Match Thread: Port Vale v Morecambe

[Mario]

Yes we did 8 on target and hit post. Try and watch the game before commenting.

 

 

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8 Shots are you counting back passes ? In fairness just checked the BBC sport online they have registered 1 (one) shot on target against Morecambes 5

[Sandyford_Lion]

We seem to be getting it tactically Wrong every week.

 

Aspin needs to sort this out very quickly.

 

How he expects to win a league game with the starting eleven today i will never know. Its back to the total rubbish we have had for the last three seasons.

 

4 - 2 - 3 - 1

This formation withe these players will never score enough goals to keep us in league two , let alone get promotion.

Kay and Tonge are two players doing one job

We have six defensively minded players.

Goals are left to three front midfielders and Pope.

The three :

Hamnett worthy of a place, covers lots of ground, is a footballer but i dont ever see goals in him.

 

Whitfield and Worrall , same applies to both, neither are out and out wingers and will not go outside the defender to cross for Pope.

When one does have the ball out wide the other remains out wide on his side and never makes a run into the box to assist Pope.

Goals from either will always be in short supply.

Defensively again neither cover the full backs enough

 

Pope. Totally isolated every time. Always in a battle with two players, thugs mainly. Always gives his all.

Most importantly - when he does have the ball, where ever on the pitch, he looks a very good footballer and rarely wastes the ball.

He will always score his goals during a season but he is on his own.

 

Who else can assist in goals :

The two defensive mid players may chip in with a few

The two full backs may get a goal a season

Center backs dont look to have any goals in them this season.

 

Who else can create goals :

Gibbons, started off very well, now he looks poor.

Poor on the ball and does very little in forward runs and crosses into the box.

Left back - cannot really name one for sure but cannot remember for a long time our left back creating anything.

Jules has been awful in the two games so far. He is never a full back. Montana before him must have been a bet Aspin won playing him. Pugh may have been poor at Accy and in other games but he is by far the best and until we have better he has to start.

Within five mins today he broke forward and put a cross in, Jules never passed the halfway line.

 

Aspin has begun to worry me. Very poor selection for the last two games at home. For the Yeovil game he said he picked the same team as for Luton game and yet the last two home games the team and displays have been shocking.

 

Todays formation will never score enough goals as i said before but also it has not made us solid defensively. Morecambe could easily have scored three goals today.

 

Pick one of Kay or Tonge and the other needs to be Hamnett

We need a winger.

If Whitfield plays he has to play behind Pope and not out wide

Hope the signings this week will solve the center back issue.

Pigh has to be left back

Gibbons needs to improve fast

Lainton - fingers crossed with him for me [ we need a keeper ]

 

finally I hope Pope does not get injured, does not get sent off and he goes on a little purple patch again of four or five goals in the next month or so.

 

Not too hopeful for the above so yes i am very worried for survival this season.

 

Come on Aspin , there is only you left to save us now

Make the right decisions.

 

THEN we need to sort Smurf out and get rid of him.

He is taking us further and further down the league

[Wereskintandweknowweare]

Ok I'll say it, but recent performances are no better than Browns,tactically it seems to take 45mins to decide what we need to do,I can tell the management that playing Pope up front on his own IS NOT WORKING,I can also tell them that our recruitment policy using Browns scatter gun approach is ALSO NOT WORKING.

 

I can not wait until we have more to offer than Tom Pope. Whilst we all are in debt to him this season. I am sick of the one dimensional play with the pressure on the team to provide the Pope.

What we would give for two tricky talented wingers and two forwards with pace.

Never in my 40 years of supporting the vale have I witnessed such boring boring football.

Aspin has brought his non league style of play and it’s very painful to watch.

[Paul6754]

Tonge gets 7 from me

 

 

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I agree, he played well again and is the most under appreciated player in the team. Always available, dictates the play, hub of the team and despite what fans say does get around the pitch and he's the best dead ball kicker in the club.

 

Deserved his MoM today.

[onestepatatime]

We are playing dire stuff lately. We have no passion other than Pope. We have no system. Bizarre team selections and a massive gap between attack( what attack?) and defence that you could park 4 jumbo jets there but we are still 7 points clear of the base teams. Crazy! Thank God there are apparently worse teams than us. Can't wait for the seasons end to save my sanity and a fair few Bob too.

 

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[PV1973]

I must have been watching a different game. Hannant got a good 4 or 5 crosses in to the box when he switched to left wing. Worral and Gibbons got more than that in the second half that lead to some decent half chances, and they were both much better second half going forward. Even Jules got one in first half that was decent too. Difference is we’re getting good balls into decent areas and forwards aren’t getting on the end of them.

[DIV3SOUTH]

Two mediocre teams, a mediocre game and crap atmosphere.

How some of these players actually make a living in professional football amazes me.

Shouldn't pay them any more than minimum wage.

Keep thinking it's going to get better but it never does.

[TheSage]

Funny how we all see a different game isn't it, but that's football.

 

For me, our two stand out players were Raglan and Kay. Lainton did well and made two good saves, plus one poor kick, but he had nowt to do for much of the game (like their keeper).

Both full backs were awful. Gibbons gave away possession at least 5 times and is a shadow of his former self. If we had another right back he'd be dropped. Jules was equally poor but he looks like a lumbering centre half playing out of position so goodness only knows why Aspin thinks he's a left back.

Kay, for me, was head and shoulders better than the pedestrian Tonge and the busy but ineffective Hannant. Hannant might run round a lot, like I would, but he's got little quality. Harness, arguably, is better, but he's an Aspin signing and so he stayed on for 90 minutes.

Pope was totally isolated for 45 and had no support at all. What was that all about - playing like the away team in the first half, with no goal threat at all.

Worrall was poor today and could not trap a ball let alone pass it well.

 

It's ok making excuses game after game but that was dreadful. They were better than us for 45 minutes, created a couple of good chances and got their 9,7 and 8 (I think it was) breaking quickly into our box.

Why the hell we began with that negative formation bemused me.

It was rubbish for the third home game in a row and the manager's tactics baffled me completely.

[john1952]

i was full of hope after December but the sooner these last 15 games are played the better and hopefully we are safe although in this form you never know

[Guest TommyMac]

Aspin needs to sort this out very quickly.

 

How he expects to win a league game with the starting eleven today i will never know. Its back to the total rubbish we have had for the last three seasons.

 

4 - 2 - 3 - 1

This formation withe these players will never score enough goals to keep us in league two , let alone get promotion.

Kay and Tonge are two players doing one job

We have six defensively minded players.

Goals are left to three front midfielders and Pope.

The three :

Hamnett worthy of a place, covers lots of ground, is a footballer but i dont ever see goals in him.

 

Whitfield and Worrall , same applies to both, neither are out and out wingers and will not go outside the defender to cross for Pope.

When one does have the ball out wide the other remains out wide on his side and never makes a run into the box to assist Pope.

Goals from either will always be in short supply.

Defensively again neither cover the full backs enough

 

Pope. Totally isolated every time. Always in a battle with two players, thugs mainly. Always gives his all.

Most importantly - when he does have the ball, where ever on the pitch, he looks a very good footballer and rarely wastes the ball.

He will always score his goals during a season but he is on his own.

 

Who else can assist in goals :

The two defensive mid players may chip in with a few

The two full backs may get a goal a season

Center backs dont look to have any goals in them this season.

 

Who else can create goals :

Gibbons, started off very well, now he looks poor.

Poor on the ball and does very little in forward runs and crosses into the box.

Left back - cannot really name one for sure but cannot remember for a long time our left back creating anything.

Jules has been awful in the two games so far. He is never a full back. Montana before him must have been a bet Aspin won playing him. Pugh may have been poor at Accy and in other games but he is by far the best and until we have better he has to start.

Within five mins today he broke forward and put a cross in, Jules never passed the halfway line.

 

Aspin has begun to worry me. Very poor selection for the last two games at home. For the Yeovil game he said he picked the same team as for Luton game and yet the last two home games the team and displays have been shocking.

 

Todays formation will never score enough goals as i said before but also it has not made us solid defensively. Morecambe could easily have scored three goals today.

 

Pick one of Kay or Tonge and the other needs to be Hamnett

We need a winger.

If Whitfield plays he has to play behind Pope and not out wide

Hope the signings this week will solve the center back issue.

Pigh has to be left back

Gibbons needs to improve fast

Lainton - fingers crossed with him for me [ we need a keeper ]

 

finally I hope Pope does not get injured, does not get sent off and he goes on a little purple patch again of four or five goals in the next month or so.

 

Not too hopeful for the above so yes i am very worried for survival this season.

 

Come on Aspin , there is only you left to save us now

Make the right decisions.

 

THEN we need to sort Smurf out and get rid of him.

He is taking us further and further down the league

 

Agreed, although some think it's the pitch and/or the referees that have put us where we are.

[gags 64]

Couldn't fathom our complete lack of urgency when you'd expect us to be pushing for a winner, several players looked totally disinterested.

 

Morecambe should really have been 2 up at the break as we were there for the taking

 

Seriously can't see us picking up too many more wins if that's our formation for the rest of the season.

 

Popey for all his effort struggles with most opposition centre halves nowadays, he seems to be more interested in a pushing and shoving match and wins very few headers. To leave him isolated up front means our moves break down 9 times out of 10

 

Feel sorry for Aspin, I'm sure he wanted better players bringing in but as we're shopping at Poundland you get what you pay for.

 

Thoroughly depressing today!

 

 

 

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[Doha]

Tonge somehow getting man of the match is the most entertaining thing to happen at Vale since the Burton game.

 

Smurthcnut out.

[mickyferns]

For some reason Aspin can not get this lot playing something isn't right maybe he's out of his depth but something definitely not right with the players he doesn't seem to be a manager that can get the best out of individuals, very worrying imo

 

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[Inny]

There was a lot of poor performances from the management down to the players.

 

I would love to play against us at the moment. Creating nothing and looking slow and unorganized. Pope needed someone closer to him. There was zero support for him from midfield, especially from the centre. I would have started with Hannant out wide and Whitfield through the middle as he did earlier in the season. Forrester helped to create more space second half with his mobility.

 

Kay and Tonge individually do well but as a pair it makes us lack any energy going forward. Kay is often just 3 yards in from the back line which is too deep. It creates loads of space for the opposition to play in, giving them too much time on the ball and being able to easily play out of defence.

 

Amazingly we had a left back playing left back by the end of the game. He may not have had the best of games in 2018 but he is the best we have (I've not seen Kelly).

 

They need to start working as a team and supporting each other from front to back. It has to be more attack minded instead of having to play plan extra man in midfield to make up for old legs. Whitfield or Forrester up front with Pope next game please.

 

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[ClntonBoulton]

I sometimes feel reticent to comment on here because I do not watch any live games nowadays. I watch on iFollow this season and yesterday was dire. The pitch, the atmosphere, the performance all reminded me of late 60's until Gordon Lee got hold of us and organised the team into a dour, yet well oiled promotion winning team.

I still don't think we'll get relegated but people will have to sit through many similar performances I'm afraid this season. Aspo has got what he has got in terms of players now and he'll have to fashion survival somehow.

For me, the summer is far more important than the January transfer window....it was totally unrealistic of everyone to expect major signings during January but come the end of this season Smurthwaite will have to show his cards. There will have to be a clear out and Aspo and Rudgey will have to be given free rein and a realistic budget to bring in decent players in order to mount a promotion/play off challenge.

IF this doesn't happen then Christ only knows what the next step is but it is so hard watching my team tread water, only just keeping their heads above it, in what is in all honesty a Pub League. It is no use saying we should be a mid table League 1 team...we are not due to what has happened over the last 3 seasons and Vale fans are currently stuck with what we have and it is depressing.

I am a "half full" type of bloke but it is hard at the moment....I'll be watching next week whatever, hoping and praying for a Luton-esque type performance.....being a Vale fan for so long, you never know do you?