Mark Marshall believes Vale's aim should still be play-offs even after their recent run of poor results.
After getting four points out of six from their last two games, Vale’s pacey winger Mark Marshall believes that the belief is now back among the squad after they ended their poor run with two good results under Interim Manager Rob Page.
Talking to us yesterday afternoon, Mark Marshall has admitted that his mentality is about winning games to get into the play-offs not to stay out of a relegation dogfight.
Marshall said: “One of the biggest things in football is confidence, getting a win and a draw should put some confidence in the boys and hopefully we can take that into Saturday’s game.
“Everyone goes through bad patches and we’ve now been through ours. In a way it’s happened at the right time, because it’s September not March.
“If we had a bad patch at that time then we’d be saying we really need to get some victories because we need to stay out of the relegation zone or we need to win this game to stay up.
“But as far as we’re concerned now, it’s about winning games to try and get into the play-offs, not to save ourselves from going down because it’s still early in the season.”
Mark hopes that Vale’s poor run of form will now be over and onto the good times we go as we make sure we don’t fall into a gap at the wrong end of the table.
He explained: “I’ve always been told while being in and around football; when you get to that ten to fifteen game mark is when things start to open up and when you’re in and around the bottom you don’t want to lose too many games, otherwise gaps will start to appear.
“Once it becomes Christmas time then the gaps start to become bigger and then the challenge becomes bigger and you find yourself in a situation you don’t want to be in.
“We certainly shouldn’t be concentrating on relegation at this point of the season, there are so many factors that can contribute to performances.
“I think we’re at a point now where we’ve had our bad run now and hopefully, that has now stopped.
“Of course we’re going to lose a few games, but as long as we win more than we lose we’ll give ourselves a chance.”