Port Vale 3-2 Fleetwood Town fan match reports – the starting eleven should start on Saturday
Vale bounced back from the opening day humilation with a 3-2 cup win over Fleetwood in midweek. Here’s how it looked from the terraces.
Welcome to our new feature for the 2023-24 as a selection of supporters offer their opinions on the game.
Chicken Steve – “we attacked with quality”
The match:
First-half talking points:
- First half pros – the new guys all looking good and trying to play well. Taylor looking fast and threatening. Once we had equalised the Hamil came to life.
- First half negs – a soft goal to give away, Fleetwood having acres of space. Who is coaching marking?
Second-half, and straight from the restart we concede another soft goal, from my view it looked like Ripley and any number of players should have done better with marking.
The heads didn’t drop though and although we looked toothless in terms of goal threat Taylor (constantly on the front foot) burst through and from the tightest of angles fired us level. He was then promptly substituted (why do they do this?).
We then came more into the game and Chissey gets his second from being set up by Massey. He is also immediately substituted (why? Are we frightened of paying hat trick bonuses). For a brief period we had looked decent in the game but always hopeless at marking and defending set pieces. After multiple subs AC decides to test our nerves and his luck and we sit on the edge of the penalty area inviting Fleetwood on. They nearly make us pay but two great saves from Rippers in injury time keep us in the lead.
We just get over the line, we really need to improve with marking and defending, for some reason we are unable to tackle in the middle third of our half inviting trouble on. Fleetwood couldn’t finish, a better team would, if that’s how we set up week after week then we may get regular wallopings. For me, we looked better before the subs and the starting 11 should start on Saturday.
Second-half talking points:
- Second half pros – a win is a win, Taylor and Chislett looked superb
- Second half negs – defending as above and hearing Massey being booed as he was being bought on, sorry folks but that’s just not acceptable. You can’t boo a player when he’s introduced and then expect him to kiss the badge – sort it out. The liner on the Lorne street side couldn’t keep pace with play all game, that’s poor at this level, six bookings and it wasn’t a dirty match, we will need big squads for when the suspensions start coming.
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