They Who Would Valiant Be
As Stoke City pushed their way into the Premier League and stayed there, local rivals Port Vale fell into financial difficulties and a somewhat protracted and fractious takeover.
Charlton Athletic: From Pillar To Post
In a footballing culture that treats all relegations like the closing act of Romeo & Juliet, it can be difficult to judge whether dropping a division might actually be existentially damaging to a club. Tears will have been shed over the last seven days by...
Port Vale Football Club: Under New Ownership
So. Farewell then. Norman Smurthwaite. From Burslem anyway. As, sort of, predicted in these pages. Predicting Smurthwaite’s departure from League Two Port Vale didn’t make stuck-out neck history, granted. But it was still a relief that he sold...
Port Vale For Sale: Normal For Norman
“We’ve been here before,” noted the Stoke Sentinel newspaper’s Michael Baggaley, as Port Vale owner/chairman Norman Smurthwaite announced that the club he helped take out of administration in November 2012 was for sale. LAST April.Last month, Smurthwaite...
Port Vale: When “Shooting From The Hip” Goes Wrong
There are two fundamental truisms of running a football club which can only attract crowds of around five thousand people. The first is that national media attention is likely to be thin on the ground and should be used wisely. The second is that you can't afford to...
Port Vale: Norman’s Conquest
After Port Vale’s FA Cup third round replay triumph over Plymouth Argyle, Mark Murphy thought it would be opportune to revisit the two clubs’ financial fortunes since they emerged from administration and ownership crises. And what a tangled web they both have woven....
Port Vale vs The Stoke Sentinel… And The Club Is In The Wrong
The relationship between football clubs and the local newspapers of the areas that they inhabit has long been assumed to be a mutually beneficial one. On one side of the equation, in an era during which the print media is undergoing a period of trauma that has...
A Warning Message To Bury FC From Port Vale
The last few years have been difficult ones for the clubs that live on the periphery of the city of Manchester and in the shadow of the two giant clubs that dominate its football culture, and Bury are no exception.
The Murphs: The Most Important End Of Year Awards… Of That Name
The “even if Lionel Messi wasn’t the best player of 2012 as a whole, Andres Iniesta didn’t quite do enough and we’re not giving an award to that preening prick Cristiano bloody Ronaldo” player-of-the-year award: LIONEL MESSI. If Cristiano Ronaldo feels hard done to by...
Port Vales Latest Bidder Shows His Hand
The emergence of Altrincham-based businessman Paul Wildes and his Leicestershire business associate Norman Smurthwaite as the latest “preferred” bidder(s) for Port Vale triggered a wave of hope across Burslem. Some of it was live on telly too, as Vale gave Oxford...
Port Vale: Reserving The Right To Criticise
The benefits of hindsight are many. And reviewing the fretful close season that Port Vale fans have just endured, I am glad that I “knew the result” of the negotiations on Lancashire businessman Keith Ryder’s putative club takeover. Otherwise I would have feared for...
Port Vales Summer Of Optimism Returns To Square One
200% has observed events at Burslem from a distance over the summer, as Port Vale appeared to be slowly edging towards an exit from administration. In recent weeks, Vale have begun to slowly edge nowhere. In the first of a two-part piece, Mark Murphy summarises what...
Port Vale In Administration: The End Of The Beginning
“It will be the perfect administration, if true,” wrote the BBC’s Matt Slater on March 19th, in response to Port Vale joint administrator Gerald Krasner’s prediction of getting a deal with creditors signed off by the end of April. Krasner, to the surprise of no-one...
Port Vale: Out With The Old, In With The…. Who?
On February 26th, local businessman Mo Chaudry said “administrators could be called in within two months” to League Two Port Vale. And this assessment, which appeared in the local Sentinel newspaper on February 26th 2011, found some unlikely – and probably unknowing –...
On The Brink: A Week In The Life Of Port Vale Football Club
On September 25th 2008 the then Port Vale chairman Bill Bratt declared: “I feel the board and I have taken the club as far as we can.” And now, officially, they have. The end of the “Valiant 2001” era at Vale Park, which began when the self-styled “supporters”...
On The Brink: An Introduction To Football’s Chaotic Current State
For much of the last decade, British football has been teetering on the edge of a precipice. In an era during which the game should have been reaping the rewards of unprecedented amounts of money flowing through the game, we have seen over half of the clubs of the...
A Good Time To Bury Bad News For Port Vale
It is virtually impossible to forecast the next misdemeanour, potential or otherwise, to emerge from Port Vale's boardroom, without descending into the realms of bad-taste fantasy (one of the major protagonists revealing themselves to be a woman trapped in a man's...
Port Vale: Blue Skies Or Grey Clouds Ahead?
Clucking bell. Again. Remember that “£8m” investment deal between Port Vale and American synthetic pitch manufacturers Blue Sky International (BS). You do? Well, apparently that puts you one-up on Hank Julicher - who just happens to be BS's Chief Executive, so really...
Port Vale – (Yet More) Secrets & Lies
I was going to have a quiet weekend. Write some stuff about Everton. Catch up on the latest fun and frolics at Rangers, with Wilfrid Hyde-White's distant cousin Craig “I have nothing to” Hyde-White. And watch a Gaelic Football match in North-West London. Then a...
Port Vale… Not Again?
Yes, again. Last month, I started what I hoped was an epilogue to Port Vale's takeover saga. Then Plymouth Argyle's concluding fortunes took priority and Vale took their place lower down the article queue. But not before I wrote the following: So, farewell, then,...
Port Vale – Bullet The Blue Sky
After months of turmoil – preceded by years of worry and struggle – Port Vale’s tale could be nearing a happy ending, provided the right protagonists hold their nerve and the decision-makers do something like ‘the right thing.’ When last we were in Burslem, boardroom...
The Culture Of Mistrust At Port Vale
This weekend, Port Vale’s board are due to publish answers to 141(141!) questions from fans about a proposed multi-million pound investment by American ‘sports construction’ firm ‘Blue Sky International.’ A full Vale article on this site will follow that publication....
Port Vale: A Light At The End Of The Tunnel?
Next up in our brief series on summer take-overs, Mark Murphy has an update from Port Vale. Port Vale have a functioning, constitutionally sound, a recently-elected board of directors, a six-figure investment deal (seven-figure, if you include various forms of...
A Continuing War Of Words At Port Vale
There’s no close season in the financial trials and tribulations of modern English football, as Port Vale and Plymouth fans are discovering. June will see, if not the end, then the beginning of the end of the clubs’ respective takeover sagas. There will be new...
Port Vale And The Battle For Burslem
The mornings get warmer and the evenings get longer, but still the main protagonists in Port Vale’s takeover battle argue over how many angels you can fit on the head of a pin. The deadlock is straightforward. Successful local businessman Mo Chaudry wants control. The...
Port Vale And Plymouth Argyle: Money Men Updates
For what seems like longer than the three months for which it has actually been happening, fans of Port Vale have been bombarded with promises of multi-million pound investment by ironically-labelled ‘secret millionaire’ Mo Chaudry. His interest in football has been...