Eleven cup wins. Nine in the league. That’s Port Vale’s 2025-26 in two numbers. A place in the FA Cup quarter-finals for the first time since 1954. An EFL Cup tie at Vale Park with Arsenal in front of 16,326. Twenty-six goals across 14 cup games.
If you browse form on platforms like 1xbet casino or other online entertainment sites, there was nothing in the League One numbers to suggest this club would go on a cup run. 23rd. 42 points. Back down to League Two after one season up.
Tolaj Left and Everything Went Sideways
Lorent Tolaj scored 15 goals in the 2024-25 promotion year. Top scorer by a distance. Plymouth triggered his release clause over the summer and he was gone before the summer window closed. The contract had that clause sitting in it, and nobody could do anything about it. Darren Moore brought in nine permanent signings and three loans. Most of them were still figuring out who plays where by the time August came around.
Two points from six games. Devante Cole showed up in September. Three wins on the spin, a bit of life about the place, and the mood at Vale Park shifted for a couple of weeks. October? One goal in four league games. November was something else. Zero goals. The whole month. Not a single one. 7,172 average attendance through that stretch, which is a lot of people paying money to watch a team that cannot score. Say what you want about the season, that fanbase kept showing up when most others would have stopped bothering.
Moore Goes, Brady Arrives
Boxing Day. 5-0 at Huddersfield. Moore was gone two days later with Vale sitting bottom, ten points off safety. Plenty of supporters thought it should have happened in November after the Plymouth match, and the delay probably cost Vale the January window. If Brady had come in a month earlier he could have planned his signings in advance rather than scrambling in the final days. Jamie Smith covered for a week, then Jon Brady got the call on January 6. He’d been at Northampton Town before, knew League One, knew what a rebuilding job looks like.
Brady trimmed the squad straight away. Then lost Cole. Late January, done deal, joint top scorer with eight goals across all competitions walked out the door. Waine had eight too. Six of those? Cups. Brady’s main striker for the league had two goals from League One all year. Two. Hard to stay up in any division when that’s the goal output from your front line.
| 2025-26 Port Vale | Figure |
| League position | 23rd (League One) |
| Points | 42 |
| League wins | 9 |
| Cup wins | 11 |
| Top scorer (all comps) | Devante Cole, Ben Waine (8 each) |
| Player of the Year | Kyle John |
| Highest attendance | 16,326 (vs Arsenal, EFL Cup) |
| Average league attendance | 7,172 |
The FA Cup Run
Nine league wins from 46 games. In cups? Different planet. Arsenal at home, EFL Cup third round, 16,326 in the ground. EFL Trophy quarter-finals against Stockport.
Then the FA Cup happened. Port Vale hadn’t made the quarter-finals since 1954, back when the club was a Second Division side. Brady’s lot beat Sunderland 1-0 at Vale Park in the fifth round. Premier League Sunderland. One shot on target all match, Waine’s header, job done. Brady said the cup run was a “pain in the bum” because of the league situation, but he had a massive grin on his face when he said it. Waine bagged three FA Cup goals that season. First Vale player to manage that since James Wilson in 2021-22. If you checked those cup results through an app latest version on your phone, you’d have thought the league scores and cup scores were coming from different clubs wearing the same kit.
Chelsea put seven past them in the quarter-final at Stamford Bridge. It’s not the scoreline that any Vale fan wanted. But getting to that game at all from bottom of League One is the part people will talk about.
Brady Stays and the Club Keeps Building
Brady’s staying on. New hybrid pitch going in. £2.3 million Vale Park Community Campus on the way. That’s real money going into the ground while the club drops a division. League Two is back, and Brady needs a squad that goes straight up again, without another Tolaj situation where your best player has a release clause waiting to go off.
Kyle John got Player of the Year. The 16,326 against Arsenal. Waine’s header to knock out Sunderland. This season had moments that deserved a better league campaign around them.
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