Carol Shanahan.

[Bald Eagle]

2 hours ago, JoeB2 said:

It’s not even the worst since 2015.

Has everyone forgotten finishing 20th in League 2?

Tbh Joe I think this lot would struggle to finish 20th in Div4.  Since Ollie and Alfie left and with Willo sadly injured again we lack any real creativity to continually create chances and ultimately win games.  Couple that with no natural finishers and comic cuts defenders this lot would not prosper in the League below.

[Santa]

To some extent I have sympathy with the owners. Vale Park and the Railway Stand in particular is a money pit. We have had two decades of under investment and many things that needed to be renewed under V2001 or NS had been simply kicked down the road.

Some of the other projects maybe we needed to decide if they were priorities, over and above say, winning games of football. A lot of money has been spent and very little has been added to the asset register.

 

[Fosse69]

4 minutes ago, darren1810 said:

She cited the Plymouth model as one to follow.

However they had a season of consolidation. Then missed the play offs on the last day, followed by the title the season after.

 

Missing out either strengthens the resolve for the next season or needs a while to dwell on what might have been, Will be interesting to see how Mansfield cope in L1 next season, a point on Tuesday will be enough to get there.  

[Vale1995]

The sad thing is , to the younger generation of fan (myself included) I've witnessed some pretty horrendous times at vale. Its been tough really tough. 2 years ago it finally felt like the tide has turned and that promotion team it finally felt like we were on the up and i was proud to be a vale fan and i had complete trust that we had competent owners for the first time in my life. Fast forward 2 years and its back to the usual chaos that usually follows the club. And it just feels so deflating this time. How has it been able to get to this point. Im not questioning carols intentions as i do still believe she wants the best for the club however i expect answers to what has caused our catastrophic downfall from January last year to now. Bad decision after bad decision. The complete neglect of the running of the football side of things. The neglect of the fans views . The going into hiding instead of fronting things? The sad thing is if i dont hear some accountability for whats gone on. Some explanation i dont think ill get a season ticket next year. Ive never felt so disconnected from the club in all my time supporting the club. Our promotion year was like a siege mentality we were all in it together to where we are now is night and day and she will have closer to 2k home fans there next season compared to the 10k she desires. How has she got it so wrong? Whilst i was impressed when moore was brought in i find it astonishing that our last two manager appointments there was no interview process to see who was the best out there for us. Its just complete and utter neglect. No strikers brought in January. If you look at our business in January when it was evidently clear we needed some quality brought in to help us avoid relegation we brought in our marquee signing dan gore who played for 50 mins never to be seen again. Lapata disappeared . Mighten disappeared. Weir looks a non league player. Rhys williams sent back to Liverpool before kicking a ball. Its just a <ovf censored> shambles 

[DazFred]

This is how I feel about Carol.

Insulted.

My son and I have STs. It's a pain to get to home games as I have an elderly relative who is very ill and due to working Monday-Friday,Saturday is the only time to visit. To commit to the team I run round to make it to the game. On Tuesdays we have to shop so it's a similar routine. Wolf some food down and rush to the game.

Carol appointed Flitcroft. The decision to move home fans to the Hamil would have gone ahead anyway,with or without a vote.

Carol is overheard saying our players are phenomenal. Flitcroft says publicly he hasn't considered relegation. Carol sacks the manager after the January window. Carol lets Flitcroft go. Carol appoints Moore,on a 5 year deal. Carol oversees the El Presidente fiasco. Carol sends a snotty condescending letter to the fans.

All these things,and more,have happened whilst she is the owner.

That's me done. I won't be running round like an idiot on Tuesdays and Saturdays. She doesn't deserve people to do this,whilst she seems to think burying her head in the sand is the answer.

I will look for the results but I feel absolutely empty after yesterday. The team have lost 24 home games out of 43 in this division. Iacovitti said pre match that when the crowd gets going it frightens the opposition. Does it? I don't think so.

Carol needs to apologise for mistake after mistake after mistake. I admire the diehard fans who will watch Vale whatever division they are in,but for me, yesterday was the final straw.

I haven't enjoyed being in this division watching the team lose every other week. It's depressing. The only person who thinks they are doing a good job is Carol. 

[Guitar Ray]

3 hours ago, Rampant Zebra said:

Flitcroft didn't get lucky with the Clarke appointment, he was part of the problem. They tried to prove that they were somehow better than all the other 71 clubs by doing things differently, we overspent on a shiny new rocket which got us to the moon but then ran out of fuel. 

I beg to differ.  Clarke has a proven track record at the level below so was a solid appointment.  Where Flitcroft got lucky was that Clarke replicated that success with us in achieving another promotion, which could in no way be guaranteed let alone in the short timescale it took.  I feel your negative bias towards Clarke has blinkered your judgement on this one.  Fair to say however that this success also probably played into Flitcroft’s hands in the sense that it made it harder for the powers that be to accept that he wasn’t capable of turning things around.  Naturally the manager would get the axe first as is always the case.  Then we’re in the wait and see cycle again until finally, after changing several managers and pressure from the fans the lightbulb has had to come on.

[soothsayer]

11 minutes ago, Santa said:

To some extent I have sympathy with the owners. Vale Park and the Railway Stand in particular is a money pit. We have had two decades of under investment and many things that needed to be renewed under V2001 or NS had been simply kicked down the road.

Some of the other projects maybe we needed to decide if they were priorities, over and above say, winning games of football. A lot of money has been spent and very little has been added to the asset register.

 

Two decades of under investment? I’d say it’s closer to five but you’re spot on about VP being a money pit.

In an ideal world we should move to a new build stadium with a 12k capacity similar to Rotherham. If our our useless City council got involved, it could also become a proper ‘community stadium’. 

[soothsayer]

14 hours 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. 

Although I agree with the majority of what’s a well crafted post, she didn’t purchase the club debt free. There were creditors that transitioned with the sale and it did cost her close to £5m to purchase.

Carol clearly has her heart in the right place but being the top person, does need to acknowledge the debacle of this season before we can move on. Hopefully she will reflect on the mistakes made, learn from them so we can rebuild and come back in a better position.

[Guitar Ray]

1 hour ago, Wrex said:

That is the thing for me. Carol hired Flitcroft and put him in charge of all things football. That was a terrible mistake and in if itself was poor leadership, delegating responsibility to somebody else. One continuing error that is thankfully over now.

However, even if Moore or another person put the club on their back and carried us back into League One, then it will feel awfully hollow when Carol starts doing the rounds with media interviews when she was so silent during our ongoing long malaise. Bar the love letter to Flickers, of which the less said the better.

To appoint someone better qualified than yourself into a role and delegate responsibility is not poor leadership and is perfectly normal in any business.  The problem is that Flitcroft has been able to manipulate Carol from day one, being interviewed as a potential manager the club suddenly adopts a completely new DoF model with him as that DoF.  Bingo!  Our initial success and the galvanising effect it had no doubt clouded people’s judgement.  Clearly Flitcroft was a grade A waffler full of management speak and that possibly appealed to Carol, who knows, but she clearly rated the guy, hence that crazy letter.

 

[Portvale4]

44 minutes ago, JoeB2 said:

She paid around £5m and had loaned us, interest-free, £8m, over 5 years. 

Of course the losses are greater now, but that’s down to two factors:

1. Losses are higher across the football pyramid. Nearly every club is insolvent and reliant on director’s loans. Our losses have been very manageable (1m a year) until last season where clearly we made a dog’s breakfast out of League 1. Comparing losses for previous owners is useless.

2. 3.4m is a fairly standard loss for League 1. Very normal. It’s bad for us, but common for a lot of teams. You have to be spending way in excess of what you bring in to compete. Unfortunately, Carol fell for the BS from Flitcroft and consequently the money was poorly spent.

It’s clearly ‘give Carol a kicking’ season which is understandable- her poor leadership has squandered the opportunity created in May 2022 and set us back several years and several million. She should have listened earlier and set up a far better quality assurance structure to assess where the money was going.

I’m not coming out to bat for her. I was raising concerns in the immediate summer after promotion where our signings were non-existent and we played minimal friendlies. I had worries in January 2022 when we seemed to bundle home a load of questionable signings and very nearly fell out of the playoffs. It was a circus then, held together by a very good manager.

However, let us not rewrite history. Carol’s first two seasons were Covid-impacted, and in her first full season with fans we went up. Survival in League 1 was acceptable, if underwhelming last year, and then this year has been a disaster. 

Folks emotionally predicting we’re on our way to non-league, that Carol has killed us, and that she hasn’t a clue what she’s doing are (in my view) emotionally and angrily lashing out after a relegation. 

The fundamental truth, however some try to twist it, is that PVFC will always incur losses of at least 1m a year (as every club does) and someone has to pick up that bill. Carol is the current fool daft enough to do so, for the ego trip and adrenaline rush. 

I’m really not bothered about apologies or ‘taking responsibility’, or making her March through Burslem whilst we chant ‘shame’ At her. 

She just needs to quietly and without fuss go away, learn from the mistakes, and do what she did in 21/22. Moore’s rumoured wage suggests she is more than happy to throw more money at the financial black hole of PVFC. The alternative is she sells up, incurring about a £10m loss, to (most likely) a consortium of investors who would again have to foot the losses, without the attachment to the club or area.

We will be absolutely fine next year, and if I had to bet, I’d assume we’d have a fairly successful year considering the weakness of League 2 24/25. The cloth will have to be cut a large amount (which is probably going to force much-needed efficiencies) and the off-field structure needs completely reshaping, but as a serial moaner who is never satisfied I’m rather sanguine about it all. 

The compounding effect of so many losses over the last 18 months have absolutely battered the fanbase emotionally. Everyone is knackered. There’s an intensity to how awful we’ve been. We’ve been crap for ages. We need the season to finish and to all find something else to do for 3 months. PVFC will be fine under Carol Shanahan - as much as that appears to be a controversial view on this thread.

Spot on! 

Emotionally battered is a perfect way to sum the general mood amongst a hardcore fan base of 5,000. 

What an absolute car crash League One has turned out to be. 

[Vale Ball]

 
Doesn’t mean she is actually good at running a business per se. 
 

You don't run a business as successful as Synectics if you are no good........



Sent from my SM-A217F using onevalefan mobile app

[Powerline]

11 hours ago, JohnJames said:

The toilet situation sort of highlights an issue with fan engagement. In days of yore an appeal would have gone out for some roofing company fan to have a look to see if they could do a temporary repair. Bit of goodwill probably had it done in exchange for some seats in hostility.That sort of stuff appears to be beneath the corporatati running the place. 
oh yeah <ovf censored> Hollands pies. Which <ovf censored> from Manchester thought that would be a good idea Patrick? 

I know it’s a very small concern in the grand scheme of things but I’ll take any chance I get to bash the pies. I’m a pie loving bastard. And they’re bloody awful. I no longer buy pies at the vale. I go home and away and the only one I’ve had all season that was as bad/worse than Vale’s was Fleetwood’s. Which was also Holland’s. Bring Wright’s back so I can eat pies again!

[JohnJames]

I’ve seen a post on X from a Boro fan who loved being in the Bycars as the view was excellent but he proper slagged off the pies. Away fans are more likely to buy hot food but once they see the pasty pastry and slop. They won’t buy another!

[Santa]

I genuinely don’t have a problem with Holland’s. The balti pie is great.

[DazFred]

20 minutes ago, Vale Ball said:

 

 

You don't run a business as successful as Synectics if you are no good........



Sent from my SM-A217F using onevalefan mobile app
 

 

Fair enough. However I am more interested in the business that I have invested my money in via a season ticket. And it's fair to say she hasn't been very good at doing this for the last two seasons