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Match Thread: Port Vale v Northampton Town


Fosse69

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13 hours ago, Erniemossrules said:

Yes but they did score and Scott Brown kept us in it.

16 shots with 7 on target(who kept them in it) just wondering??

Oh and we are in the top 5 or 6 after 2 games with shots and shots on target(I know that doesn't win games before you say that) so yes I am hating this negative football

Bruno and Aspin when we were lucky to get a shot at goal after 70mins now that was negative football

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It’s all very well and good making the right noises, saying things like ‘yes of course we have to be patient’, the only thing is you have to back it up by actually being patient.

Two draws is far from terrible, four points out of six would have been an excellent return from these two games. Our tough run of early fixtures is far from over.

We’ve spent far more this last window servicing the former owner than some clubs have spent on players. That’s what rebuilding a club looks like.

Micky Adams in his first few league games (the league cup run aside) drew a lot but made us resilient and put some identity into us. 

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Thought we played well and certainly don't think we'll be in a relegation battle this year. Amoo and Worrall (especially) were the stars, genuinely hardworking and creative. We're bound to score more this year with quality around the box from those two. 

Pope was fairly anonymous first half but had two cracking headers second half that either could have gone in - one from an impossible angle. He seems to have more control with his head than I do with my feet. 

Conlon did well and looked classy, Manny didn't do too much and looked a bit sub-par. Joyce sat back and did the dirty work well, I'm usually one of his critics but he's seemingly being played in the right position now. 

The one area that I do think needs to sorting is left back. Crookes doesn't jump out as anything special at the back and his crossing is wofeul - he hesitates and doesn't look like he wants to put a ball in, allowing defenders to close him down. I'd swap him for Monty on Tuesday and see if Monty/Amoo can get a relationship going.

Quietly confident now for the new season, maybe the fabled mid-table obscurity at last 😁

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I'm relatively close to the front in the bycars end. The idiot of a ref was openly laughing his head off at times particularly when ironic cheers greeted a corner award for us in the 2nd half.

From where I was sat there were two horrendous corner decisions, firstly Smith shepherded the ball out of play and Warburton was about to run off. Think the linesman gave that , obviously the 2nd was the goal. Truly dreadful decision but you still have to defend the wrongly awarded corner. 

A couple of other observations why are professional footballers so scared of using their ' wrong ' foot ? Conlon had a glorious opportunity to hit a right footer in the first half and pulled back on his left. I play five a side and am able to swing both legs !! 

Crookes panics in the final third and is pretty clueless at what to do but he's young and can only get better. 

Also ran out of pies in the bycars. 

Overall a positive day after Sir John was rightly recognised for his services.

A decent performance just lacking that little end product. Not concerned about any worries over our shoulder . 

My only concern is our very own Darren Anderton, Manny is a huge loss and we hugely rely on him. 

I'm positive despite a couple of moans that this is a far better side just lacking a creative player to open teams up in midfield

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I always felt that even though we were badly lacking in certain areas, under Aspin we still had a few decent players at this level and should never have been battling relegation. A couple of players can make all the difference and I think we have one of them in Amoo. Not just because he scored yesterday and did well in pre-season, but because he has pace and is direct, something which full-backs hate to come up against. Hopefully Rhys Browne can have a similar impact once he's back from injury as at home, on a wide pitch, playing with two wide players is the way to go. The last time we genuinely had that was when we had Jamie Vincent and Jennison Myrie-Williams for a season.

There's a good player in Cullen but if you're only going to start with one forward you would go with Pope every time due to his heading ability and hold up play. In some games we'll probably be able to get away playing 4-4-2 and I would expect him (Cullen) to make some sort of an impact. The rest of our signings over the summer other than Crookes are chancers. Some will do alright and the others will probably be gone this time next year. But it's the same situation for pretty much every other League Two club. On paper we have a more decent starting 11. And although obviously far from perfect we also have a better manager now than we did when we had to suffer Neil Aspin. With some luck on the injury front and a couple of astute signings in the loan market there's absolutely no reason why we can't do better than most predict this season, and from what I've seen in the first two games I'm more optimistic than not.

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3 hours ago, Fosse69 said:

Lack of confidence, if only expecting a point and grabbing a lead there is a tendency to not risk anything. Whereas in this league of giants and set-pieces deflections are a big risk. With our height, attack is the way, a pressing game, and higher scoring rate of the increased opportunities  our best option. Can the current players rise to the challenge? By the end of Sept we will know, early days.

I agree, but it's also a matter of mindset and not just with this bunch of players, but certainly over the last 2 seasons the squads have not appeared to have enough self-belief.  Hopefully in one of the upcoming matches we will get a 2 goal lead and not then see this just as a 'cushion' but more as a springboard to more goals and anhiliation of the opposition.  I quote Man City again as a brilliant example of this!

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17 hours ago, Erniemossrules said:

No we still leave Pope isolated up front to pick up scraps against their two centre halves.If the midfield is pushed back we still struggle to support him.

If Manny is out drop Worrall back and play Cullen up front to try to feed off Pope.

 These are my thoughts and believe like Ernie that Worrall should slip into midfield which would allow us to field Cullen to play alongside Popey and also allow Amoo to take up his favoured position on the right wing. In this way he would I'm sure provide a better service in crosses to Tom. I love Worrall's work rate but his crossing ability from the flank is not his strongest asset.

 

 

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Worrall had a very good and effective game yesterday on the right, I don’t understand why anyone would want to see him dropped deeper. Cullen hasn’t offered enough yet to make me think that he has to start at the expense of breaking up the Worrall Gibbons partnership.

We created a lot of decent stuff yesterday, I don’t see the negatives in it. I think people are just seeing Pope as the lone striker on that team sheet and straight away think it’s negative without actually judging what we did in the game and the amount of problems we caused the opposition.

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4 hours ago, Erniemossrules said:

The same as any other Vale fan I want the Vale to win.

I have been a season ticket holder for more than 10 years so have endured the ups and downs.

I honestly cannot see much improvement from last year and cannot understand the euphoria by some people that there has been a large improvement from last season considering we have the same players and tactics.

Askey had the perfect opportunity to improve the team with better recognised first team players but wasted the budget signing non league and cast offs from Askeys previous team.

That is my opinion and time will tell if you or I am correct.

Aspin was ridiculed for doing the same last season but some people seem to think there has been a big improvement and I hope and pray that they are right and I am wrong which wouldn’t upset me in the least.

You come on this site ,you whinge moan and criticise just about everything to do with the manager and team . You, me and every other Vale fan want the best players here, but we have what we have, what we can afford , and these players are Port Vale, our team. This is the start of a new era at our club thanks to Carol and Kevin, and 99.9% of us fans show our appreciation of the huge financial commitment they have made, by fully backing them and the decisions they make , both on and off the pitch , including staff and players. However you seem to struggle to buy into this , and instead of showing them ,the manager and players your Vale diehard support ,you would sooner criticise and moan and whinge and ridicule certain players, something you seem to enjoy day in day out . 

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1 hour ago, aspin for england said:

You come on this site ,you whinge moan and criticise just about everything to do with the manager and team . You, me and every other Vale fan want the best players here, but we have what we have, what we can afford , and these players are Port Vale, our team. This is the start of a new era at our club thanks to Carol and Kevin, and 99.9% of us fans show our appreciation of the huge financial commitment they have made, by fully backing them and the decisions they make , both on and off the pitch , including staff and players. However you seem to struggle to buy into this , and instead of showing them ,the manager and players your Vale diehard support ,you would sooner criticise and moan and whinge and ridicule certain players, something you seem to enjoy day in day out . 

Just ignore him and he'll disappear.

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Having watched most of the game back again, I think we were very good on Saturday and made a decent team (albeit a toothless team) look bang average.

David Worrall was superb and I'm excited about him and Gibbons building that partnership. There was already some lovely one touch triangles when a central midfielder got involved and that's where most of our joy came from.  On the other side, Crookes badly needs to work on his distribution and delivery in the final third. Amoo was fairly quiet but someone I like because he scares the opposition with his pace and direct nature. Again, final ball needs to be worked on. 

Joyce was the best of the midfield three, with Conlon and Manny doing the little things right but the bigger decisions wrong. The lack of vision shown by Conlon when we had the 3-on-1 opportunity was criminal. Even at the end of the first half he decided to waste possession in the 2nd phase instead of recycling and building again. Instead, he gave the ball away with a daft nothing ball down the line which led to Northampton breaking and getting the phantom corner. Just little decisions like that show me why Stevenage released him. 

At the back, Smith was immense but I'm still a little worried about Legge. For both goals we've conceded this season he's been on the line semi-obstructing Brown, and he drops off far too deeply at times to compensate for his lack of pace which plays people onside too often.

I don't want to upset Old Sage with my verdict on old Popey. All I'll say is that the biggest impact he's had in the past 12 months has been when he came off the bench at home to Crewe towards the back end of last season. Miler has ran his legs off for 65 mins, we'd huffed and puffed but couldn't get the winner. Enter Popey - a heavy legged defenders nightmare. We easily went on to win that one with Pope instrumental. Oh how I'd have liked to have seen that free header from 8 yards out land on a fresh-off-the-bench Pope's head instead of a battered-bruised-and-knackered Pope's head on Saturday. Maybe we'd be sitting here on 4 points instead of 2.

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With reference to Tom pope -  he should not go back and defend corners and free kicks - there are 10 others on the pitch that can do that . His job is to score goals and when he goes back into our penalty area he is unable to break upfield should we attack. It was painfully obvious on Saturday when we had a quick break towards the Bycars and the Vale players looked confused because there was No Tom Pope option - he was well behind play. Its all well and good Old Sage saying he was once a 30 goal a season man - that was years ago and his legs are not that quick any more so to ask him to be the centre forward and a centre half is not realistic. When the opposition are attacking he should be in the centre circle where some one will have to mark him, and should we break away he only has half the pitch to run. Everyone needs to face the situation that Toms pace has gone so the team need to give him every opportunity to conserve it for when it is most effective. He should not play on Tuesday - not because he's bad but because its a prime opportunity to try a plan B without risking points. He isn't going to be able to play effectively in all matches this season so its best to see how we manage without his presence early on and in a controlled manner. If the backup forwards can't do it then we still have a little time in this transfer window to see if there are options available or do we have to have a rethink ready for the next window.  

 

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3 minutes ago, pensioner said:

With reference to Tom pope -  he should not go back and defend corners and free kicks - there are 10 others on the pitch that can do that . His job is to score goals and when he goes back into our penalty area he is unable to break upfield should we attack. It was painfully obvious on Saturday when we had a quick break towards the Bycars and the Vale players looked confused because there was No Tom Pope option - he was well behind play. Its all well and good Old Sage saying he was once a 30 goal a season man - that was years ago and his legs are not that quick any more so to ask him to be the centre forward and a centre half is not realistic. When the opposition are attacking he should be in the centre circle where some one will have to mark him, and should we break away he only has half the pitch to run. Everyone needs to face the situation that Toms pace has gone so the team need to give him every opportunity to conserve it for when it is most effective. He should not play on Tuesday - not because he's bad but because its a prime opportunity to try a plan B without risking points. He isn't going to be able to play effectively in all matches this season so its best to see how we manage without his presence early on and in a controlled manner. If the backup forwards can't do it then we still have a little time in this transfer window to see if there are options available or do we have to have a rethink ready for the next window.  

 

Why is it then Pensioner that Tom Pope heads the ball away more than any other player within his own penalty area? With regard to Popey losing his pace I ask how can you lose what you never had? On his own admission Popey doesn't possess great pace but there is no better header of the ball than Tom, even with two big units on him he still wins more than any other player in this league.

  For me it will be a sad day when he finally hangs up his boots and then many Vale fans will then realise what we no longer have up front leading the line. For those who mock my words just take the time to watch how he rarely loses a ball or plays a poor pass. He has more skill than many of our resident experts give him credit for. Long live the Pope I say. 

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