Second placed Vale travel to take on third placed Fleetwood this evening, but Vale boss Micky Adams knows at this stage of the season league positions don’t necessarily mean to much at all.
He said: “I don’t know the significance of that, particularly in this early stage of the season. You will often hear managers – and I’m just the same – saying that the league table will take shape after about ten to twelve games and we are not there yet.
“There will be plenty of twists and turns. It is second versus third and I would rather be going to Fleetwood second in the table than be down near the bottom of the bottom echelons of the league and not looking forward to it quite as much.
“The next two games (Fleetwood and Gillingham) are only significant in the fact that the teams we are going to play next are as confident as we are, have picked up points like we have.
“The significance of both games won’t be known until the end of the season.
“The group of players that I have got are a close-knit group and the good thing for me is the response to being one-nil down at Plymouth on Saturday and how they put it right in the second half.”
The rise of Fleetwood from non-league football and the way they have started the season comes as no big surprise to the Vale manager.
He commented: “It is a terrific story. I suppose in many respect it’s about one man’s vision, the chairman and the owner of the club who has spent money.
“That is not decrying anything that they have done, because it is alright having money, you have got to spend it wisely and what he has done is built a football club up from nothing.
“He has spent money on the stadium, but what he has also realised is that to get to where he wants to go he has got to invest in the team as well.
“We see a lot of football clubs these days spending a lot of money on stadiums and forgetting about the product – the team.
“They have gone out and recruited players that have done it at a higher level, such as Jon Parkin, Damien Johnson and Steven Gillespie and they have added them to the group of players that took them through the leagues
“They are a confident group and we have seen it many times before that the teams that win the Conference, if they add to their squad and stick together they normally do very well the season after, as did Crawley and Stevenage.
“They are going to be one of the favourites and I would expect them to be there or thereabouts come the end of the season.
“Micky Mellon has done a fantastic job there and he is to be applauded, but I think the real driving force is the man behind him, the chairman.
“It’s a stable football club and in many respects that is what we crave and we haven’t got, but hopefully that won’t be too far away.”