Port Vale 1 v Charlton Athletic 0

If you didn't suffer this match yourself, just think of the worst performances of this season and virtually everything applies - chaotic defence, clueless midfield and nothing upfront. The sideways passing across the defence, even when they had pushed up to half-way, was too much for me. I gave up at half-time and tuned into the egg-chasing. I felt marginally better when Port Vale scored that I didn't witness it for myself.

There really wasn't much to report either. We only managed one chance off-target in the opening forty-five minutes and Alan Curbishley's post-match analysis that the "first half was poor and the second extremely poor" reassured me that I had missed nothing.

Once again I say that this side lacks leadership and a spine. By spine I mean through the side as well as metaphorically. Lavelle and Inniss is a partnership made in League 2 and with Dobson effectively playing as an extra defender, Scott Fraser has far too much to do to even think about creativity. Sadly, Vale doubled up on Blackett-Taylor and Rak-Sakyi, unusually, played like he was suffering the after effects of a night out on the ale.

Jayden Stockley is coming in for a lot of abuse after his latest effort and I get it, but he is effectively alone against two or three central defenders and the balls being thrown up to him have been hit-an-hope, so I cut him a bit of slack.

Ben Garner's post-match comments were very illuminating. Last week our players had run out of gas but this week he decided to tell us what we have long known, that he "expected different when he joined the club....I only had a limited amount of the budget available to me." Whilst some are applauding him for this, I struggle that he has effectively denied any of the suspicions previously and has chosen to wheel this out now when he has run out of other excuses. Sandgaard won't like it but if it's the truth, there is no reason why he couldn't have been much more open about it earlier in the season instead of trying to spin his way out of indifferent performances.

Whilst he said he wasn't making excuses, he mentioned the eight players who are injured as well as the bad pitch. Personally, I thought the side was strong enough to get a result today and couldn't see anything wrong with the pitch. The problem was simply his players, how they had been told to play and their attitude. He also said we haven't been able to rest players because of "the numbers we've got," alluding to "squad depth." This is the manager who said he doesn't like a big squad when we failed to recruit properly in August.

This performance and result feels like those games in the past that cost Adkins and Jackson their jobs. However, I don't get the feeling Sandgaard will do anything yet or for awhile to come. Not because he won't have an itchy trigger finger, having been called out on his recruitment bullshit, but because he won't want to pay Garner off and more for an experienced manager. 

We are where this side belongs (fourteenth) and have to hope they can continue to win a couple when they really need to in order to avoid a relegation fight because I don't think we have the balls if it comes to a fight at the death.

Foe once though, I think we can say not to worry too much about this league defeat because we can now concentrate on the Cups.