City fell to their first defeat in five games on Saturday as they lost to newly promoted Port Vale away from home.
The 1-0 defeat saw City lose just their fourth game of the season, and it was a poor performance from Mark Kennedy’s side despite a previous good run of form. Mark made one change to the side that put in an impressive performance against Barnsley on Tuesday night. Adam Jackson returned to the side in place of Joe Walsh, who is on a recovery plan (which looks like one game a week). I felt a bit sceptical going into the game, seeing Mark sticking with the back-five formation, I feel we need to be more flexible at times and with how the game went I think Mark showed some naivety going into it and picked the team based on previous games and game plans.
I don’t want to sound too critical, but I thought yesterday if we had got on the front foot early, we could have had three points, but we tried to stay with the back five and we struggled to gain control of the football in the midfield. Port Vale also lined up with a five at the back but they moved their wing-backs forward a lot more than we did and they had an extra man in the midfield space playing in the number ten position, and that number ten was free for most of the game due to our lack of defensive midfielder. Matty Virtue and Max Sanders were busy with Tom Pett and Ben Garrity and Danny Butterworth was free to operate in the ten position in between our midfield and back line.
The first half never really got going at all due to the number of stoppages down to injury. Ben Garrity and David Worrall were both forced off due to injury for Vale and were both down for some time. While for us, Danny Mandroiu was forced off to an injury and one that could keep him out for some time and considering the performance of Jordon Garrick on Saturday, that is really bad news for us.
We didn’t have too many chances in the game, and we only registered one shot on target to prove it. Regan Poole was by far our best player on the pitch, the skipper put in a great performance, and it had signs of last season, where Poole looked to be the only one on the pitch performing at a high level. That being said I don’t think we were too bad individually. We lacked a creative spark and that cost us massively on the day. To be honest, I thought their goal was poorly defended, the first shot shouldn’t have been allowed to happen and I think Carl could have done much better and maybe pushed it round the post or further out of the danger zone.
We could and probably should have had a goal in the game for ourselves. A rare attacking move saw Jordon Garrick played through on goal, and due to the attacker trying to sort his feet out the keeper saved his tame effort at goal. I really like Jordon, but his performance against Port Vale was poor, you can’t escape that. He is a nice lad, and it is clear he has ability, and I don’t know why he put that performance in on Saturday. I think with Danny’s injury, now is the perfect time to give Charles Vernam that first team chance he hasn’t had yet, there is competition in the wide positions and if we stick with Jordon on Tuesday what does that tell us about Charles.
I think Mark is doing a stellar job but there were a few things I picked up on this weekend. I cannot get my head round that Tashan Oakley-Boothe substitution. Jack looked really fatigued and I get he probably wouldn’t have been as effective, but we have Vernam on the bench, and I’d love to know what he was thinking when he didn’t come on late-on, especially considering that we were losing and one of our attackers was taken off. I also think we should have switched it up late on too, maybe Adam Jackson on for Freddie Draper, but one thing I did like was Adam playing as a centre-forward but when we have a young hungry striker on the bench, I think we needed to get him on the pitch.
Another thing I will touch upon is the slamming of Port Vale after the game. They have just as much right to be in this division as we do, they are well run, and they have a good fanbase. I think people label them as a side we should beat but they were above us going into the game and we shouldn’t feel entitled. I think we have a better squad and the players to beat Port Vale, especially after the performances against Ipswich and Sheffield Wednesday but that is down to my trust in our squad not my arrogance of thinking we are better. We all hate it when the big sides such as Sunderland come down and claim they will walk the league, so let’s not do it ourselves to other sides.
That being said, we have to keep positive, and we go into another game that will be a tough battle on Tuesday night against a tough to beat Accrington Stanley side at home. We are yet to be beaten at home, so it will be an interesting one and the team news should a big topic of discussion both before and after the match. Let’s pack out Sincil Bank and get behind Mark and the lads.