Here we go then. No point pretending we need to wait until the final whistle of the season because, honestly, we’ve seen more than enough by now. Everyone’s had their chance, plenty of minutes on the pitch, plenty of time for opinions to harden. They already have. So this is part one. Keepers, defenders, wing‑backs. That lot. A kind of rogues’ gallery really – the good, the bad, the ugly, and an awful lot that sits uncomfortably in between. I won’t dress it up because what’s the point? There aren’t loads of positives to cling onto here. The league season has been an utter shambles, a disaster movie without any notion of a reprieve at the end, and if you’re reviewing the squad you’ve got to reflect that honestly or it’s just noise. No spin, no cushioning the blows. Just how it’s felt watching it unfold. Enjoy!

Joe Gauci. Right. Context first: Marko Marosi clearly not up to it, Ben Amos held together with tape and crossed fingers, so Vale went rummaging around Aston Villa’s cupboards and came back with an Aussie on a season-long loan. Needs must. First impressions? Shot-stopping decent. Hands? Actually pretty good. Calm enough when the ball came at him. But the kicking. Jesus. Absolutely cursed. Feet like jazz hands in a storm, just swinging a leg at the ball and hoping for the best. Every clearance felt like an act of faith. Sometimes it went vaguely football-shaped. More often it went straight into the Lorne Street on its own weird spiritual pilgrimage, never troubling a Vale shirt. And the thing was, it never really improved, well, maybe slightly recently, but then it all goes to pot again. You wait for a keeper to click, to tidy it up, to at least find someone in the same postcode. It just didn’t happen. Every restart a gamble. Every back-pass a collective intake of breath. That uncertainty seeps into everything, into the defence, into the crowd, into his own head. You could see it in his confidence as the season dragged on. The early patience drained away. The mistakes stuck. He lost his place to Ben Amos at one point, which tells you plenty in itself. Amos, broken and limited, still got the nod. Until, of course, Mansfield in the league and Stockport in the Vertu Trophy. Absolute goalkeeping crime scenes. After that, Amos was done and dusted. So Gauci was parachuted back in. By default, not demand. And he was, well, sort of ok. Sometimes. Never a disaster, rarely reassuring. A goalkeeper you endured rather than trusted. One good save followed by a clearance into orbit. Rinse, repeat. I wouldn’t be surprised if we are facing him next season – League Two seems about right for Joe. Just not with us.

Marko Marosi. Arrived on a two‑year deal last summer. No.1 shirt straight away – probably always the plan, but with Ben Amos injured there isn’t even a debate. This is it. This is who we’re going with. He comes in with a bit of a CV, been around – Coventry, Plymouth, Shrewsbury, Cambridge –  looks solid enough on paper, even if there’s that nagging doubt because he hasn’t played much lately, injury hanging over him like a warning sign you hope you’re imagining. First game, Rotherham away, and almost immediately it feels wrong. Everything near him causes panic. Flapping, hesitation, nothing looks clean. You can see it spread – the back line unsure, glancing, second‑guessing, everyone looking a little lost. And it never really stops after that. He never settles, never grows into it, never gives you that sense of calm you need from a goalkeeper. We were crying out for something else. Someone new, someone confident, someone assured. And it just never arrived. Marko was quickly bombed out, quickly became our No.3 keeper – game time going to Gauci and Amos – and ended the season as a seemingly unending emergency loan at Tranmere Rovers. He is, unfortunately, contracted for next season. We need him gone.

Ben Amos. We barely saw him this season and that’s not a bad thing. Because when he did appear, you immediately start questioning everything. His contract’s up in the summer and you’d struggle to imagine that being anything other than the closing paragraph on his playing days. Surely even the most desperate recruitment spreadsheet has a cut‑off point. Someone, somewhere, will convince themselves they need experience – but really? Ben Amos? He briefly got the nod when Brady decided that Gauci wasn’t cutting it. Amos demonstrated emphatically, that he was worse. Much worse. And it’s a shame, really. Started his career at Man U and was tipped for big things. It never materialised at the top level, but to be fair, he’s carved out a perfectly respectable lower‑league career. That version of Ben Amos just didn’t really turn up here. He joined last season and ended up as our number one just after Christmas 2024, following that unforgettable Conor Ripley Grimsby catastrophe. Damned by circumstance as much as ability, perhaps, but football doesn’t deal in sympathy. It deals in results and impressions – and his were grim. If the Vertu Cup game against Stockport turns out to be his final competitive appearance, then it was an awful way to bow out.

Aaron Davies. Young keeper. Academy product, spent time out on-loan at Stafford Rangers – “Go and learn the men’s game.” Cold nights, heavy pitches, crowds that don’t care where you came from. Comes back having done exactly what was asked. Will we see him before the season is finished? Who knows…

Kyle John. I love him, I really do. You can’t ever question the effort. Every time he pulls that shirt on, that’s it – everything he’s got goes into it. Strength, grit, sheer bloody-minded determination. Heart and soul football. It’s there in every run, every tackle, every refusal to back out of something. And when the armband came his way, he didn’t hide. He stepped up. Looked like a leader. Played like one too. But then there’s the other side of it, and it’s impossible to ignore. Injuries. Always injuries. Two seasons with us and it’s felt like we’re constantly holding our breath. Every time he goes down after a tackle my stomach drops. You wait. You watch. You think: that’s him gone again. He plays blood-and-guts football, and I admire it, but blood-and-guts comes with a price. Knocks stack up. Little things turn into weeks, into months. And at some point you have to ask whether his body can keep taking it.

Maybe he needs a bit more luck. Maybe he needs to be cut from something a bit less brittle. Or maybe he needs to be smarter. Protect himself better. Pick his moments. You don’t want to dull that edge, because that edge is what makes him, but you also need him available. Passion doesn’t help us much from the physio room. He’s under contract for next season, and that’s a positive. There’s comfort in knowing he’s still ours, still part of it. I just wish we’d seen more of him on the pitch, more minutes, more continuity. Because when he’s there, properly there, he gives you everything. We just need him to be there far more often.

Cameron Humphreys. Arrived with quite a buzz. Summer signing. Two-year deal. Championship experience. He might be the one. The centre-half we’ve been crying out for. The footballing defender. The grown-up. And to be fair, you see it straight away. He is composed. He’s comfortable. Ball at his feet doesn’t bother him. Wants it. Takes it. Doesn’t hoof it into the stands out of panic. That alone has felt like progress. But there’s always an and yet. Because there have been moments this season – not loads, but enough – where I’ve sat there thinking, is that it? Maybe I just had my expectations a little off-kilter. He does his job, ticks his boxes, keeps things neat. Calm. Collected. Polite defending, almost. Is he a leader? I don’t really see it. You don’t see him barking, organising, dragging people into position. You don’t see him grabbing the game by the scruff when things start to wobble. Humphreys doesn’t radiate menace. He doesn’t dominate space. He doesn’t impose himself physically in the way some defenders do – and yes, that might be old-school thinking, but football at this level still needs a bit of that edge.

It sounds like I’m laying into him, and maybe I am, a little. And I shouldn’t be. Because he’s been more than decent. Reliable. A steady hand. And in a side that’s lurched between chaos and inconsistency, that’s not nothing. I like what he offers. The calm. The assurance. The sense that the ball won’t just come straight back at us every time he gets it. The question hanging over it all, though  – and it’s a big one – is whether he wants us and a season in League Two? Is Vale Park somewhere he sees as home for a bit longer? Because if he stays, I feel like he needs someone beside him who is louder and nastier. Someone who lets Humphreys be the footballer while they do the ugly stuff. On his own, he feels a little too quiet. A little too soft. But alongside the right kind of centre-half? Maybe that’s when you get the best of him.

Jesse Debrah. Farmed out on loan to Bromley or somewhere equally forgettable as soon as Jon Brady had actually looked at what he’d inherited and thought “nope”. Contract up this summer and you’d be stunned if there’s even a token conversation about extending it. A defender who somehow manages to be limited in every single aspect of defending. Doesn’t read the game. Ball-watches constantly. Looks panicked under even the mildest pressure. Composure? Non‑existent. Decision‑making? Impulsive and usually wrong. Always feels like he’s reacting half a second late, guessing rather than thinking. One of those players where the more you watch, the more flaws you spot. No. Just no. Not a player I ever want to see in a Vale shirt again.

Ben Heneghan. One of those players who’s sort of existed this season rather than featured in it. You forget he’s there, then he pops up, and to be fair when he has popped up he’s been fine. Solid enough. You never sit there thinking Oh Christ, what’s he doing, which already puts him ahead of plenty over the years. You know exactly what you’re getting. He turns like an oil tanker wedged sideways in a canal and if there’s a foot race involved you might as well start clapping the striker early. That’s never changing. But within those limits he’s usually done his job. No dramas, no disasters, just very Heneghan. Then Northampton happens. Concussion. And then – nothing. Vanished. Like he’s fallen through a trapdoor. One minute he’s there, next minute he’s completely disappeared. Strange. Contract’s up in the summer and it feels pretty clear which way that’s headed. You can almost sense that Jon Brady’s already mentally moved him on, and honestly I get it. That’s football. Needs move on, squad evolves, legs get younger. It’s a shame, but I’m not losing sleep over it. No tears on the shirt. He’s been fine, he’s never embarrassed himself, and there’s dignity in that.

Connor Hall. Yeah, alright, fair play – he’s done alright this season. Probably better than alright, actually. When you strip it back to the basics – heading, positioning, putting his foot through it when it needs it – he’s had more good days than bad. There’ve been games where he’s just quietly gone about his business and you don’t really notice him, which for a centre-half usually means he’s done his job. That said, that ball down the channel. You know the one. Opens his body, gives it a lash, no Vale player within 30 yards of it, and it sails harmlessly out for a goal kick. It’s never really gone away, has it? Every time he lines one up you just wince. Still, it keeps the Paddock’s ‘get it forward!’ brigade quiet for 5 minutes. But when you think back to the absolute torrent he went through last time he was with us in League One – confidence shot, head gone – it puts this season into context. He’s steadied, he’s been reliable, and he’s taken a lot of minutes without fuss. No drama, no headlines, just turns up. With his contract up in the summer, I’m comfortable keeping him around. League Two suits him. If he extends his stay, I won’t be grumbling.

Ben Lomax. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve seen him kick a ball this season. Maybe he got ten anonymous minutes somewhere obscure – did he come on late in a Vertu Trophy game? Possibly. But in any meaningful sense, he’s been invisible. No league minutes, no sustained chances, and as far as I can tell no loan either, which just deepens the confusion. He’s not being developed on the pitch here, and he’s not being developed elsewhere, so he’s just sort of, well, nowhere. And that raises the obvious, slightly awkward question: what is the plan? If there is one, it’s certainly not obvious from the outside. Is he just making up the numbers in training? Is he cover so deep it may as well not exist? Or has he quietly slipped into that footballing limbo reserved for players who are technically “around” but functionally irrelevant? There isn’t much more to say because there hasn’t been anything to react to. No cameos, no talking points, no sense of progression. Just absence. And that, more than anything, feels like a bit of a waste.

Jaheim Headley. God, where did that player go? When he walked through the door in January last season he just looked different – electric is the only word for it. Every time he got the ball something happened. Direct, confident, fearless, like he didn’t overthink a single action. Even with all the injury interruptions, when he actually was on the pitch he made things happen – goals, assists, chaos. The numbers per minutes were stupid, genuinely ridiculous. You felt excited when he was starting, like something might break open at any moment. And then this season. It’s been such a let-down. That straight red on the opening day feels huge in hindsight. Like it just knocked something out of him. Confidence, momentum, whatever it was – he never seemed to properly recover. He’s always been suspect defensively, that’s not new, but previously you accepted it because of what he gave you going the other way. This year? Very little. Hesitant on the ball, second-guessing himself, caught between passing and carrying, between crossing early or taking another touch – and so often he takes that extra touch and the moment’s gone. The spark just isn’t there. It’s frustrating because you know what he can be. You’ve seen it. This isn’t a case of imagined potential; he’s already done it for us. But instead of building on that, this season has felt like stalling, maybe even going backwards. A proper disappointment, especially given the promise he showed.

He’s under contract for next season, so there’s still hope. Maybe a reset, maybe a clean slate, maybe confidence comes back and we see that fearless version again. Because if we do, we’ve got a real player on our hands. Right now, though, it just feels like a missed opportunity.

Liam Gordon. Pinched from Walsall in the summer. Definitely more solid defensively than Headley – you feel a bit more secure down that left-hand side  – although he’s absolutely still got chaos in him. Chelsea’s second goal is the obvious one, just pure brain fade stuff, where you’re watching it back asking what on earth are you doing there? That side of his game hasn’t gone away. That said, he’s been decent overall. Credit to him, he’s nailed down that spot and made it his own, which didn’t feel guaranteed earlier in the season. First choice left-sided option now. Gets himself forward well, too – finds space, overlaps intelligently, pops up in areas where you think something might happen – but that’s the frustration as well. The end product just isn’t consistent enough yet. Final ball, delivery, decision-making in the last third, it all needs sharpening. There’s a useful player there, no doubt, just still waiting for that bit of polish.

Jack Shorrock. Just feels like a proper worrying one at the moment. A year ago it genuinely felt like he was on the cusp, like this was the lad we could be building around. Now it all feels like it’s gone backwards. The loan move didn’t kick him on, if anything it’s stalled him, and ending up back with the Academy again says a lot. He’s miles off the first-team picture, not even knocking on the door, and that’s a horrible place to be at his age. You can almost feel the momentum draining out of his career. I hate thinking it, but right now it feels like one of those familiar stories where promise fades and suddenly you’re looking at non-league football in a couple of years wondering how it went wrong. Really hope there’s a turnaround in there somewhere, because twelve months ago this conversation would’ve sounded ridiculous – and now it doesn’t at all.

Jordon Gabriel. If I’m being honest, I did not take to him early on. At all. Partly because he didn’t really stand out – nothing flashy, nothing that made me sit up and think yeah, he’s the one. And partly because I was firmly, stubbornly, unapologetically Team Mitch. Gabriel arrived and immediately felt like someone I wasn’t ready to accept, like he needed to prove more just to get a fair hearing. Then the injury at Wimbledon happens and that doesn’t help. Sidelined for a good couple of months, momentum gone before it ever really started. And you think: here we go again, especially knowing it’s not the first time injuries have interrupted his career. Easy to write him off quietly, almost without noticing you’ve done it. But when he came back, something shifted. He looks stronger now, more assured, more comfortable in his own skin. Defensively, he’s clever in a way that doesn’t shout for attention – nicks in front of people, draws fouls, wins free-kicks in areas that just let everyone breathe for a second. Those moments you don’t always clock at the time, but you feel the effect of them. He looks like a proper player now. Reliable. Smart. I’ve become a big fan. He’s won me over. And going into next season, he feels like someone we’ll be better for having around – a player who could easily be a big asset, maybe even a headline act.

Mitch Clark. Absolute headcase. The good kind. A throwback to when footballers looked like they might actually murder someone on a wet Tuesday night. Completely loveable, completely deranged. Every club needs one and every manager probably lies awake at night worrying about theirs. That Burton challenge, honestly. Ridiculous. Stonewall red, no debate. Could’ve been a tribunal job, could’ve been a police matter. It was one of those where everyone gasps and then immediately looks at the ref waiting for the inevitable. He gets away with it. Only Mitch. The ref clearly knew he’d ballsed up the Byers sending off and decided the universe needed “balancing”. Cosmic refereeing maths. One howler cancels out another.

That’s always been the thing with Mitch though. He’s full of chaos. Is it controlled chaos? Not really. But somehow functional. Play on the edge, live on the edge, occasionally leap clean over it with both feet. Problem is, the body just can’t keep up. Injuries everywhere. Something’s always broken. Always. And you can’t even blame him – that’s the price of playing like every match is your last and every tackle is personal. The loan in January felt telling. Contract up in the summer, Brady clearly not buying in, whether because of availability, temperament, or just wanting a different profile. Feels like the end. Probably is. But then again, this is Mitch Clark. I wouldn’t be remotely shocked if he reappears in twelve months having re-signed for the fifth time. Not perfect. Not sensible. Not reliable. But absolutely a legend in my eyes.

Marvin Johnson. October scramble signing, bodies everywhere, wing-backs dropping like flies so we grab experience, that’s the sell, that’s always the sell. Experience. For what though? For this? Ran about, filled a shirt, but nothing actually happened. And then that moment. Stockport at home, already sinking, already grim, three down, humiliation setting in, and there he is, flat on his arse, blood pouring out of his nose, elbow smashed into him, not even subtle, Nathan Lowe knew exactly what he was doing, lazy arm, calculated, brutal. And what do we do? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No one flies in, no one squares up, no delayed consequence, no memory, no backbone. Just Vale players standing off, watching one of their own bleed. Season-defining in an awful, symbolic way. That was us. Meek. Soft. Accepting it. Pitiful. Weak. Marvin exited Vale Park late Dec/early Jan. Not a player the streets will remember, not in Burslem anyway.

Sam Hart. Christ. Sam Hart. Big daft Sam with his big daft hair. Season‑long loan somewhere up in Scotland, out of sight, out of mind, hasn’t kicked a ball for us all season and now we’re just counting down the days on his contract. Summer can’t come quick enough. I honestly can’t remember a player giving up so publicly, so shamelessly, so embarrassingly. Just folding. Throwing the towel in while the match was still going on. Those “injuries”, going down in the middle of games, stopping play, sitting there while everyone else is still trying to graft, and you just know. You know. Nothing broken except his nerve and bottle. Nah. I’ve never seen anything like it. A body on the grass waiting for a stretcher. An embarrassment. Plain and simple.

Part two arrives tomorrow, maybe even later today. Midfielders who promised control and delivered fog. Attackers who moved like strangers introduced five minutes before kick‑off. A system built on vibes, hope, and a January transfer window that looked like someone panic‑buying gifts at a petrol station.

I’ve gone studs‑up on a couple of players along the way. None of it’s undeserved. If anything, restraint has been my greatest contribution this season. This isn’t about scapegoating – it’s about accountability in a campaign that felt like it was slipping through our fingers from October onwards. About calling out the moments when effort dipped, when standards slid, when “it’ll come good” became a weekly lie we told ourselves just to get through the weekend. Darren Moore was an unmitigated disaster. The fact he held on to his job until 27th December is mind-blowing, and that sits firmly with Matt and Carol. That does not excuse the players though. Regardless of what is going on, they should be giving their all for the fans. Not for the Manager. Not for the CEO. Not for the owner. For the fans.