The fanzine is dying, man. Twenty-five years of ink-stained rebellion, of typewriter dreams and sardonic truths, and now Andy McCormack — the beat poet of Burslem terraces — is hanging up his pen, his keys, his soul. Derek I’m Gutted!!! is riding off into the sunset, and we’re left clutching our matchday memories like old ticket stubs in the rain.

He said it straight and true: the kids are chained to their glowing rectangles, hypnotised by the scroll, the swipe, the algorithm. They don’t want paper, they want pixels. And Sky Sports — that great capitalist beast — has torn Saturday 3pm from our hearts, scattering kick-offs like confetti in the wind. And Andy, man, he’s just tired. The road’s been long. The rollercoaster’s rattled his bones. It’s time.

Born in the wild August of 2000, when the millennium was still fresh and the Vale were still weirdly hopeful, Derek I’m Gutted!!! gave us the gospel according to McCormack — a gospel of gallows humour, of pint-finding missions in Morecambe and Barnet, of rob-dog opposition and their ticket prices, of managerial madness and boardroom farce. Bill Bell’s last stand. V2001’s techno-dream. Peter Miller’s shadow. Perry Deakin’s ghost. Norman Smurthwaite’s pantomime. Bruno Ribeiro’s samba. Jim Gannon’s chaos. Michael Brown’s stare. Relegations, promotions, LDV Cup final delirium — all of it, man, all of it.

It was more than football. It was life. It was the Vale as seen through the cracked lens of a poet with a pint in one hand and a biro in the other. It was the kind of thing you read on the train to Gillingham, or in the pub before kick-off, or under the floodlights when the game was dull and the words were better.

And now it’s gone. Or going. Or fading like the last page of a dog-eared copy of On the Road. Derek will be missed like a lost friend, like a pub that’s been turned into a Tesco Express, like a 3-2 away win on a Tuesday night in February.

We are gutted. But we are grateful.

So here’s to Andy and his team. Here’s to Derek. Here’s to the fanzine that told the truth, made us laugh, made us think, and made us proud to be Vale.