Gaffer waiting on fitness of central defender before naming his side

Vale boss Micky Adams will wait to assess the fitness of defender Richard Duffy before naming his line-up for Vale’s final home game of the season on Friday evening.

Duffy picked up an injury during Vale’s game against Rotherham on Monday afternoon and has not trained since, but the manager will leave the decision for as long as is practical.

He said: “We are waiting for Richard Duffy for the Sheffield United game – since Monday he has not been able to do any sort of training at all, but we are going to give him as long as we possibly can before we even attempt to get him up and running.

“That effectively gives us three fit defenders, so we are down to the bare bones in that department , but on the plus side we have got Chris Lines back from suspension.

“There is nobody who is going to come out of the treatment room and suddenly appear, so we are not going to spring a surprise on people.

“Yates, Robertson and Dickinson are the three fit defenders that we have got available to us and we will have to come up with a plane.

“We don’t want people feeling sorry for us, we will come up with something that hopefully will give us a platform and a base to go and play against a decent Sheffield United side.

“I don’t think that it is an ideal scenario that you go in with three fit defenders, but having said that we are not going to rule Richard Duffy out until right up to the last minute, we will assess him on Friday morning before we make that judgement.”