Port Vale co-owner admits she could have walked away

Port Vale won promotion back to League One at Wembley in 2022 - three years after co-owner Carol Shanahan took the helm in Burslem

Port Vale co-owner Carol Shanahan admits she and husband Kevin considered walking away from the club they love - in the wake of last season's painful slide to relegation from League One.

After winning five of their first seven league games of the season to go joint top by mid-September, Vale suffered a dreadful slump, winning just five more times in 39 games to be relegated back to League Two.

The mood among the fans who had danced and celebrated on the pitch after their League Two play-off semi-final victory over Swindon Town en route to promotion in May 2022 quickly turned.

And Shanahan told BBC Radio Stoke that the sheer "nastiness" she encountered on social media almost took its toll.

"During that time, I looked very seriously at, 'Am I the right person to be running a football club?' Were we the right people to be doing this? Because it didn't feel like it."

What turned the Shanahans' heads again was the confidence and faith they had that the management system now in place in Burslem was the right one - and that they had already made the changes needed by bringing in Matt Hancock as chief executive in January, and then the highly respected Darren Moore as head coach in February.

Moore had failed to stop the rot when he came in, winning just two games - but his past reputation as a good manager and an even better human being counted for a lot.

"We went away on a long holiday, which was really good," she added. "It gave Kevin and me time to talk and think.

"The conclusion we both came to was, 'Hang on. We've done all the hard graft and worked hard to get the right two people here. Why would we not want to be part of that?'"

Carol and Kevin Shanahan were joined on the pitch by newly appointed club president John Rudge (centre) on the day they formally took over Port Vale in 2019

She admits that the lowest moment was going into the Valiants Social Club after yet another home defeat towards the end of the season and giving an impromptu heartfelt rallying call, only to discover that her words had been secretly recorded and spread far and wide on social media.

"I speak from the heart," she said. "It wasn't scripted. I was just hurting as we really hadn't played well, but someone recorded it, they put it out there, it got shared and analysed and every word was commented on - and I thought that was so mean.

"To have that amount of vulnerability and for it to come back to me was hard. It isn't right that sort of behaviour - and football has so much of it.

"It is tough for an owner of a club when things aren't going well on the pitch, especially for a community club like ours.

"I came off social media and I stopped walking round the ground before the match as it was horrible.

"I don't want to be scripted. I just want to speak from the heart. And I thought the best thing I can do is shut up. But I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to carry on - and I'm not going to shut up."

The Vale owners have instead opted to put up, not shut up. And 11 new signings later, it is now not only the Vale owners who feel refreshed by their summer holiday splurge.

Smiles are back on faces in Burslem - and not for nothing have Moore's Vale been installed as fifth favourites by bookmakers for a quick promotion back to English football's third tier.

Carol Shanahan was talking to BBC Radio Stoke's Phil Bowers