Jake Taylor got the only goal of the game for Port Vale on the hour-mark to end Crewe Alexandra’s unbeaten run at the Alexandra Stadium yesterday afternoon – the result seeing the Alex drop from top-spot down to 4th place in the league.
Manager David Artell made one change from our last game against Colchester United with Callum Ainley, on his 22nd birthday, replacing Owen Dale on the right-wing for the Alex while former Alex striker Tom Pope was again on the Vale bench.
The first chance of the game saw a David Worrall corner which was headed goalwards by Richie Bennett cleared off the line by Paul Green on 8 minutes before a left-wing cross from Charlie Kirk evaded everyone and hit the base of the post 8 minutes later. Kirk shot wide following a good move down the left before the best chance for the Alex came just before half-time with Tom Lowery having a shot blocked.
Green had the first chance of the second period with the midfielder heading a Kirk cross wide before the only goal of the game came on the hour. Minutes after Pope came on, for his 300th appearances for the Vale, a Worrall corner was headed goalwards by defender Nathan Smith with Taylor finishing from close-range after the initial effort had hit the post.
Will Jaaskelainen would deny Pope a headed goal with a superb save which he tipped onto the bar before his opposite number Scott Brown would deny Porter with an equally good save to preserve the 3 points for the visitors.
We host Everton’s Under-21 side in the final EFL Trophy group game on Tuesday night before a trip to League 1 side Accrington Stanley in the FA Cup next Saturday.
What can we learn from this game?
It was another game, similar to the last game against Colchester, where the opposition came and made it difficult for us to play our normal brand of football – something that we are going to need to address going forward as more teams will look to do this, especially for our home games.
As a result of that, we started to panic a little and the long-ball game that we played once we’d stopped trying to move the ball from side-to-side between the centre-backs.