Port Vale manager: there is little we can do if star wants to leave

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Port Vale manager Neil Aspin is keeping his fingers crossed that clubs do not make a move for loan star Mitch Clark in the January transfer window. Aston Villa defender Clark has been a resounding success and is on loan with Vale until the end of the season. However, the young defender could leave if […]

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[rsb]

Is he already going in jan and aspin is paving the way for him leaving the club.

[PV1973]

I have it on good authority theres been a lot of scouts watching him at our home games.

 

The funny thing is Aspin talks about consistency, which in the main he has been, and then goes on to talk about the mistakes hes made. If that was other players they'd be absolutely crucified for some of those game changing errors and mistakes.

[Bald Eagle]

Would he have got himself cup tied if he was looking to move on in January?

[Essex Vale]

I suspect Neil is structuring our expectations

[toyahw]

Massively over rated. He was terrible Sat. Aspin seems to have a weird definition of "consistent". Being consistently inconsistent somehow seems to qualify as "consistent". If your face fits.

[CambridgeDon]

The lad has lots of potential and that's what the scouts will be looking at. The question for us, if he does leave, is will be playing even one proper fullback?

[PV1973]

Massively over rated. He was terrible Sat. Aspin seems to have a weird definition of "consistent". Being consistently inconsistent somehow seems to qualify as "consistent". If your face fits.

 

He’s certainly got lots of potential and has the makings of a good player. He looks comfortable with the ball at his feet (as he should be coming from an academy which has mainly been in the premier league whilst he’s been there). I think he has been steady in most games for us without necessarily pulling up any trees. Mansfield wasn't his (or others) finest hour, Tranmere and Grimsby were other bad ones for him. I do think he’s prone to switching off, I can think of a couple of incidents last Saturday, one of which lead to the goal. Notts County’s first goal where he wasn’t alert to the quick free kick and got caught out by their winger when he tried to nip in front of him. Grimsby obviously with the back pass (he did a similar thing at Crewe but got away with it), and also the second goal at Grimsby there where he wasn’t tight enough or aware of his man and he got in behind (reminded me a bit of what he did for Mansfields goal I guess). Positionally I think at times he’s had a tendency to be caught too far up the pitch or a bit too far in front of the rest of the defence, and we’ve seen teams use that space in behind him. Exeter scored a goal from it at home, Crewe got in behind him a lot in the first half there. Notice his pace in his recovery runs more often than not gets him out of trouble, but not always. I can’t remember an assist from him, in fact how many assists do our full backs have this season? I think maybe just Monty in the opening game. Our changing formations and sides haven’t really seen any of the full backs form a relationship with a wide player on the pitch and we haven’t seen much attacking play down the flanks with them linking up. Maybe that’s down to the tactics Aspin is using in the league. Ironically the one game where I feel we saw that happen was first half last week at Walsall in the dead rubber game. Personally I wouldn’t say he’s been a million miles better than what we already have, but this is obviously a big learning curve for him, but I do think he has the potential to play at a higher level.

 

We saw Smith dropped after costing us goals v Lincoln, Gibbons was dropped for even less, Whitfield is another player dropped often. Imagine for example if it was players like that making game changing mistakes, the crowd would go mad and they’d probably be dropped too. Which makes me wonder if Clark has a clause in his contract that if he’s fit he has to start games?

 

The lad has lots of potential and that's what the scouts will be looking at. The question for us, if he does leave, is will be playing even one proper fullback?

 

I see what you’re saying. For some reason Aspin has gone against Gibbons and I wonder what will happen with Monty. He’s played left back in the reserves and checkatrade but will Aspin persevere with that experiment? I certainly don’t think centre halves like Rawlinson and Vassell are the long term answer.