Port Vale 0-3 Wycombe Wanderers – dire performance, dire refereeing, home defeat…
A poor performance by a toothless Vale side and by the match officials made it an afternoon to forget in Burslem.
To some surprise, new signing Matty Taylor was not named in the Vale squad and the only change was Dan Jones for the injured Lewis Cass.
However, it was not to be one of Jones’ best games for the Valiants as he partially to blame for the opening game. Nathan Smith’s pass during a Vale attack was intercepted and Wycombe broke. It should have been stopped by the retreating Jones but he miskicked allowing Hanlan the relatively easy opportunity to fire past Stevens.
It was an uninspiring first-half performance from the Valiants who looked short of attacking threat and with David Worrall having a rare quiet game. The best chance fell to Mal Benning but he fired wide.
The pattern continued with a physical Wycombe side rarely allowing the Valiants any time on the ball and this lead to Vale trying a pointless long-ball game at times – a fairly useless venture when your attack consists of Butterworth, Politic and Massey. Meanwhile, the referee was also having a shocker with dubious decisions interspersed with overly officious behaviour causing multiple disruptions to the game. However, take nothing away from Wycombe who, although they benefitted from some decisions were much the better side on the day.
The referee copped more flak with a dodgy penalty when he spotted an apparent Aaaron Donnelly handball and Joe Jacobson dispatched the spot-kick to make it 2-0 on 79 minutes. That sparked a mass exodus which only got worse when Gareth McLeary scored a fine third goal for the visitors on 82 minutes.
It was a game during which few Vale players could say they had a good game and the Valiants were well beaten by the final whistle. The team need some experienced faces upfront and the bottle to bounce back as their poor recent run continued.
Full-time: Port Vale 0-3 Wycombe Wanderers
Port Vale stats
Notes
It was one of those games which was littered with errors and virtually no-one on the Vale side could emerge from it with any credit. Danny Butterworth and Dennis Politic were largely anonymous while Dan Jones had a rare error-strewn game and Aaron Donnelly a tough home baptism of fire. Keeper Jack Stevens looked shaky at times and even David Worrall had a rare quiet game. In my opinion, only Nathan Smith can hold his head up high as he battled away against a physical Wycombe attack.
Team line-up
Stevens – Smith, Jones (Forrester), Donnelly – Worrall (Robinson), Garrity, Ojo (Odubeko), Benning – Massey, Butterworth (Proctor), Politic (Conlon)
Subs not used – Stone, Holden
Stats
Vale bookings: Butterworth (who knows what for though!)
Vale goals: none
Attendance: 7,237 (379 visitors)