Carol Shanahan.

[Spunk Trumpet]

I’ll get my tin hat on for this one. 
It’s time she kopped the majority of blame here. 
 

She bought the club debt free. And as Vale fans we were overjoyed after the last crook. However the last 18 months have been shambolic. 
 

As fans I hear, yeah the academy are doing good. We will get millions for him and him. We have sold this lad to Man City for hundreds of thousands. Etc. Etc. Bearing in mind as supporters we don’t see that money.

So isn’t it right to question why we are almost 10 million in debt when she bought it debt free?

The bread and butter. The football. It’s garbage. With garbage footballers.

Shes also had 4 managers now in her short tenure. And I dare say the latest one won’t last long.

Shes divided a fanbase with her cringeworthy backing of a man who was intent on ruining Port Vale. David Flitcroft. And only sacked him after a group of fans had to give her head a wobble.

The laughs and jokes and arrogance as Flitcroft announced that relegation wasn’t in his vocabulary. Followed by the cringe distraction of “El Presidente”. Probably for her and his ego.  
 

The Valiant Suite talk about how people she met 5 minutes ago told her our players are phenomenal and we won’t go down.

She was very quick to go on radio and tv across the country when it went good. Then sunk back into her shell, apart from the most pathetic open letter I’ve ever read, when she more or less slagged off her fanbase. Those that loved her. In support for one crook.

Sorry Carol. The time has come to break your silence.

The last 18 months has been an absolute disaster. And the repercussions will carry on because that debt isn’t good, the players are garbage, the manager is looking like a dear in the headlights, and the fans are well and truly demoralized with the whole debacle.

The buck stops at the top. 
Before any idiot says “Who do you want to buy us”, I’m not saying she should sell. My point is that her decisions, as owner of this football club, have got us into this financial mess and on the pitch it’s an absolute disgrace. The worst Vale team I’ve seen in 40 plus years. And if it was Smurthwaite at the helm, going through all of this, you’d all be raging.

She needs to be accountable for her actions. 

[steauavaliant]

I’ll get my tin hat on for this one. 
It’s time she kopped the majority of blame here. 
 
She bought the club debt free. And as Vale fans we were overjoyed after the last crook. However the last 18 months have been shambolic. 
 
As fans I hear, yeah the academy are doing good. We will get millions for him and him. We have sold this lad to Man City for hundreds of thousands. Etc. Etc. Bearing in mind as supporters we don’t see that money.
So isn’t it right to question why we are almost 10 million in debt when she bought it debt free?
The bread and butter. The football. It’s garbage. With garbage footballers.
Shes also had 4 managers now in her short tenure. And I dare say the latest one won’t last long.
Shes divided a fanbase with her cringeworthy backing of a man who was intent on ruining Port Vale. David Flitcroft. And only sacked him after a group of fans had to give her head a wobble.
The laughs and jokes and arrogance as Flitcroft announced that relegation wasn’t in his vocabulary. Followed by the cringe distraction of “El Presidente”. Probably for her and his ego.  
 
The Valiant Suite talk about how people she met 5 minutes ago told her our players are phenomenal and we won’t go down.
She was very quick to go on radio and tv across the country when it went good. Then sunk back into her shell, apart from the most pathetic open letter I’ve ever read, when she more or less slagged off her fanbase. Those that loved her. In support for one crook.
Sorry Carol. The time has come to break your silence.
The last 18 months has been an absolute disaster. And the repercussions will carry on because that debt isn’t good, the players are garbage, the manager is looking like a dear in the headlights, and the fans are well and truly demoralized with the whole debacle.
The buck stops at the top. 
Before any idiot says “Who do you want to buy us”, I’m not saying she should sell. My point is that her decisions, as owner of this football club, have got us into this financial mess and on the pitch it’s an absolute disgrace. The worst Vale team I’ve seen in 40 plus years. And if it was Smurthwaite at the helm, going through all of this, you’d all be raging.
She needs to be accountable for her actions. 

Yes.

[gavcradd]

Agree to an extent. Carol's got the club at heart and is a brilliant owner in terms of intentions. We'll always have a club with her at the helm.

But. But. She's seriously neglected the first team at the expense of everything else and has swallowed too much of everyone else's bull. A season back in League Two might actually help her/us refocus on what the main priority actually is. How many Vale fans would swap the big screen and fancy restaurant for 10 more points this season? Virtually everyone I'd imagine. 

Edited April 13 by gavcradd

[Tim vlf]

exactly mate 👏👏

[pete vale]

10 minutes ago, Spunk Trumpet said:

I’ll get my tin hat on for this one. 
It’s time she kopped the majority of blame here. 
 

She bought the club debt free. And as Vale fans we were overjoyed after the last crook. However the last 18 months have been shambolic. 
 

As fans I hear, yeah the academy are doing good. We will get millions for him and him. We have sold this lad to Man City for hundreds of thousands. Etc. Etc. Bearing in mind as supporters we don’t see that money.

So isn’t it right to question why we are almost 10 million in debt when she bought it debt free?

The bread and butter. The football. It’s garbage. With garbage footballers.

Shes also had 4 managers now in her short tenure. And I dare say the latest one won’t last long.

Shes divided a fanbase with her cringeworthy backing of a man who was intent on ruining Port Vale. David Flitcroft. And only sacked him after a group of fans had to give her head a wobble.

The laughs and jokes and arrogance as Flitcroft announced that relegation wasn’t in his vocabulary. Followed by the cringe distraction of “El Presidente”. Probably for her and his ego.  
 

The Valiant Suite talk about how people she met 5 minutes ago told her our players are phenomenal and we won’t go down.

She was very quick to go on radio and tv across the country when it went good. Then sunk back into her shell, apart from the most pathetic open letter I’ve ever read, when she more or less slagged off her fanbase. Those that loved her. In support for one crook.

Sorry Carol. The time has come to break your silence.

The last 18 months has been an absolute disaster. And the repercussions will carry on because that debt isn’t good, the players are garbage, the manager is looking like a dear in the headlights, and the fans are well and truly demoralized with the whole debacle.

The buck stops at the top. 
Before any idiot says “Who do you want to buy us”, I’m not saying she should sell. My point is that her decisions, as owner of this football club, have got us into this financial mess and on the pitch it’s an absolute disgrace. The worst Vale team I’ve seen in 40 plus years. And if it was Smurthwaite at the helm, going through all of this, you’d all be raging.

She needs to be accountable for her actions. 

Can't argue with any of that personally. We are not privy to what appeared to be "pie-in-the-sky" ideals of academy funding and the 'campus', let alone the loan and use of Premier League 2 youngsters - not viable in my opinion at this level at this moment in time. Yes, there needs to be a focus on youth and making the club sustainable for years to come commercially and professionally football-wise.

Look at the effect on the fan base in regards to changes in the ticket office/ club shop as an example, not to mention the Paddock portaloos and exit debacles. A good example again today. We walked into the shop at 2.20pm today to look at and possibly purchase merchandise - no chance!! The queue was massive with I assume people arriving late and wanting match tickets? You could not view merchandise and even if you did try to purchase you would have probably missed kick-off? There are many issues/ examples of a distinct lack of common-sense about the place.

The second half performance today was without question as bad if not worse than any performance I have witnessed since first attending in 1975. I struggle to reason exactly as to why things have unravelled so quickly and at such cost to the Shanahans financially. It is obviously poor decision making on both the playing side and future structure modelling of the club.

Some comments from within particularly in regard to Flitcroft "going nowhere" were derogatory and condescending to the fan base, were these said comments merely a defence of the indefensible or born of arrogance from an inner circle environment that clearly had a 'plan' of sorts and the rest can go to 'hell in a hand cart whatever may'?

That said this is an embarrassing, expensive, harsh lesson to learn leaving the club in financial woe and it's fan base totally demoralised at a time when this certainly shouldn't be the case following on from the euphoria of the 2022 promotion.

Sad, very sad.

[Phil500]

Never understood the combining of the ticket office/ club shop. Fine on non match days, but does not work at the other times. Can’t see how it has improved anything.Dozens of staff everywhere so three in the ticket office for a couple of hours costs next to nothing.

[Brian Johnson]

56 minutes ago, gavcradd said:

Agree to an extent. Carol's got the club at heart and is a brilliant owner in terms of intentions. We'll always have a club with her at the helm.

But. But. She's seriously neglected the first team at the expense of everything else and has swallowed too much of everyone else's bull. A season back in League Two might actually help her/us refocus on what the main priority actually is. How many Vale fans would swap the big screen and fancy restaurant for 10 more points this season? Virtually everyone I'd imagine. 

It's not going to be a season back in League Two though is it?

Most of this squad are contracted to us next season.

Why are a bunch of bottler's and losers suddenly going to turn into serial winners?

It will be the following season, when most of these are off the club's books is when we can maybe have an attempt at promotion.

[TJHValiant]

The sad reality is the club has had as many bizarre decisions that we saw under Smurfwaite. It may be wrapped in the cuddly, warm quilt of community clubs and self styled saviour nonsense, but things like Flitcroft, President Robbie, poor summer funding for strikers, dreadful January windows, irate letters to fans are pure Smurfwaite level errors.

What we really need is a board of investors with real knowledge who can truly scrutinize decisions being made. Having a DOF as a director in Flitcroft was madness. We basically gave him the right to mark his own homework! 

[TJHValiant]

28 minutes ago, Phil500 said:

Never understood the combining of the ticket office/ club shop. Fine on non match days, but does not work at the other times. Can’t see how it has improved anything.Dozens of staff everywhere so three in the ticket office for a couple of hours costs next to nothing.

I think the idea is, if you have to go to the club shop tills to buy a ticket, you might fancy buying else from the shop along with it. 

[Guitar Ray]

33 minutes ago, Phil500 said:

Never understood the combining of the ticket office/ club shop. Fine on non match days, but does not work at the other times. Can’t see how it has improved anything.Dozens of staff everywhere so three in the ticket office for a couple of hours costs next to nothing.

I don’t like to mention this but we’ve got far bigger problems than the combined shop and ticket office.

[Guitar Ray]

On the subject of the owners, the biggest failing was to trust David Flitcroft in the first place and then subsequently fail to recognise the direction the guy was taking the club in before it was too late.  Other than that the other goings on are part and parcel for the vast majority of clubs at our level, including losing millions, unless you’ve got owners with vast wealth.

[Spunk Trumpet]

13 minutes ago, TJHValiant said:

The sad reality is the club has had as many bizarre decisions that we saw under Smurfwaite. It may be wrapped in the cuddly, warm quilt of community clubs and self styled saviour nonsense, but things like Flitcroft, President Robbie, poor summer funding for strikers, dreadful January windows, irate letters to fans are pure Smurfwaite level errors.

What we really need is a board of investors with real knowledge who can truly scrutinize decisions being made. Having a DOF as a director in Flitcroft was madness. We basically gave him the right to mark his own homework! 

I think this is a great post.

I would like to state that let’s not get this topic turned into a slagging off of Carol. It’s more of massive mistakes have been made and the club has become a circus. And now is the time to address it and make sure, under her leadership, we are never in this situation again.

If we lose on Tuesday we are down. Simple as that. 
Her negligence and stubbornness cannot ever happen again and she clearly needs help from good people. And not one or two but like TJH says, a group of people. A proper board. To make decisions. 
Not some dippy bloke over in the states who wants to put on a shirt when it suits him and she falls in love with him.

It’s time this club started acted professionally again from the very very top. Where it clearly hasn’t for a good 18 months.

And one last point. 
Feed the area. 
Be a good community club. 
Be nice. 
As fans we are all for that!

But….. When we are 22nd in league 1. Hadn’t won a game in god knows how long. And you’re posting a picture of Carol and David smiling because they’ve walked a mile and raised 559 quid, or whatever, for some charity, expect the backlash from the average fan who don’t see this as an IT business. They want heart, passion, commitment and quality on the pitch. 
All of which were lacking today. And the majority of the season. 
 

Ultimately Carol, Port Vale Football Club fans couldn’t care less about anything other than two things.

1. To have a team that represents us and gives their all week in week out.

2. A manager and owner who will have our back and tell us the way forward and how our club is going to progress.

As of the 13th of April 2024, we don’t have either. And we are a long long way from getting any of those 2 things in my opinion.

[JoeB2]

There’s some sense and some nonsense in this.

Debt is part and parcel of football. Around 68/72 EFL clubs are insolvent. We would be in debt now, at likely similar levels, regardless of who bought us in 2019, give or take the odd million.

8m directors loans (or debt) in 5 years of ownership, considering there was a year of a pandemic with no fans, is really pretty normal and probably on the low side for a club bouncing between Leagues 1 and 2. If we broke even, folk would kick off for a lack of investment.

Agree with the points on her mistakes, the open letter, etc.

I’m not too bothered about her being held ‘accountable’, whatever that means. She just needs to put it right.

[Valiiant]

 

The less said the better.

[Spunk Trumpet]

6 minutes ago, JoeB2 said:

There’s some sense and some nonsense in this.

Debt is part and parcel of football. Around 68/72 EFL clubs are insolvent. We would be in debt now, at likely similar levels, regardless of who bought us in 2019, give or take the odd million.

8m directors loans (or debt) in 5 years of ownership, considering there was a year of a pandemic with no fans, is really pretty normal and probably on the low side for a club bouncing between Leagues 1 and 2. If we broke even, folk would kick off for a lack of investment.

Agree with the points on her mistakes, the open letter, etc.

I’m not too bothered about her being held ‘accountable’, whatever that means. She just needs to put it right.

Held accountable. 
Put things right. 
Pretty much the same thing.

At the end of the season I would like to see the transparency back when she first took over and a clear message to supporters as to where we are going as a football club.

She got so many things right and she was adored and rightly so.

Shes now got so many things wrong and the buck stops with her and only she can sort this absolute shambles out. That she has ultimately caused.