It was a disappointing trip on the road this past weekend for Vale.
The Valiants came away from the Proact Stadium with a 1-0 defeat, with Joe Rowley scoring the winner for Chesterfield, seconds after Sam Foley almost put Vale 1-0 up.
Despite the defeat, Vale remain firmly in the hunt to climb out of the relegation zone, with destiny in their own hands.
Manager Michael Brown spoke to Valiant PlayerHD after the game about the result: “Very disappointed with the result. It was a game that I thought up until the goal, that we could have gone on and won.
“We had a good spell, and their ‘keeper made a fantastic save just before they broke away. Once again it was one ball over the top, a great shot across and unfortunately Smith just could not get across to get infront of the rebound.”
Brown continued: “We felt in the first half that we had had loads more of the ball, we felt like we were controlling the game, but maybe we needed to create more on their goal, which is what we told them at half time.
“They tried to do that, but we also stressed to be wary of the long ball which is what Chesterfield were trying to do, and that was the sucker punch.”
There was also more bad news, recent signing Andre Bikey also pulled up with an injury, to add to Brown’s injury woes: “We are now missing nine players, which does make a big difference. But we still had enough on that pitch to win the game today.”
The 40-year old knew of the risk of including the defender in the squad, but due to size of the squad available, his choice was made for him: “It was a huge risk today, with 3 games in a week, we knew that.
“He has done ever so well to have given us as much as he has, and hopefully it is not bad as it could be. Hopefully it is days rather than weeks. “
Brown will be hoping for a welcome addition to his team-sheet come Friday: “We hope to have Streete back for Friday. But again, that is very early for him and another big risk.
But we are at that stage now, and Remie [Streete] will be wanting to play if he can, so hopefully we can have him fit.”
Despite the back-to-back defeats, Brown goes into Vale’s final four games of the season in a positive mind state and will be looking for nothing less than victories: “It is very tight. We knew it was going to go all of the way, but there are games that we have left that we can win. We need to be as positive as we can.
“It is obviously a disappointing day today and the players know that, but we have a big game on Friday, and we need to go again. Teams are beating teams higher than them in the table as we have seen today, and that is what we are going to have to do.”