Promotion within our sights and could still be settled this weekend
Despite dropping points at home to Aldershot Town on Tuesday night, Vale can still seal promotion on Saturday at Spotland, providing other results go their way.
First and foremost, Vale need to beat Rochdale, then if any two of the next three events occur, Vale will be up:
Northampton lose at home to York City
Burton fail to beat Plymouth Argyle at the Pirelli Stadium
Rotherham fail to win at home to Fleetwood Town
The odds against it happening this weekend are not too good, but stranger things have happened, and at this stage of the season results don’t always go to plan.
As we saw for ourselves on Tuesday evening, the teams towards the bottom of the table are scrapping for their lives and to use an old cliché, there will be lots of twists and turns yet.
Whatever happens, Micky Adams will be looking to pick up all three points on Saturday afternoon, knowing that if it doesn’t happen this weekend, we are still on course to finish the job.
He said: “Rochdale won’t want us celebrating promotion at their place, but if we could get promotion on Saturday with a win, then we will obviously go for a win.
“If you look at our away form it has been as good as most teams in the division and it shows that we like to attack teams away from home so I don’t see our ideology changing on Saturday – we’ll go for it.”
Injuries may cause the Vale boss one or two minor headaches, but he believes he has enough quality within the squad to field a strong side against Rochdale.
“We will have to assess John McCombe and hopefully Liam Chilvers’ groin won’t be as bad as we first feared and will be available for selection on Saturday.
“Having said that we have got young Joe Davis or Richard Duffy we can stick in there, so it’s not the end of the world if those two don’t get fit, but I would like a fully fit squad to choose from in the run in, but sadly I don’t think that is going to happen.”