Port Vale up for Sale

[mozzavale]

What a joke football club owners have become. Unless your club is fan owned you're getting ripped off and mugged every time you spend money at the turnstiles and concourses. Blackpool has to be the famous case for this.

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We're proof that fan ownership isn't always the answer. It can work, look at Swansea (I think Palace are fan owned too, is that right?) but the approach needs to be really well thought through and not open to manipulation. Our Charter originally aimed to protect the club from becoming owned by a single shareholder. It originally included the promise of one person one vote. However, out of the almost 1000 shareholders, 14 "fans" held well over 50% of the shares. When it became clear the board would lose a vote around the time that Paladini was on the scene, they changed it to one share one vote. It was at that precise moment we stopped being a fan owned club, and were simply a club ran by a select few "fans". They enjoyed the power and control they got from being major shareholders. Hugely unpopular motions were voted through, scumbags and people completely unassociated with the club were voted onto the board. Voting basically became pointless, because the 14 held the majority. The real fans lost control of their club. Not only that, but the 49% rule we imposed meant that the club could not accept investments over a set amount (I think it was around £500k), which restricted how much people could support us, and even if people wanted to support us up to that 49%, the board could vote against them if they didn't like them (Mike Newton / Mo Chaudry). Our own charter became our downfall. Real fans that had invested thousands lost it all when we went into admin, yet the snake Bill Bratt sold his shares 6 months beforehand when he saw how things were going. He also took a healthy £50k a year out of the club as Chief Exec for about 5/6 years.

I'm not saying it would never work, it clearly can, but it's only as secure as the individuals (fans) that are charged with looking after it want it to be.

 

[TimeyWimey]

Splitting the ground and club is a concern and if we do get sold I imagine we will end up renting off Smurf (luckily the contract on the ground means it wont get bulldozed) but I believe this is getting more common in clubs (for eg sure I recall Crewe fans mention this has happened with them where it turned out the club and ground were set up separate?)

Yep, ours was split a few years ago now on the quiet. Club owners say it better protects the ground/land but the fact the ground is most clubs biggest, most valuable asset always leaves me feeling uneasy. They may not be able to build a block of apartments (or railway station) on it immediately but as you depose of them as club owners, they'll likely be the ones holding you to ransom over the ground in the future.

 

[valefan16]

Yep, ours was split a few years ago now on the quiet. Club owners say it better protects the ground/land but the fact the ground is most clubs biggest, most valuable asset always leaves me feeling uneasy. They may not be able to build a block of apartments (or railway station) on it immediately but as you depose of them as club owners, they'll likely be the ones holding you to ransom over the ground in the future.

Spot on. Smurf did it and seems a few clubs are going this way with it. Gives them security if things go pop I guess.

 

[yukon]

Don't tar everyone that uses that forum with the same brush. Yes there's some dickheads there but there's also a few that talk sense and aren't willing to sugar coat the fact that our club is in a complete mess.

They're a bunch of absolute bellends. The thing is, forums are there to air an opinion yet every Vale fan I know who's ever posted on there has been banned simply for not supporting Crewe- presumably by those thunderc*nts Proggs and Chalkdust

 

[lordofthepies]

http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/Port...-beaten-Vale/story-28320647-detail/story.html

Oh and as for Grant, he isn't a Crewe reject. Our manager decided our 2nd best player from last season(some would argue, the best) wasn't good enough for us because he's an idiot and let him go. If any Crewe fan thinks that is a good decision and we are now better off with Bingham, King and Atkinson, they are deluded and simply not worth listening to.

Whether or not you think it was a good decision, he literally is a Crewe reject.