David Artell says that his team made the wrong decisions on far too many occasions at Vale Park. Port Vale deservedly won 1-0 on the day thanks to a fine finish from our ex-player Tom Pope and it could have been more but for the form of Ben Garratt, who made three or four very good saves.

Speaking after the loss at Vale Park, Artell was disappointed by our lack of composed football on the day.

He said: "We had players that thought they could whack it into the air and whack it as far as they can and thought that would be good enough – and that’s not.

  "Yeah it was a bobbly, tricky pitch. And? Yeah they’re going to be a bit more direct than us. And? Did they play much football? No, but we didn’t half help them.

"I told them at half-time to stop whacking it. They must have not been listening.

You can’t say there was one team playing lots of football or dominant or anything like that, but there’s one team making better decisions and that wasn’t us.

"Coming in at 0-0 you go ‘right, you’ve had a half there where you’ve come here and go we’re in the game, it’s a derby, settle down, play your football’. But it just didn’t happen.

The boss added: "We’ve played that way before, gone away from home and played that way and we were one defeat in seven – and what’s the difference? It’s the same personnel, the same shape, the same formation, but a different performance and the result matched the performance."