Port Vale 0-2 Cambridge United reaction – players have had ample opportunities and some are falling well short

Post-match reaction from Port Vale manager Darrell Clarke and defender Nathan Smith as the Valiants suffer a poor home loss to Cambridge United on Saturday.

Darrell Clarke

A woeful performance; nowhere near the standard we need to win a League One game. I am angry, frustrated and disappointed. Maybe a few of the players have run their race because certainly in the second-half of the season since the New Year, we have been going backwards. Some of the performances have been OK but we have been going backwards on the pitch. That is the brutal reality of this game that we are, there are a lot of players in there that have done well for the football club but they certainly didn’t hit the standards that they need to be hitting to win a League One match, that’s for sure.

After the first-half, I didn’t think we could get worse, but we did. We had a great opportunity to score, though, but within five minutes they have gone up the other end and scored two. We weren’t at it, nowhere near the levels we needed to win the game today.

I am the manager, I pick the team, the squad and the accountability is on me. This second-half of the season in League One we haven’t got the results that we have wanted to get, needed to get and we have seven games to go to see how many points we can actually get.

I am calm and measured about it; I know where we are heading as a football club but to be able to do that, we have to get to the end of the season and the lads have seven games as a group to try and get as many points as possible in this league, because we are not safe yet, we still have a bit of work to do and certainly have missed opportunities in previous weeks to collect those points. Today we deserved nothing and got nothing.

I know what is needed in this group to make sure we are more competitive at this level; players have had ample opportunities and some are falling well short of the standards I require and the team require, so they have got seven games to try and show that they can turn that round as individuals and collectively as a group.

Our fans will back us in numbers at Accrington and against Oxford, the games are coming thick and fast in this month and we have to play a damn sight better than we did this afternoon.

Nathan Smith

It’s another game where we come away with disappointment, frustration, and we’ve only got to look at the lads that were out there on that pitch. It’s 11 vs 11, we’ve come away with another defeat against a team that’s below us.

It’s been a frustrating few weeks where results aren’t quite going our way, but as a group of players we are hungry to set things right and end the season on a high, like it started.

It’s only you out there that can win the game, and the people that have been chosen, it’s up to them to get a result.

We pride ourselves on being able to win no matter what the circumstances, the weather, the team, the style of play, and I don’t think that’s an excuse, I just think it was a below average performance, and we thoroughly deserved to lose.

We have just spoken in the dressing room, as a group of players we are hungry, we want to finish this season on a high, and we are keen to set things right.

I don’t think there are any players in there that think it’s time to put your flip flops on and end the season.

You want to win every game, there’s nobody in there that wants to lose at anything we do, we’re going to take it one game at a time and try and get as many points as possible.