Denry Machin

Classic Vale. When have we ever punished a team with 10-men at home? Awful.

Cannot believe Page has stuck with essentially the same team that played two days ago. What does Streete have to do to get a game, and are Daniel and Ikpeazu not up to it? Away win written all over it. Hope my pessimism is proved wrong.

Not quite sure why we haven't seen McCourt tonight. Page can't just play the same XI every match, otherwise we'll put in performances like we're seeing tonight

Vale's league record under Page: P27 W13 D4 L10 F37 A33 Not bad. Six of those defeats have been games with a one-goal margin. That's where improvement is needed.

Yep, fourth consecutive game we've conceded a goal in the ten minute period before half time, and the sixth game in a row we have gone a goal down at half time. Abysmal.

Fourth game in a row where we've conceded ten minutes before half time. Lapse in concentration once again.

Robertson and Birchall in for Duffy and N'Guessan

You've come up with quite a dichotomy there. How on earth can we improve the squad (and hopefully mount a credible promotion challenge next season) if we assume this season has 'been over for several weeks'. No decent players will want to join a club that finishes in the bottom half of League One.

To say Vale have little to play for is a bit daft. There's an - admittedly - slim chance of sneaking into the last P-O place. Moreover, the higher we finish in the table, the more money we can get at the end of the season, the more it convinces current players like Lines, Loft and Pope to stay, and the more it makes us look an attractive club for players to join during the summer. Are you telling me you'd be happy to finish 16th? I cannot comprehend how some fans think we have nothing to play for; it's certainly more than pride.

Big game, really. I don't know about other Vale fans (a fair few seem happy to settle for mid-table mediocrity) but if we beat Crawley, it keeps us amongst the mini-league outside of the last play-off place. By the time we reach 5pm after the Notts County game in a fortnight - and regardless of how other teams do - all of a sudden we could be looking at seriously challenging for a top eight finish. The club should still see the season as 'alive'. Adams needs to go back to playing the team he thinks will beat the opposition that day. When he played the same team game-after-game (at Bradford, Shrewsbury etc), we saw our dullest performances and worst results of the season. Keep it fresh, Micky.

Has any preparation gone into this game? Or have the staff and players decided not to turn up, like at Bradford, Shrewsbury, Gillingham and MK Dons?

As others have said, we MUST get three points today. Anything else, and we could be looking at less than an eight-point gap between ourselves and the bottom four with less than ten matches remaining. If the players got their ***** into gear we could finish 7th in the table, easily.

Vale love conceding within the last five minutes of the first half. Must be more than ten games this season where that has happened.

4,735 please

I'm surprised at the number of fans on here that are settling for mediocrity. Like The Waterboy mentioned in his post, clubs like Walsall are what we should be aspiring to. Hence the problem is not solely that we seem to be slipping away from the play offs, but, moreover, the lack of desire from Adams and the players to perform to the highest ability. Effort and entertainment have not been consistent for a while now. The comeback at Plymouth aside, it was the back-end of December in the win against Rotherham that we were reminded why we wanted the Vale to be in League One. Even before that we earned an unspectacular victory of struggling Notts County and refused to turn up in the opening half hour at MK Dons. There are fans on here saying the play-offs are an unrealistic aim, but there is no reason why a place in the top 8 is beyond us. Surely our current ranking amidst current form (two victories in eight), suggests that this is Vale's strongest chance in a number of years to earn an impressive season finish. Come the summer, it would help attract better players and convince some of the current crop, such as Loft and Lines, to stay. Micky Adams has filled his bench with attacking options for the last two matches and hasn't utilised any of them to make us look remotely like scoring. How can Smurf or the club expect fans to turn up in numbers with this mentality?