Difficult team selection proves to be a success

Micky Adams wasn’t too despondent following the two-nil defeat to league leaders Brentford on Saturday afternoon after being forced to reshuffle his defence.

Vale put in a decent performance and with a little bit of luck could have perhaps returned home with something to show for their efforts, but it wasn’t to be.

The Vale boss said: “I can’t disagree that they deserved to win the game, but if you are going to lose a game you may as well do it in the manner that we did, with your boots on. The selection was difficult, but I thought we acquitted ourselves well.

“With the squad that we have got and with the injury crisis we have got at the club at the moment it was always going to be difficult for us.

“I think particularly in the first half we handled the ball well and had a few chances, particularly early on in the game.

“In the second half I wanted us to be resolute but pass the ball better and I think if we look back at it with a little bit of disappointment it was in the second half really, in the first twenty minutes when we didn’t pass the ball well enough.

“We will look back at the first goal and maybe the sun had something to do with it and maybe on another day Chris (Neal) may have done better with that one.

“But he has made two outstanding saves in the second half – I wouldn’t say they were world class because he’s not Gordon Banks, but he has done well with those.

“The back four isn’t one that I would want to go with most weeks. Jack Grimmer was going to play in a different position at the start of the week but we lost Liam Chilvers on Thursday, we lost Chris Robertson on Friday and with Carl Dickinson’s family problems it was a make shift back four.

“We tried our best to fill the gaps and I think the two centre halves can be proud of what they did and if you had said to me we were only going to conceded two with that back four I might have taken that, but we still didn’t do enough going forward.”