DEAN Glover’s first task as Port Vale manager will be to turn the club’s lack of money to his advantage.

At least without two pennies to rub together, he won’t be tempted into making panicky wholesale changes in the dressing room.

That was surely one of the mistakes in the recent past, losing too many experienced faces such as Danny Whitaker and Paul Harsley.

In their place came a busload of largely untried and untested players and, I’m afraid, the results speak for themselves.

When you bring in a whole host of new faces, you usually reckon you’ve done well if just two or three really hit it off, so Vale were always pushing their luck this summer.

Dean’s first priority is to now steady the ship and get an improvement out of what he’s got.

Vale should be safe this season thanks to others being docked points before a ball was kicked, but there will be no such safety net next season.

And so they really must start building a base to not only see them through this campaign, but ensure they are strong enough to hold their own next year, when everyone will start on a level playing field.

I don’t think anyone will have been too surprised by Dean’s appointment, except perhaps the caller to a local radio phone-in show on Friday, who insisted chairman Bill Bratt was having talks with yours truly over the weekend.

I don’t know if that news was a surprise for listeners, but it certainly was for me.

As for Andy Porter, he will no doubt be disappointed at being overlooked on this occasion, but I see no reason why he shouldn’t roll up his sleeves now and get on with his job.

After all, if the club had been wealthy enough to bring in a new manager from the outside, he might have been on his bike anyway.

I think it’s important the club’s board also ensures it doesn’t become distracted by the task of trying to sell it.

It’s crucial the hierarchy concentrates on the most important aspect of any club, what happens on the pitch.

You could be waiting months for a sale, particularly the sale of a club which, let’s be brutally frank, doesn’t have an awful lot to recommend itself to any outside investor.
Especially at the moment, for these are hard times in football at just about every level of the game.

When you see several thousand empty seats for a fixture like Sunderland at home to Arsenal last Saturday, I think alarm bells might just be starting to ring.

If football is a reflection of society, as people have always claimed, then it’s only natural that troubled times caused by the credit crunch will eventually catch up with our great game.

Sunderland is not the sort of place you expect to see empty spaces as they are going pretty well, have always had great support and Arsenal are not exactly the biggest turn-off these days.

People’s finances are obviously an issue, judging by Sunderland’s turn-out, and it’s a lesson a club like Birmingham will have to learn after charging £30 for a Championship game being screened live on Sky on Saturday lunchtime.

Fans are becoming choosy when money is tight, particularly as there are not that many entertainers in the game these days.

Be honest, how many individuals would have you making the effort in time and expense to attend a particular fixture?

The fact that Stevie Wonder sold out two nights running in Manchester over the weekend, with seats at something like £70 apiece, suggests those still with money to spend will do so when they are guaranteed entertainment.

Football has even fewer guarantees than it ever had, sadly, now there are so few genuine entertainers out there these days.

And for all the talk about this Asian businessman or that African consortium wanting to buy into English football, there are still a lot of big clubs such as Newcastle, Everton and Portsmouth holding out their hands and still waiting for deals to be done.

I wonder if these people are thinking twice, particularly at the current asking prices, because the wind is blowing in the wrong direction for football at the moment?

And if it is, that makes it even harder for the likes of Port Vale to find a willing and
able buyer further down the food chain.

I CAN’T pretend I’ve never used the odd naughty word, particularly where reporters are concerned, but 52 swear words in about five minutes is pushing it just a bit.

Joe Kinnear has been widely ridiculed for his relentless rant against a group of journalists up in Newcastle – and understandably so.

It’s inevitable you’re going to read or hear something you don’t like as a manager simply because that’s the nature of the game.

But there can be no excuse for losing the plot like Joe did that day.

A firm, but quiet word was the way I usually went if something needed to be said to an individual.

If somebody deliberately and maliciously stitches you up in print, then fair enough have a rant at them like that.

But you usually find there is a reasonable explanation if you’re willing to talk it through like grown men.

One thing you quickly learn is that the man writing the story is not the man writing the headline, so your beef is often with the wrong person anyway.