7 minutes ago, philmpv said:

1 hour ago, darren1810 said:

Big day for our season. 

Bigger day as a test for Robs servers if we sign no striker or the 'wrong' striker if the past week's posts are an indicator

Season over by 7.30 but we still have Arsenal to play.

7 hours ago, valefan79 said:

With Garrity out and seemingly picking up lots of niggles over the last few season, I don't see goals coming from this midfield.  We have decent midfielders in Byers, Walters, Croasdale and Ojo but goalscoring midfielders they are not, we have to find a way of getting another attack minded player into this team.  Over the course of the last 3 seasons, for those 4, we have Walters 0 goals from 25, Byers 3 goals in 67, Ojo 4 goals in 89 and Croasdale 6 in 92.  I like these players but attack minded they are not.  If you play with 3 of these 4, your 2 strikers will need 35/40 between them.

YES. Someone else can clearly see the reality of our players. Playing three in the middle, plus two wide players , who are defenders, leaves all the pressure on the front two. One of those three in the middle has to be a regular 10 goals a season player. Has to attack the box, take chances, create chances. We are missing this.

7 hours ago, LancyTony said:

No reason why we shouldn't? - it's not as if we're not creating chances, but the players need to work on shooting and heading...i.e. taking those chances. Doesn't matter which position you play, you should be able to shoot straight and keep shots/headers down. 

Look at Garrity goal average under Moore than Clarke/ Crosby and 24/25 was a promotion year, our best goalscoring midfielder is being played deeper

League Two	43	12	3	0	1	0	6[e]	0	53	12
2022–23[75]	League One	34	1	0	0	1	0	2[d]	0	37	1
2023–24[76]	League One	39	9	4	2	4	0	3[d]	1	50	12
2024–25[65]	League Two	29	5	0	0	0	0	1[d]	0	30	5
2025–26[77]	League One	2	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	3	0

Byers, 1 goal in 6 for Sheffield Wednesday. 1 goal in 13 for us.

Walters, over 2 dozen games for the Vale and no goals in fact I can hardly remember him having a shot at goal 

 We aren’t playing a system which allows the midfielders to get in to the opponents box enough, hence why we aren’t getting many goals from our midfielders, add the fact that we have poor strikers at the moment is a big reason why we are not scoring many. 

10 hours ago, JoeB2 said:

I honestly think Byers is an all-time disappointing signing, in terms of hype and outlay.

We're a year in and he's offered us just under 18 '90s'. In that time, could we name 5 games where he has stood out? Or 5 games where's he's been good? Wimbledon he was quite good. I'm struggling beyond that. I'm not sure he's had a MOTM in that time, when Ojo has several this season alone doing quite a similar job.

This season he's picked up a red (and we can bleat about the deserving/undeserving nature of it all day) and been culpable for the goal against Reading.

He's rapidly got to start earning his keep. I can see the flashes of quality from time to time but he's regularly being outplayed by a 19yo with 15 starts to his name. I wouldn't lose sleep if he was moved on, though it won't happen.

All time disappointing signing… now there’s a thread topic in itself. I’ll start.  Nathan Lowndes.

8 minutes ago, BlytheValiant said:

All time disappointing signing… now there’s a thread topic in itself. I’ll start.  Nathan Lowndes.

Peter Farrell and/or Dan Gore

12 hours ago, Valiant in Brum said:

I think staying in the league is most important. We can’t keep dropping down to League 2. 

From time to time I think of the theme tune to Ale and the Vale and hope it’s not true:

”We sometimes get promotion but always end up going down”

Today might have a bit of a bearing on what happens this season. 
 

13 hours ago, worldsendvalefan said:

People keep going on about Vale should have had a plan in place to replace Tolaj if he left in the transfer window. Very true they should have. However it doesn't matter how many plans you have in place, if a player doesn't want to sign for you the deal isn't going to happen. We could have been approaching quality strikers for the last 3 weeks but kept getting knocked back, due to better offers or players just not fancying going to Vale. But we will never really know.

Exactly - as I understand it, thats how we lost Tolaj in the first place.  We're told that Plymouth lost their first three choices and ended up coming for the Swiss Prince.

Look at Garrity goal average under Moore than Clarke/ Crosby and 24/25 was a promotion year, our best goalscoring midfielder is being played deeper

League Two	43	12	3	0	1	0	6[e]	0	53	12
2022–23[75]	League One	34	1	0	0	1	0	2[d]	0	37	1
2023–24[76]	League One	39	9	4	2	4	0	3[d]	1	50	12
2024–25[65]	League Two	29	5	0	0	0	0	1[d]	0	30	5
2025–26[77]	League One	2	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	3	0

Byers, 1 goal in 6 for Sheffield Wednesday. 1 goal in 13 for us.
Walters, over 2 dozen games for the Vale and no goals in fact I can hardly remember him having a shot at goal 
 We aren’t playing a system which allows the midfielders to get in to the opponents box enough, hence why we aren’t getting many goals from our midfielders, add the fact that we have poor strikers at the moment is a big reason why we are not scoring many. 

I agree with you on the logic of playing Garrity in a role where he can get forward more. However the irony is, is that when he played in that deeper role we were winning games.

Spending my morning on opta analyst.. I know people say we have lots of chances and shots but Curtis leads in attempts on goal (12) with 1 on target. 
 

As for midfielders getting forward, we have seen this last season with Garrity and Croasdale and they got a few? Croasdale drifting wide to deliver the cross for the Headley goal was the kind of accuracy and output the wingbacks need to produce. Clark tries a lot but his accuracy is awful. 

I don't expect this to happen, but if it was up to me:

Out: Hart (perm); Shorrock (loan); Lomax (loan); Paton (loan/perm); May divide opinion but I'd move Curtis on too - he's a winger out of position up front and never looks like scoring.

In: Two strikers, replacements for Paton/Curtis - one youngish on a perm with a semi decent record (ie Michael Mellon), then another perm as 'proven' as we could realistically get (ie Cole).

We're creating chances, the team setup is good, we just need better forwards.

12 hours ago, Mellor! said:

We need a permanent signing as well imo. Its all well and good signing loan players, but if one comes in and scores 10 goals before January, they'll just be recalled and we'll be in the same situation.

Morning Mellor - from what I've been told, Brown looks like he'll be a loan-to-signing player and that Derby are happy for him to move to another club. I like the idea of that - we get to get a good look at him and make sure we're not chucking money down the hole. 

Love transfer deadline line day. As well as the grainy photos taken in VP car park with a 1986 kodak instant camera with no flash for us all to determine the player who turns out to be the cleaner, watching grown men absolutely lose it and act like the worst toddler who's just had his rusk taken off him is a anthropologists dream

1 hour ago, philmpv said:

3 hours ago, darren1810 said:

Big day for our season. 

Bigger day as a test for Robs servers if we sign no striker or the 'wrong' striker if the past week's posts are an indicator

Don't worry, we have server power contingencies just in case...

 

24 minutes ago, Osh said:

Morning Mellor - from what I've been told, Brown looks like he'll be a loan-to-signing player and that Derby are happy for him to move to another club. I like the idea of that - we get to get a good look at him and make sure we're not chucking money down the hole. 

That and the fact he's been given the number 10 shirt are both concerning signs that he is Tolajs replacement and we won't see an established striker signing. Hope I'm wrong.

9 hours ago, LancyTony said:

Yet, despite our scoring problems, we almost won the League!

What scoring problems are you referring to? I didn't say we had scoring problems last season. You have missed the point I was making in replay to the post I quoted.