Plans for next season are underway
Vale boss Micky Adams says they have got to where they have got so far this season through hard work and that is something that will continue for the remainder of the season
“We are in a tremendous run of form, the team is playing with a lot of confidence, we have players playing with confidence and feeling good about themselves.
“We have players on the fringes of the team who are frustrated they are not getting a game and I can understand that and we have also got players who are not even in the eighteen so the football club is in great shape at the moment.
“We know we have got to work at everything that we do. It’s not a fluke that we are where we are, it is because we work hard at it every day and looking at training over the last couple of weeks it has been a different class.
“There has been an intensity to it and confident players passing it around and when you have got that you know you are a decent football club.
“I have been very lucky that I have had players believing in themselves and half the battle at this level is not what physical shape they are in but what their mental strength is like.
”At this moment in time they are physically strong, but they are mentally strong as well and that is half the battle at this level.
“But as I said before, we don’t take anything we do lightly. We have to work at it every day and they get gentle reminders now and again that we are not the finished article.
“But we know what to do to get results and sometimes trying to convince players can be rather difficult, but they seem to have grasped the mettle very quickly.”
The manager, along with the chairman and the board of directors, have one eye on next season and they are keen to start talking contracts with players they wish to keep at the club for next season.
Adams continued: “The next process is to sit down and talk to players that we maybe want to keep beyond this season and we have started that process with Tom Pope.
“A lot of the players have got two year deals anyway, so there’s some we haven’t got to worry about, but some will be attracting attention from other clubs and we will be sitting down over the next couple of weeks to discuss their futures as well.
“Some may see it as an opportunity to strengthen their case in terms of negotiating new contracts either here or somewhere else, but we won’t know that until we sit down with them.
“It is a process now – like good football clubs should do – where we plot not for this season but for next season, and as I said before, we will do that in the coming weeks.”