… if we class Bells tenure as getting the “first team picture right” even then we ended up in administration. So having things right on the pitch without the infra structure in place isn’t the way to go.?

I think we'd all take the Bell years, with its end, again in a heartbeat.

[Fosse69]

7 minutes ago, JoeB2 said:

I think we'd all take the Bell years, with its end, again in a heartbeat.

He also put in more seats and roofs than any other owner, and had the Lorne St  Stand built to the Prem League standard of the day. Although it took 20 years for it to be nearly finished.

[Wrex]

Bell had Rudge as manager, bringing in millions of pounds of revenue and operating on a shoestring budget whilst also doing the work of ten men. I'm not sure Bell spent the money as well as he could have, though fair enough he wasn't wealthy enough to pump money into the club himself and kept us solvent... until he didn't.

[robf]

34 minutes ago, Bobnewtonian said:

Not sure… if we class Bells tenure as getting the “first team picture right” even then we ended up in administration. So having things right on the pitch without the infra structure in place isn’t the way to go.?

But if you read my post on Bell, for years it was first team first. During the JR glory years. Things fell apart when he deviated from that and put the Lorne St stand first. When he didn't put the team first 

[darren1810]

Has he gone yet ?