[Official Site] TEAM NEWS VS PORT VALE

beats me why anybody would travel for this trophy at all.
Even more so after seeing the team we turned out.

 

It was probably too late once the team sheets were out.

 

Rubbish absolute Rubbish , Attitude ,Application , preparation , selection ,Substitutions . Everything was wrong tonight .
Feel for the travelling fans tonight as they got a slap in the face from players and staff as far as I’m concerned . I think the attitude of the first team squad was two fingers for the rest of the team selection .

 

Ah well, if they can't be bothered I suppose the result was inevitable. There were one or two decent passages of play involving Kane but the disappointing thing for me in that midfield was Benson. What has happened to this lad since his injury? From being top scorer and always involved he has regressed to last season's inertia. He wasn't the only poor show though. Plenty of other contenders against a no more than average Vale side I would have thought. We could and should have done better than that but the lack of intensity, desire and physicality was blindingly obvious. Oh for a Victor or the like tonight. I wonder why he wasn't playing??

 

Where was Norwood?

 

Feet up watching the World Cup I suppose. I'm not sure he would have made a lot of difference but surely he would have been better than young Butterfill who was completely out of his depth tonight.

Perhaps a Norwood/Cole partnership would have got us a win. Or they might have both got injured.

 

Josh Benson should be ripping sides apart at this level.
Unfortunately for us he can't be arsed .
Kane looked good at wanting to play when he came on.
Duffy Ave a word with Benson ffs

 

At least we scored a goal!

 

Mebbe when they saw the actual team , but it was always going to be something like that.
The competition is just a run out for fringe players, personally I wouldn’t even watch it on the telly!

 

The one & only positive tonight was when Kane came on.

Everyone else, stinkers. Walton, out of position, kicked loads out of play. Cundy, so slow, can't pass, only decent thing he could do today was head ball out of our box, Nejman & Butterfield looked out of their depth, Aitchison non-existent - not exactly helped by constant long balls, Kitching, really poor can't pass for toffee apart from the occasional worldie, Benson had a decent first 6 minutes, looked weak as p1zz after that, Larkeche's passing really poor but did seem to try a bit. Martin really, really poor and lacking application apart from patches in second half

Moon was by far the worst though. Incredibly bad performance

 

Not a bad final assessment of the game.
Can't argue with any of those points.

 

Awful first half, half decent second, so that's about 25% by my reckoning, simply not good enough. On this showing, Moon is pushing for worst player ever to play for the club.

Ah well, at least we can concentrate on... the FA Cup.

 

Hopefully no injuries tonight and get ready for a much more important match this Saturday.

 

Tonight’s game was an opportunity for some of these younguns to show their mettle .
Even if they weren’t playing their best, attitudes can go a long way especially with the fans .
Some of them had the attitude of having reigned to a career in insurance sales and wanted the game over ,
The coaching staff didn’t notice that !

 

At least we made a bit of a fight of it second half. Today just hammered home the fact that our striking options are (or should be) an embarrassment to those responsible for recruitment at the club.
A bit of physicality up top tonight and we make a game of that. Aitchison and Butterfill as a pair wouldn’t trouble many defences at a level 3 or 4 leagues down.
Totally get why we weren’t starting Cole or Norwood given they’re our only true fit strikers. That said, I though we might’ve given Cole the last 15 minutes.

 

Me too.

 

I have nothing against him, he seems to be redeeming himself somewhat in the league.

But if he was serious about wanting to progress he would have played the strongest team available.

Its's wrong for him to make such comments then pick that team to start the match woefully under strength.

Now if he had said we are using this cup to play our fringe players, paying supporters can make a reasonable assessment of the expense of travel and ticketing etc.

Just saying give us that level of transparency.

 

You can want to progress in a competition and not play all the first team. One isn’t mutually exclusive of the other.

He played a team to try and win the game - but didn’t risk too many of his first team and took the opportunity to give game time to other members of the squad.

Not too bad an idea really - the board can’t argue he has enough in the squad when he goes begging for an extra blackies egg and toffee crisp for January if he cites the performances of the fringe players in this competition.

I’d expect a stronger but still potentially mixed team on Saturday too to be honest. Maybe not though, a third round tie could earn the club quite a bit of cash.

 

Totally flummoxed. Why bother putting Cole on the bench. Have him warming up on the touchline and no intention whatsoever of bringing him on. at 2-1 we should at least attempt to try get a draw out of the game. And go to penalties. Pumping high balls into the box
Several first teamers on the bench. Why. ? Where was Jalo.?

 

The report said Vale were at full strength. We certainly weren't and couldn't be arsed to take it seriously.
I'm sure whoever gets to the final will enjoy their day out at Wembley and put some silverware in their boardroom. It precictably, once again, won't be us.