And here it is then, part two, the 2025/26 squad review rolling forward. Midfielders first, then attackers, then the January window – where the bargain bin gets tipped upside down and you convince yourself there’s treasure in there somewhere. This season doesn’t need a historian – it needs a witness. Part two is where the real damage report begins. Somewhere in all this wreckage, there is a player of the season, improbably standing upright while everything burns. We’ll get to that. There always has to be someone – the one who kept turning up, kept grafting, kept pointing and shouting while others hid. The human proof that the badge still means something, even when the league table is screaming otherwise. Bon Appétit!

Ben Garrity. Ah, Ben. It’s impossible not to respect him. Impossible. Proper servant to the club, no debate, no caveats. He drags standards up just by being there, barking, driving, demanding more. You never question his effort. Ever. If talent fell short at times, he bridged that gap the hard way – running through walls, doing the ugly stuff. And at this level, that still counts. It still matters. But football isn’t sentimental, not really. And this is the part that’s uncomfortable to say out loud. He’s injured. Too often. Too long. Watching from the sidelines when you need him on the pitch. You can’t ignore that forever, no matter how much you admire the bloke. His contract’s ticking down, summer’s coming, and maybe – just maybe – this is the moment. A line drawn. A rebuild that doesn’t include him. Not because he hasn’t given enough, but because he already has. It feels harsh. It feels wrong even. But it also feels necessary. A shining star, but the time is now.

Jordon Shipley. Honestly, where do you even start. Comes in on a two‑year deal in the summer and he’s been absolutely dreadful, just horrific, week after week. Every time the ball goes near him I’m already bracing myself. He refuses to tackle, just sort of ghosts into players like he’s allergic to contact, and then when he finally gets the ball he’ll somehow launch a 40‑yard pass straight out for a goal kick. No pressure, no excuse, just straight out of play. And the set pieces – Jesus Christ. Corners that don’t beat the first man, free kicks that drift harmlessly out or get overhit by ten yards. Absolutely useless. There isn’t one part of his game I can point to and say yeah, that’s decent. Everything feels half‑arsed. I actually dread watching him now. I really do. It’s got to the point where it feels disrespectful, like he’s taking the piss out of us some weeks. The worst part is he’s still got another year left. Another year. And we need him gone, desperately. But who’s taking that on? Who’s watched this season and thought yeah, that’s the bloke we need. I just don’t see it. I really don’t.

Rico Richards. Just bizarre. Darren Moore hands him a two‑year deal at the start of the season, sits him down and tells him – on camera, no less – that he’s more of a League One player than a League Two player and then ships him out on a season‑long loan to a League Two club. Make it make sense. Absolutely baffling. And the thing with Rico is that, yes, he looked okay at times last season, but only in fleeting little bursts. Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes where something might happen, and then he’d just evaporate. Drift out of games completely. You were always waiting for him to kick on and he never really did. He never looked like he had more than sixty minutes tops in him anyway, and for a young lad trying to make his way, that just isn’t good enough. Not remotely. Now he’s out at Walsall and, from the looks of it, barely playing anyway. So what was the point of any of this? Twelve months left on his contract now, and you’d hope the club can find a way of binning him off in the summer. Move him on. Make him someone else’s problem.

Rhys Walters. I keep coming back to him and feeling the same frustration. Because there is something there. You can see it. The ability, the engine, the sense that he could impose himself on games. And yet, he doesn’t. He never quite does. It’s like he plays with the handbrake half on. What really gets me lately is those moments when the space opens up, when there’s a chance to drive, to surge, to actually hurt teams. He gets the ball, looks up, starts to go – and then stops. Hesitates. Second‑guesses himself. Suddenly the move dies and you’re left wondering what might have happened if he’d just gone for it. There’s no real goal threat there, and he’s not dominating midfield either. Not the organiser, not the one barking orders, not the heartbeat of the side. He sort of floats between roles without ever pinning one down. He’s contracted for next season, but that question hangs in the air – does he even fit into whatever comes next for us? Either way, it feels massive for him. Next season can’t be more of the same. It has to be the season where Rhys Walters decides what kind of player he’s going to be and actually takes responsibility for games, for moments, for outcomes. Because time, quietly, is ticking.

Funso Ojo. My Player of the Season. Honestly, if you’d asked me twelve months ago whether I thought I’d be writing that sentence I’d have laughed. Big Funz? Still here? Player of the season? No chance. Of all the players I had packing their bags last summer, Funso was right at the top. No debate. He looked done with us. Properly done. Second half of the 23/24 relegation season, head gone, body language awful, toys fully out of the pram. You could see it. We all could. So, when he returned last summer from his loan move at Shrewsbury I just assumed either his contract gets torn up by “mutual consent” or someone comes in with a low-ball offer and we bite their hand off. Anything, really, to draw a line under it. I was convinced he wouldn’t be back. Convinced.

But he was. And somehow, against all expectations, he’s been our most consistent performer this season. Nothing loud or flashy, I don’t think he ever goes above-and-beyond, but wholly reliable. Week after week. And you forget sometimes – or maybe I did – just how good a footballer he actually is. His ability is levels above a lot of this squad. Touch, composure, game intelligence. And that’s the thing, it’s never really been about talent with Funso. It’s always been the attitude. The temperament. That sense that if his head goes, it proper goes. That’s where the question marks have always lived. But this year? He’s answered enough of them for me. Would I offer him another twelve months? Honestly, yeah. I would. Why not? As long as this version of Funso Ojo is the one we’re getting. Would he want another contract with us? Who knows? Football’s weird. Sometimes the player you’re most certain you’re done with ends up being the one you lean on the most.

Ryan Croasdale. Last season’s Player of the Season. That still matters. Or it should. And yet this season he’s looked completely out of his depth, like the game has sped up half a second and he can’t quite catch it. Stockport took one look at League One a couple of years ago and decided they didn’t fancy going into it with Ryan in the middle, so they tossed him aside, and on the evidence of this year you can see why. Maybe they were right all along. But then again – last season. He was brilliant. Never stopped running, always available, always ticking things over, especially when we were missing Garrity and Byers and someone had to keep things moving. It’s bizarre, really, how enormous the step up to League One has been for him, how it’s exposed him so brutally. I go round in circles with it. Do we offer him twelve months? He’ll want more, obviously, and maybe someone else will give him that. And deep down I want a squad full of players who can make that step up, who don’t shrink when the level rises, and I’m not sure he’s proven he’s one of those. And yet. You don’t just discard last season. You don’t forget what he was. No – we probably should offer him something. In League Two, Croasdale is a genuine asset.

George Byers. The metronome. The heartbeat. Everything runs through him when he’s there. Calm on the ball, shoulders dropped, head up, never rushed, never panicked. Just keeps us ticking, setting the tempo while others do the running. You don’t always notice it until it’s gone. And it’s been gone since mid‑January, since that horrendous challenge at Mansfield. That’s always been the story with George, hasn’t it. Stops and starts. Rhythm broken. Injuries arriving just when things are flowing. Just when he looks settled, just when the team starts to click around him. You feel for him because footballers like that need continuity, need minutes, need trust in their own body. He’s got twelve months left on the contract now, time ticking as steadily as he does when he plays. And the truth is obvious: we’re a better side with George Byers in the team. Smarter. Calmer. More grown‑up. So all you can do is cross your fingers, maybe cross them twice, and hope that 2026/27 finally gives him a clean run.

George Hall. Big George. Big Georgie Hall. We need to start calling him that, don’t we. Big Georgie Hall. Though he’s not that big, really. Anyway. He’s given both this season’s managers a proper dilemma: does he start or not? Jon Brady sits in The Vine on a Friday night, scribbling the team down on the back of a fag packet – Gauci in nets, Kyle, Cam, etc…  and once the spine’s in place, that’s when the headache starts. The flair players. The panache. The maybes. Does George produce enough? Because the ability’s there. Pace to burn. Tricks for fun. Brilliant in tight spaces. It’s the final act where it all goes wrong – the cross, the pass, the shot. That moment when it actually has to matter. And it’s maddening, because on his day he could be the headline act in this squad. But here’s the thing. However poor we’ve been this season, George Hall still hasn’t managed to make himself one of the first names on the team sheet. He hasn’t nailed that starting role down. Not for one manager, let alone two. And that is telling. We need to see good things happening next season.

James Plant. Sold. Tranmere. January. One of those names that makes you pause for a second, makes you rewind a couple of seasons in your head. Because there was a time – not that long ago, really – when he looked like the future, one of those players you assumed would just naturally kick on because that’s what promising players are supposed to do. Two, three seasons ago you could see it, or you thought you could: the movement, the energy, the idea that something beautiful might blossom if you just gave it time. But football doesn’t really wait, does it. Time passes, managers change, loans happen. Yeovil becomes a place name you associate with his career more than Vale Park ever was. Twelve months drifting in and out, useful enough to be sent away but never quite enough to be built around. And by the time Darren Moore and then Jon Brady had their turn at deciding what comes next, the decision had already sort of been made by inertia. Not in the plans. Not quite failed, not quite fulfilled either. Another reminder that potential is fragile, that “one day” doesn’t always arrive, and that sometimes a January sale is less about ambition and more about acceptance. Shame.

Mo Faal. Where do you even start with Mo Faal? There were moments – long moments – when he genuinely looked like he had no idea what was happening around him. Lost. Bewildered. A bundle of arms and legs flailing about in perpetual motion, like his boots were a size too big and his brain a second too slow. He turned up from Wrexham on a season-long loan, but thankfully they pulled the plug just after Christmas. And here’s the bit that really stings: the two strikers Brady dragged in during January have, at this moment in time, somehow managed to contribute less to our season than Mo. Less. Sit with that for a second.

Dajaune Brown. Season-long loan from Derby. Nowhere near League One level. Not close. Not even in the same postcode. Just relentlessly underwhelming, week after week, until “maybe he’ll come good” turns into “why is he still getting minutes?”

Ronan Curtis. One of the many casualties of Darren Moore’s positional roulette wheel. Continually shunted about, anywhere but where he actually belongs, until he’d had enough and downed tools. He is not a wing-back. He is not a striker. Never was. Plymouth pick him up in January, play him as a winger and – surprise, surprise – he looks happy, liberated, reborn. A player enjoying his football again. Entirely our fault. And we’ve paid for it.

Ben Waine. Ok, here we go. Not everyone will want to hear this, but I’m doing it anyway. FA Cup heroics aside, he’s been next to useless. Seriously. Let’s stop dancing around it. Let’s stop pretending. It’s April and we’re celebrating a striker with three league goals. Three. Look at his record in League One over the last three seasons with Plymouth, Mansfield and us – he’s scored 8 league goals in 89 appearances. Eight. Eighty‑nine. Look at those numbers again. I’m not buying into the ‘Waine Train’. I’m not standing on the platform. And I’ve got absolutely no intention of getting on board. It’s a brutal truth. Someone had to stand up and say it.

Jayden Stockley. This season has just never got going for Jayden. Injuries, stop‑start fitness, constant attempts to reach full match sharpness – none of it’s clicked. When he has made it onto the pitch he’s not really found any rhythm or form, and that’s a real shame because a fit, firing Stockley is exactly what we’ve lacked. He can do it at League Two level, we’ve seen that before, and on that basis alone I’d still be inclined to give him another 12 months – a Plan B to throw on the pitch when we need a goal.

Ruari Paton. You keep waiting for it to click and it just never does. Didn’t look like a League Two striker last season and this season in League One it was the same thing all over again, only louder because the level’s higher. A likeable character, there’s no doubt about that, but you’re squinting, searching for something that says centre-forward and it never quite appears. Brady saw it too, didn’t hang about, January comes and off he goes on loan, shipped north into the Scottish wilds where the standards are looser and even big Uche and the Yak can make an honest living. Says a lot, that. He’s still got another year on his contract, technically ours, but it’s hard to see a future for him here. Feels done. Summer comes, we shake hands, move him on, and everyone quietly agrees it just didn’t work. That’s football.

Devante Cole. Arrived at the beginning of September, a week after Tolaj walked out the door, and I really believed we had a player who would turn our fortunes around. The moment Jon Brady was appointed though, Cole decided he’d had enough and wanted out. His arrogance and inflated sense of self are genuinely staggering. Yes, he’s been a fairly decent League One striker in his time, maybe done okay for a season in the Championship. He has never achieved more than that. His best days are well behind him. And his refusal to celebrate when he scores – was that some deep personal statement? Or was it just sheer disrespect to the club, the badge and the supporters? Like he was slumming it with us? Anyway, he left for Luton and promptly bombed. No surprises there. There’s no jazz in Devante. None at all.

Lorent Tolaj. Left for Plymouth Argyle towards the end of August. Came back to Vale Park on 22nd November and scored the winner that dumped us bottom of the table – the game most of us see as the moment Moore should have gone. Tolaj has rattled in 15 league goals for Plymouth this season, a little reminder of how utterly, spectacularly we never replaced him. Not just the goals either – though God knows we miss those – but the whole presence, the vibe, the look of him. That gloriously continental ponytail-and-moustache combo he brought to Vale Park, like he’d wandered in by mistake from a different life entirely. No human being in history has ever looked more like ‘the lad on reception in an alpine youth hostel who can sort you out with a bit of weed if you ask nicely and don’t make a fuss’ than Lauren Tolaj. A complete one-off.

The January Bargain Bin Recruits

Ethon Archer. Jon Brady’s first signing, that little rush of optimism that always turns out to be misplaced. On loan from Luton, came with a bit of promise, and for one perfect second against Burton Albion he absolutely justified his existence. That free-kick. Still see it. Still feel it. The ball hanging, dipping, doing something none of the others ever do. Our goal of the season almost by default because what competition has it really had? And that’s sort of the issue. One moment, one image, one thing to cling to. Since then just cold performances with the occasional flicker. George Hall-shaped without the thing that makes George Hall dangerous.

Tyler Magloire. He’d played under Brady before which explains how he ended up here, plucked from Workington Town. He doesn’t do anything catastrophically wrong in isolation I suppose, but he also does absolutely nothing right. Just another bloke standing there when the ball ends up in our net, eyes darting, trying to work out whose fault it was this time. I would be extremely disappointed if Brady offers him anything for next season.

Martin Sherif. On loan from Everton and for a couple of games you could almost lie to yourself. He was alright. Serviceable. Then he got injured or ill, I can’t remember, anyway he missed a few games, came back, and it all drained away. Another big lad who can’t head a ball. It’s becoming a trend these days and it makes me feel a little bit sad.

Eli Campbell. Another Everton loanee, another drought of inspiration. A few steady outings. And then we had that performance at Doncaster. it was like watching someone collapse mid-sentence. It was horrific. He disintegrated right in front of our eyes.

Andre Gray. Proper end-of-the-road stuff. A body still going through the motions long after the game has moved on. The gestures kill me – that wide-legged stance, arms out, pointing, glaring, demanding the pass like he’s owed it. And then when he finally does get the ball, nothing happens. Ever. The move dies. The clock ticks. Yesterday’s man stubbornly existing in today’s shirt.

Onel Hernandez. My spiritual Player of the Season. Our Cuban Saviour. In my head he’s the one – the chaos, the magic, the spark, the player who turns this whole miserable narrative around. If he’d given us even half of what I believed he would, we’d be talking statues and songs and a season saved. Instead reality intrudes and insists I accept a difficult truth. Onel has, in those fleeting glimpses we’ve had of him on the pitch, been nothing other than fat and useless. Regardless of all this I’d still offer him a two-year contract. And if he doesn’t fancy doing any training, then that’s fine. I love him to bits. Just having him in the squad makes me happy.

Grant Ward. I have nothing. No notes. No memories. I’m not entirely convinced he’s real. If someone told me he’d left weeks ago I’d just nod and move on with my life.

So that’s it then, 2025/26 squad boxed off, done. Relegation not technically confirmed yet, but it’s just maths now, a slow walk to the inevitable. League Two after the summer, and honestly – and I’m not taking the piss here – I’m kind of looking forward to it. Season ticket renewed, new clobber already on its way from Vinted. It’s not the League Two bit itself, not the badge-on-the-table thing, but the aways. That’s the hook. Look at them. Crewe, Walsall, Shrewsbury straight out of the blocks. Fleetwood. Maybe Cleethorpes if the stars align and Grimsby stay put. I love seaside aways, always make a big weekend of it. And Bristol’s a cracking night out if you like that sort of vibe, York’s just a beautiful place full stop, stone and history and decent pubs – why wouldn’t we want to be going there? I mean, York or Leicester? It’s a no-brainer…

Jon Brady’s got a mountain of work over the summer, obviously, and look, for me this isn’t about bouncing straight back up like flicking a switch. That never sticks. It’s about building something that actually survives when we do get back to League One. A squad that doesn’t look lost the moment we arrive. A team that belongs there, not one just propping the table up.