Michael Brown’s Port Vale side travel to Chesterfield on Saturday, and will be looking to make amends after last week’s home defeat to Wycombe Wanderers.
The Gaffer spoke to the club website earlier this week on the upcoming fixture: “It will be a tough game. Gary is getting a good squad together and already has some good players. It will be a tough game, I think that they will move the ball well.”
Despite their start to the season, Brown is not convinced that the Spireites will be a pushover on Saturday, or for the rest of the campaign: “I know the results haven’t gone that well for them at the moment, but I think that they will certainly be a team to be reckoned with at the end of the season.”
Brown will be looking for a reaction from his players after two defeats within the space of four days, and concedes that his squad are feeling the effects of a hectic week: “I feel that the week before took its toll. I thought that it was slightly early for some of our players to play those two games, and obviously we lost [Danny] Pugh and Anton [Forrester] which may be in direct relation to having the midweek game.
“It certainly doesn’t help. But we move on, we have dissected the [Wycombe] game, and we look forward to another game. It will be a slightly different style of game, and it will be a tough place to go.”
There are places up for grabs within the matchday squad, a chance that the 40-year old expects his players to be ready to grab: “I think you always have to be ready if you are a professional footballer. The chances come very quickly and it is about being as fit as you possibly can, doing the right thing every day and the true professionals are generally like that.”
Amongst those up for contention may be new signing Jack Stobbs, a player that Brown thinks offers Vale something else that they have not got already: “He is a young boy, again, and it is his first loan so we are going to have to work with him.
“He is something different that we have not got, and we are looking forward to seeing him down the right hand side. He can cross a good ball in, he has potential, and if he can use his potential then we could have a good player.”