The Imps travel to relegation-threatened Port Vale today hoping to extend their unbeaten run, writes Tom Morton.
The Valiants are on a poor run of form in a poor season, having failed to win since the end of December. Since then, in eight games, they’ve picked up just two points. They started the season brightly. After a thrashing by Barnsley in the opening game, they had an unbeaten run of six games that included five wins. That raced them to more than half of their current points total.
Since then, though, things have gone south. Injuries seem to have taken a significant toll and they picked up just one point in October and they’ve slumped into the drop-zone with just thirty-one points from the same number of games.
Vale played just three games in January, with one game postponed due to a frozen pitch and then having their away game against Reading abandoned after home fans stormed the pitch. Certainly some bad luck.
They let go of manager Andy Crosby in early February, and to be honest that, and the transfer window as a whole, feels very odd. Essentially they brought in five loan players, and that’s about it – and most of these don’t appear to be playing regularly. In fact, in a continuation of the bad luck Rhys Williams returned to Liverpool pretty much straight away due to long-term injury having never even made the squad.
Backing Crosby so long, in his first full managerial role, seems a miss given the run of form. Regardless, they do seem to have had a bit of good luck now, picking up Darren Moore who was recently let go from Huddersfield after winning just three games in twenty-three. Moore has a good reputation at this level, having managed Sheffield Wednesday and Doncaster Rovers through successful seasons. Today is Moore’s first home game in charge – which could prove a challenge for us.
Tactically it’s unclear, given the new manager, how Vale will line up. They will be without two or three of their recent loan signings, including defender Kacper Lopata who has been a consistent starter, and Dan Gore, on loan from Manchester United, who picked up an injury after one game. We may see their top scorer Ben Garrity (9) who has been out with a long-term injury but returned as a substitute last time out.
At the back, their line speed doesn’t seem very pacey. They can be caught on the break and might struggle with pace from players like Taylor or Sorenson. Equally, they seem slow pushing out from set pieces or clearing their lines, giving opponents plenty of time to reset. One of Reading’s goals in their 2-0 defeat this week came from a follow-up to a corner and the other after a scramble in the box which, realistically, Vale had at least three opportunities to clear. In fact, during corners, they crowd the six-yard box leaving a lot of space to play the second ball.
Going forward they seem well drilled – it will be hard to say how they will show up given the injuries and new manager – but against Cheltenham, they scored a couple of decent goals. Their crossing does seem a bit flat and they seem to want to rely on the wide ball slicing across the box, so we’ll need to make sure that’s cut out from the wing. Vale do have a handy set of corners which they do score from, and given it’s our kryptonite a bit, one to watch.
In terms of recent head-to-head, we’ve faced each other eight times since 2017, won four and lost two. So a good record. That includes a couple of big results in a fun “double” during the 18/19 season. We started with a 4-0 away win in the Carabao Cup in August before going on to thrash them 6-2 away in the league a couple of months later. Since then results have been a lot tamer, and our last visit to Vale Park was a tight and disappointing 1-0 loss in Oct 2022.
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