Weekly Digest: Long wait over and Cup stupidity…
The return of our weekly digest looks at a weekend of celebration for Nathan Smith, some tough questions about our loan signing Matthew Kennedy plus more Premier League greed.
Top story: relief for Smith
Nathan Smith will be celebrating today after Torquay United secured their FIRST win of the year. Admittedly, Torquay’s fixture list has been decimated by bad weather but it has taken four games in 2016 for the side to record a win. It was a vital victory too with Torquay beating Boreham Wood 1-0 away. With Boreham third from bottom and Torquay still bottom those three points could prove vital.
Despite Torquay’s poor season, the loan has been a personal triumph for Smith. He’s in contention to be named player of the year after recording twenty nine league starts for the Devon club and earning rave reviews in the process.
Development squad – where are they now?
Striker Jordan Hugill (Preston) was the most high-profile of Vale’s 2013 development squad while Ryan Boot remains with Vale. But where are the others?
Ben Jefford is now with promotion chasing Forest Green Rovers. The full-back joined from Welling in the January transfer window and now has a reasonable chance of making it to the Football League. Meanwhile midfielder Gary O’Neil, once touted for a breakthrough to the senior side, was last playing for University College Dublin in 2015.
Winger Wilson Carvalho is with Corby Town in the National League North and Doug Price is with Uttoxeter Town. Forward Dominic Dell (featured in the image above) plays for Chasetown and Cheye Alexander is playing for Aldershot Town. Winger Louis Tambani has perhaps the most interesting switch of all – he plays for New Haven Chargers – a University side in the United States. His profile is here – but note to Louis, do you really need a hairband if you’ve got a number three all over?
Premier League greed = FA Cup woe
Our featured story this week was a report on how the naked greed of the English Premier League is threatening the FA Cup competition. You can read more through our link below:
– Too powerful too self-interested will the Premier League kill the FA Cup?
Tweet of the week
The FA Cup changes are supposed to ease the amount of games Premier League clubs play. Well…
Do top English clubs play more than their European counterparts? Hmm…. Not really – #FACupReplays pic.twitter.com/2m55NOhrNy
— Against League 3 (@AgainstLeague3) February 17, 2016
Vintage video
For no other reason than we’ve just added this to our YouTube channel, here is a Vale win over Stoke (well, there’s really no reason needed to justify putting up a win over Stoke now is there?)