His reign was ended in January 1999 and the club entered a decline, slipping into the fourth tier whilst twice entering administration in 2003 and 2012 after the chairmanships of first Bill Bell and then Bill Bratt ended in crises. Norman Smurthwaite took the club out of administration in 2012 and manager Micky Adams achieved automatic promotion from League Two in the 2012–13 season, though they were relegated back into League Two at the end of the 2016–17 season after a failed experiment with a continental staff and playing style. Carol Shanahan bought the club in 2019 and manager Darrell Clarke secured promotion out of the League Two play-offs at the end of the 2021–22 season. 1876 or 1879: Founding The precise details of the club's founding are not known. A Port Vale cricket club were in existence in 1874, which may or may not have had any relation to the football club. It had been thought that Port Vale were formed during an 1876 meeting at Port Vale House, from where the club was supposed to have taken its name. However no evidence of such a named public house ever came to light. However, comprehensive research by historian Jeff Kent indicated that the club was probably formed in 1879 as an offshoot of Porthill Victoria football club and took its name from its location, in the valley of canal ports. Evidence in support of this came from Vale chairman Robert Audley writing that the club was "an organisation of twenty-eight years standing" in 1907. Also John Hood and an 'E.Hood' were recorded as having scored goals for Porthill Victoria on 4 January 1879, which seems to have disbanded at the end of that season. The 1879 theory suggests that Porthill Victoria players broke away to found Port Vale in 1879, having tired of travelling up the hill to Wolstanton from their work places to play their football. Before 1926, the occasional mentions in print of the club's founding had given the year of formation as 1879, and most of the original founders would not have reached adulthood by 1876. However the January 1926, 50-year jubilee celebrations saw the 1876 date apparently firmly established as the year of the club's founding; it is not known what convinced the organizers at the time that the date was correct. To add to the confusion, local newspaper The Sentinel also printed 1879 as