An Open Letter from Carol

[Rampant Zebra]

The sad thing is that we don't really seem to have got best value from any of the infrastructure "improvements".

[pvfc1994]

Flitcroft should go for sanctioning the spending of £75k on Ryan Loft alone. A player who hasn't scored a league goal since the 1st October 2022, and only has two goals since then. 

 

[Packmoor_vale]

7 minutes ago, Vtid said:

Your actually happy with all this <ovf censored>? 

Never said that 

First time last night I thought oh <ovf censored> we’re going down 

[PVFC FAN]

5 minutes ago, SuperHuman said:

Put it this way, the average Vale fan (my old man as a great example) loves Port Vale and goes to watch us to see what happens on the pitch. 

He is not bothered about where the players train, get changed or how they recover. He is not bothered about the community work. He is not bothered about what projects we have and what new office we have. He is not bothered about the under 14’s and selling them to Man City before anyone has ever seen them. He is not bothered about the abundance of technology we have. He is not bothered about the number of staff we have and what structure they fall under. 

His priority is the product on the pitch. He is bothered about what players and management we have. He is bothered about where we are in the league table. 

Carol - your priority has to be getting the football team right. The rest does have its value and I understand is also necessary in the modern game. However, without a successful team (an average team even) we will be back to square one

Our priority as fans is the product on the football pitch. That will and should always comes first. 

 

You won't get any product on the pitch without all of that. Yes I love to watch goodfootball but you won't get any with no training ground or bad facilities etc

Edited February 7 by PVFC FAN

[PVFC FAN]

1 minute ago, Nippy Naylor said:

You talk more BS than Flitcroft

And that takes some doing by the way 

Your up there with him then aren't you 

[Howjy04]

Forever grateful for what Carol and Kevin have done. and Vale have a much better reputation in football now.Unfortuneatly we are,also,getting a reputation for sacking managers(Askey,Clark and Crosby)in a short space of time..What comments were there about AC in that statement?Did she sack him or was it Dastardly Dave? 

Edited February 7 by Howjy04

[Doha]

11 minutes ago, andy jones said:

I do, but i suspect the finance being generated is insufficient to pay the going rate for a striker after all the other overheads.

Probably not worth crowing about "The money that he has generated for this Football Club has paid for his wages to date many times over." then.

Weird how literally every other club in the league manages it, just not us. Fleetwood, now our relegation rivals, signed two strikers this month. Their manager was sacked on Dec 30th and their owner and bankroller went to prison last Summer. Which club is the circus again?

https://www.itv.com/news/granada/2023-07-04/13-years-in-prison-for-owner-of-fleetwood-town-fc-for-fraud-and-money-laundering

 

Edited February 7 by Doha

[Vtid]

1 minute ago, PVFC FAN said:

You won't get any product on the pitch without all of that. Yes I love to watch goodfootball but you won't get any with no training ground or bad facilities etc

It never failed us before with the quality players we’ve had in the past!!! 

[Nippy Naylor]

5 minutes ago, PVFC FAN said:

He's not wrong the fan base is negative as soon as we get in a bit of trouble

A bit of trouble the writing has been on the wall for months # poor recruitment from Flitcroft and giving the managers job to a coach Masquerading as a manager was an accident waiting to happen .

read the room the fans are restless 

Be a good chap and go enlighten , carol 

[pvfc1994]

1 minute ago, PVFC FAN said:

You won't get any product on the pitch without all of that. Yes I love to watch goodfootball but you won't get any with no training ground or bad facilities etc

Micky Adams had us playing fantastic football with just a patch of grass, a few footballs and hard work. It's not rocket science. 

Fancy new training facilities doesn't turn bad players good. 

[Vtid]

1 minute ago, pvfc1994 said:

Micky Adams had us playing fantastic football with just a patch of grass, a few footballs and hard work. It's not rocket science. 

Fancy new training facilities doesn't turn bad players good. 

There’s no telling this one mate I’m afraid 

[Wozza4England]

10 minutes ago, Bycarsbill said:

Good on you  Carol! Thank you for your letter.  I hope that all PV fans will read it,  reflect upon it and give thanks for the ownership we've got. I for one, certainly do!

Carol and Kevin are nice people, good at business and PV and its fans owe a BIG debt of gratitude that it is they who saved us from the misery of the Smurf era and yet another potential administration.  

Secondly, Carol recognised early on that running a football club is like no other type of business and sensibly hired in DF, someone she felt was not only the right calibre of person but had sufficient footballing knowledge to help bring to life some of the aims for our club that she & Kevin had defined.

As is clearly shown in the open letter, what has been achieved in such a relatively short time span is nothing short of a minor miracle.  Of course mistakes have occurred as Carol freely admits. Perhaps one of those is the delay in reminding us all just what has been happening behind the scenes.  As fans we are always much more focused (understandably) and myopic, concentrating only on what is occurring on-pitch.  

However, I sincerely hope that Carol's letter makes us all reflect and temper the extremely harsh (and sometimes, vindictive) barbs that are appearing in too many recent posts. I finished that earlier post this week, by stating that while I obviously do not want us to be relegated, I would prefer to be solvent in League Two under sensible, caring ownership, than being run towards financial ruin by the unrealistic expectations of an ego-driven owner. 

Yes, on the playing side, I'm as disappointed as the next person that we don't have a big enough and better balanced squad.  At the end of the day in any business, (and football, for all its quirks and foibles, is still a business) costs always have to be balanced against revenue and, DF no doubt, like the other departmental sections of PV's business, has to work within budget constraints. Unfortunately in football that is where reality and expectations clash--see my same earlier post and its comments about some Premiership clubs and EFLclubs' with financial problems and subsequent official sanctions. I am not here to defend DF but consider this when taking a pop at him; added to the usual budgetary constraints he has to work to, there are also the complexities and complications always inherent in transfer market dealings with players' injuries, fitness, motivation, egos and sometimes, agents & salary expectations. 

Finally, a heartfelt plea: can we all please recognise how lucky we are to have a  Chair like Carol.  Please stop the totally unwarranted abuse and extreme criticism and get behind her, Kevin, the club's executives and, of course the next manager and team. One can clearly feel in that open letter, some of the frustration & hurt that Carol understandably must feel. In my humble opinion, she & Kevin are the best thing to happen to PV for many a long year.  The last thing we need, is for Carol to decide that the level of animosity to her being expressed by some individuals' is not worth the aggravation. 

UTV! 

FGS how many times do we have to pay gratitude to Carol and Kevin? Do you want us to self flagellate and scream “we are not worthy” every day? We are grateful, she possibly saved the club from extinction, look I’ve severed my left arm in gratitude. Can we please move on now or do you want my right arm too?

[Vale1995]

18 minutes ago, JoeB2 said:

This has backfired horrendously. Blown up in her face.

Seems to be a 80% negative reaction.

A disaster. A load of goodwill evaporating over the course of an afternoon.

Gone down like a lead balloon

[Bycarsbill]

13 minutes ago, Playa Amodores said:

I fully support Kevin.

I suspect I'm missing something here?!!

[PVFC FAN]

4 minutes ago, Nippy Naylor said:

A bit of trouble the writing has been on the wall for months # poor recruitment from Flitcroft and giving the managers job to a coach Masquerading as a manager was an accident waiting to happen .

read the room the fans are restless 

Be a good chap and go enlighten , carol 

Actual good points. Maybe we didn't have the budget for a new manager and an OK summer transfer window