The Carabao Cup dream is finally over. Wolverhampton Wanderers snatched it from our hands on Friday night, and if we’re being brutally honest, they were entitled to. Obviously that’s not the story of the night, but let’s start there. Let’s start with the football.

There are levels to this game and Wolves occupy a world that currently feels a very long way from where we are operating. Last season’s FA Cup adventure was built as much on an unplayable Vale Park pitch as it was on footballing quality. There were no such mitigating circumstances at Molineux. Wolves reminded us exactly what quality looks like.

Their speed of thought and movement was two yards ahead of ours. The ball moved quicker, their players moved quicker, and their understanding of space and timing was light years beyond ours. Yet for all that, we actually played some good stuff, and gave them a few scares. We certainly didn’t disgrace ourselves. Not on the pitch, anyway. We’ll get to that later.

All three goals felt avoidable. Wolves were good, but we helped them along the way with some ragged, fourth division defending. Every mistake was punished with ruthless efficiency. Perspective is important though. We’re highly unlikely to encounter a side in League Two with Wolves’ combination of movement, precision and finishing ability.

Defensively, I’m not reaching for the panic button. Montsma has wandered onto my radar, hopefully only temporarily, after whatever it was he was attempting for the third goal. I’ve watched it back several times and remain none the wiser. One second he was there, the next he had been ghosted past so easily that he was made to look Sunday League. We know there’s a far better player in there than that. I’m expecting to see him soon enough.

Then there is the curious case of Mo Faal.

Jon Brady has put a considerable amount of faith in him. The No.9 shirt. Public backing. Warm words in interviews. An endorsement that tells us there is a plan here, even if we can’t quite see it yet.

And Faal remains a difficult puzzle to solve. In the first half, I thought he did okay. He was isolated by the system at times but still managed to make a nuisance of himself. There were a couple of tidy touches and one particularly clever knockdown that created a wonderful chance for Cam Humphreys.

Decisive moments count. The instant Mo was handed the ball for the penalty, I mentally chalked it down as a miss. That’s not me being wise after the event either. I genuinely had no confidence he would score. Sadly, the penalty did little to challenge that instinct. And that’s the contradiction with him. Thirty or forty yards from goal, I can see what he brings. He links play, occupies defenders and occasionally produces moments of real quality. But when the ball drops to him in the penalty area, my expectations remain stubbornly low. I don’t know what the answer is.

Perhaps there doesn’t need to be one yet. Lynch looked bright when he came on. Watters is there. Tyreece Simpson is there. The season hasn’t properly began and strikers are strange creatures. Confidence arrives unexpectedly, goals come in clusters, and suddenly a player who looked lost one week can’t stop scoring the next. One of them will find a groove eventually.

Now to the part we really have to discuss.

I was sat in the now-infamous JL9 section, around twenty yards from where everything kicked off. I can’t tell you exactly what started it because I simply don’t know. My perception of the situation was hampered by a few quickly downed pints of that dreadful Cruzcampo, and as such, my recollection cannot be considered 100% reliable. So, as I remember it, about 10 minutes prior to it all kicking-off there was a couple of lads being told to sit down. One of them was wearing one of those beanie hats with the built-in goggles. You know the one’s, back in the day they were supposed to look vaguely menacing. These days they mostly scream “bed wetter”. God knows why he was wearing one, the inside of Molineux felt like the inside of a bottle kiln – you could have baked clay in there – there was absolutely no need for woolly hats. Both of them looked like they’d had a couple of drinks and weren’t coping particularly well with the experience. Getting themselves a little bit emotional. Anyway, I think beanie-hat-with-goggles bloke was removed from the ground. Things continued to simmer for a few more minutes, I don’t know what was getting said, but I do know that it suddenly went off.

I’ve no idea as to who was involved or as to why. I’m not interested in spreading speculation. I do know that there was one bunch of dickheads fighting with another bunch of dickheads. I saw parents having to quickly get their children to safety. I saw a lad who may have had additional needs having to be shielded by his dad while chaos erupted around him. It was disgusting. That lad was petrified.

Kids should not be scared about going to watch Vale, no-one should.  Parents shouldn’t be wondering whether an away game is worth the risk. Yet that is exactly the damage this sort of behaviour causes.  This cup tie will quickly fade into memory, but for some of those children in that stand, the violence they witnessed will not disappear so easily. They will remember exactly how it made them feel: the fear, the confusion, the sense of vulnerability. For them, it is not a fleeting moment of crowd disorder, but an experience that could stay with them for years to come. And for what? A few seconds of macho posturing from a toxic minority of insecure, inadequate blokes (they seem to be everywhere these days) desperate to convince themselves they matter. They don’t. They really don’t.

A final irony, of course, is that football is supposed to be the escape from all of this. Ninety minutes out of ordinary life. A chance to travel the country, have a laugh with your mates or family, moan about the cost of train tickets, moan about the price of a pint, moan about the ref. Most of us spend far too much time and money following Vale because we love being part of something bigger than ourselves.

And then you get those who just need to drag everyone and everything down to their level. Why? Because they need life on their terms, they can’t operate outside of that empty little bubble they have created for themselves. De Beauvoir’s ‘sub-man’. They are not the game. They are not the culture. They are certainly not Vale. Sad little men with sadder little lives. And if that sounds harsh, then good. Some things deserve understanding. This doesn’t.