It’s not Darren’s fault but he can get us bouncing back

[Jacko51]

19 minutes ago, werstayinup said:

More chance of me sleeping with Ant and Dec than Uche being offered anywhere near 10k a week at Charlton

Ant and Dec were at Crystal Palace on Wednesday.  If you'd let me know I could have made some arrangements for you.

[TJHValiant]

1 hour ago, Doha said:

I don't agree, and would say that is a very sad indictment in how the club has been run since the 1990s because we've spent the overwhelming majority of our history well above L2. 41 seasons in the Championship, 46 in L1.

I agree. Totally agree, but the years spent outside that in league 2 in recent years have hit us hard and we no longer seem to have the resources many third tier clubs have. 
 

I remember when we first got relegated to the league 1 again in about 2000, just how small a lot of clubs seemed in terms of stadia and staff. 

[valefan16]

Nowadays we are probably a yoyo league 1-2 club, long gone are the days of the likes of us Grimsby, Crewe, Walsall being regulars in the second tier largely due to the finance required...

That said football does change quickly, if a mega rich owner came in to a club of our size the potential is there to grow it and push it up like your Rotherham's, Brentford's or Bournemouths but the key word there is investment from mega rich owners. Wrexham possibly the next example to break out of the doldrums into it.

To achieve that I think we would have to leave Vale Park or rebuild on it to an "arena" like Rotherham that could be a big money maker etc. New Stadia often increase the fan base too when you consider say Hull City for instance and what the KC Stadium did there (but we don't have a relatively decent rugby team to help make it viable).

[Warren]

I forgot about Chesterfield coming up. I like them and we have a great rivalry over the years. But I would expect them to reconfigure enough to challenge at the top of L2 next season. 

The tricks here are to retain our best players who are L1 standard, bring through our good young players who need to be retained and played, dispose of players who simply didn't cut it in 2023/24 and make some astute signings. I'm very conscious this is all easier said than done. 

Edited April 26 by Warren

[leedsvaliant]

I'm holding out some hope that surely Moore would not have taken the job without certain promises. He will surely have been told he will be backed irrelevant of league. I can see us having a pretty competitive budget. I know Flitcroft was a bull*****, but he mentioned that we'd put in some big money offers for players. The money is there but it has to be spent wisely.

[JRC]

3 hours ago, Doha said:

I don't agree, and would say that is a very sad indictment in how the club has been run since the 1990s because we've spent the overwhelming majority of our history well above L2. 41 seasons in the Championship, 46 in L1.

For a lot of the clubs history the old league 2 was also the same as league 4 ... it was also the bottom league. We were also fortunate to be in league 2 when league 3 South was formed, as only 2 teams a season were relegated. We also dropped out of the football league twice during the first 20 odd years of it's existence; once for quite a few seasons.

What we now think of the football league was initially anything but. Teams in the South were all amateur and some northwest teams paid some of there players. It was a league set up for the small area of the country where clubs were allowed to pay some or all their players (basically Liverpool to Birmingham down what is now the M6). Broadly the same situation as the breakaway of Rugby League and Union. Division 3 was set up initially to expand the football league to the south. The first relegated team was Grimsby; which prompted a Division 3 North to be formed due to the travelling they had to do in their first season. A lot of clubs were mainly semi professional for quite a long time. I think the last semi professional we had was Mark Bright for his first year at the club. I'm pretty sure one of Ridley or Tartt was initially semi professional in the 70 when first signed. 

A far more realistic time to judge is probably post 1958 when we were founder members of the 4th division when it was started. Without knowing the figures I'd guess we've spent 1/3 of the time in league 2 (league 4), half in league 1 (league 3) and maybe 1/6 in The Championship (league 2). Certainly anything pre WW II is meaningless.  You could make a case anything pre Bosman is meaningless. 

[JRC]

5 hours ago, Brian Johnson said:

Nobody is as well funded like Wrexham below the Championship but Chesterfield are more well funded than Stockport and they are going to increase their budget this season.

Just a little example of Chesterfield's budget, they are currently paying Will Grigg £5k per week

2022/23 season Chesterfield and Stockport had the same revenues (within 50k) but Stockport's loss was 2 million more than Chesterfield.  Don't know what Stockport paid their players as they don't release that information but Chesterfield spent 3.25 million on their player's wages. You'd imagine a reasonable part of the extra 2 million in loses was either transfer fees or wages. 

[onestepatatime]

We're playing next season in Division 2 with a disheartened fan base, squad of uncaring, inept, tactically lacking players in the main. We " may " have Owners who are trying to say the right things, but fundamentally after year on year ineffectiveness we as fans cannot believe or dream of a rosy future until adequate, suitable players form a decent squad, to give us the belief that we can resurrect ourselves up the League chain. At present we all know our Team is way below fans expectations. It's easy to say once a Vale fan then this lasts forever  but now is the time to completely re think out and form a long time strategy and plan to make Vale a proud Club again worthy of respect up and down the Country.  No faffing about, set a long term, sustainable plan to put us back inrlto the mix.

[Phil500]

8 minutes ago, onestepatatime said:

We're playing next season in Division 2 with a disheartened fan base, squad of uncaring, inept, tactically lacking players in the main. We " may " have Owners who are trying to say the right things, but fundamentally after year on year ineffectiveness we as fans cannot believe or dream of a rosy future until adequate, suitable players form a decent squad, to give us the belief that we can resurrect ourselves up the League chain. At present we all know our Team is way below fans expectations. It's easy to say once a Vale fan then this lasts forever  but now is the time to completely re think out and form a long time strategy and plan to make Vale a proud Club again worthy of respect up and down the Country.  No faffing about, set a long term, sustainable plan to put us back inrlto the mix.

Long term plan for Vale fans is end of September.Bottom half of the table by then it will all kick off.

[Guitar Ray]

3 hours ago, valefan16 said:

Nowadays we are probably a yoyo league 1-2 club, long gone are the days of the likes of us Grimsby, Crewe, Walsall being regulars in the second tier largely due to the finance required...

That said football does change quickly, if a mega rich owner came in to a club of our size the potential is there to grow it and push it up like your Rotherham's, Brentford's or Bournemouths but the key word there is investment from mega rich owners. Wrexham possibly the next example to break out of the doldrums into it.

To achieve that I think we would have to leave Vale Park or rebuild on it to an "arena" like Rotherham that could be a big money maker etc. New Stadia often increase the fan base too when you consider say Hull City for instance and what the KC Stadium did there (but we don't have a relatively decent rugby team to help make it viable).

Both times we’ve been relegated in recent times have been down to catastrophic recruitment. We had a steady side under Page before Sexman had a brainstorm then this season we failed to add the couple of players that would’ve been enough to keep us up.  It would’ve been pretty straightforward to have avoided yoyoing in my opinion.

[Santa]

5 hours ago, werstayinup said:

More chance of me sleeping with Ant and Dec than Uche being offered anywhere near 10k a week at Charlton

PJ isn’t very fussy these days since the paintballing accident. 

[Brian Johnson]

54 minutes ago, JRC said:

2022/23 season Chesterfield and Stockport had the same revenues (within 50k) but Stockport's loss was 2 million more than Chesterfield.  Don't know what Stockport paid their players as they don't release that information but Chesterfield spent 3.25 million on their player's wages. You'd imagine a reasonable part of the extra 2 million in loses was either transfer fees or wages. 

All I know is that Chesterfields owners, the Kirk brothers, are worth over £500 million. They backed the manager to the hilt to get them out of the National League and they are increasing the wage budge quite considerably next season too, to have a shot at the League 2 title.

They also have a manger that’s got a history of winning the league title in various divisions.

They will walk away with the League 2 title next season 

[Valiiant]

 

He's been rubbish so far, with a rubbish, rubbish squad of players. Of course he deserves a window or two of his own and next season to convince everyone he's the right man for the job. He should start with a clean slate once tomorrow is out of the way, but the jury is very much out.

[man in the pub]

On 23/04/2024 at 17:01, Brian Johnson said:

Surely, we can get two strikers out of that?

Yes true, but no goals.