KEEPER HAS SEEN IT ALL BEFORE

KEEPER HAS SEEN IT ALL BEFORE

A blip in form is nothing new to Chris Neal

Goalkeeper Chris Neal says Vale can get over the recent blip in form. He experienced a similar situation at Shrewsbury last season and they were still promoted.

“The players have worked hard in training this week, but will now slow things down a little as they have one eye on Saturday’s fixture away to Cheltenham Town.

Chris said: “We expected a tough week in training this week, but we have struggled to train on the pitches due to the weather, so it has given the manager the chance to top up on the lads’ fitness.

“With us not having a mid-week game this week it gives us the chance to work on one or two things in training, probably a bit of defensive work as well, but although it was a bit intense on Monday and Tuesday, we will now taper it down a bit ready for Saturday.

“We came up against a very good Chesterfield team at the weekend. We were obviously disappointed to lose in the manner we did at home.

“You know you are going to get blips during the season, but after twenty one games we are second in the league. If at the beginning of the season you had asked whether we would take that, then we would have snapped your hand off.

“It is going well. We have got a lot of points to pick up over Christmas and hopefully we will be doing just that.

“I know from last year with Shrewsbury, we had a terrible Christmas period. We played four games and I think we picked up three points.

“Hopefully we have had our little blip now, and I think we have only lost one in six league games anyway. Just because the three defeats have come all together, it probably seems worse than it is.

“There are a lot of points to play for over Christmas and it all starts on Saturday at Cheltenham.

“It will probably be the fixture of the weekend, second against third, so there will be a lot of eyes on it and hopefully we can go there and put on a good show.

“We showed at one of the other top teams, Fleetwood, that we can put on good performances away from home, so hopefully we can get back on track on Saturday.”