Gannon out before Hereford Game?

There's speculation this evening that manager Jim Gannon may quit Port Vale tomorrow (Monday).

The portvale4ever site is 'praying it is true'.

They have posted an article which suggests Gannon is hated by staff, players and fans.

What an unsavoury, repulsive character Jim Gannon truly is. His conceit and startling arrogance beggars belief. Since arriving at Vale Park in January he has single-handedly dismantled all belief and confidence from the squad, turning us from a side heading towards automatic promotion into one staggering incoherently for a mid-table finish. Along the way he has alienated and humiliated Coaching staff and players. We have become an embarrassing shambles, and it has to end now.

His formations and tactics have been a joke pretty much from day one, but yesterday at Accrington Stanley it went well beyond that. Key players dropped from the squad, an unsurprisingly abysmal performance - the players clearly can't stand him either - all resulting in Gannon having to be placed in a 'secure area' after the game for his own protection. I've followed Vale for 36 years now, and never have I witnessed so much seething hatred aimed at a Manager from the Faithful. Not even Dean Glover. All around me it was raging.

Meanwhile the Port Vale Teamtalk site says the Port Vale story is 'straight out of soapland'.

It catalogues the season to date incuding the refusual of the board to sell to Mo Chaudry and the coach bust up between Gannon and his assistant Geoff Horsfield.

Horsfield had asked for a day off in the week to attend a family matter and Gannon agreed to the request, only to write a letter of complaint to the board about Horsfield's conduct.

The Vale assistant was then shown the letter by an unnamed director and confronted Gannon on the coach to Aldershot, with the manager initially denying having ever written a letter before Horsfield informed him he had seen it with his own eyes. Gannon was forced into a climbdown, but not before a sweary tirade at his number two. He left the coach at a service station to meet his legal representative.

It soon became apparent that Gannon had a dislike of Horsfield and had been attempting to force him out of the club. The players, however, were firmly behind the former Birmingham striker, with widespread reports emanating that Gannon had 'lost the dressing room'.

It seemed certain the Vale board would use the incident as an excuse to get rid of the divisive Gannon, but a subsequent internal investigation led to both the manager and his assistant remaining in their roles. A recipe for disaster if ever there was one.

Later in their article they reveal more details of the debacle at Accrington yesterday and end with this comment:

Vale host Hereford on Tuesday night and, if Gannon remains in charge by then, it is impossible to predict what the latest twist of this truly incredible tale will be..

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