Here’s the moment. The moment that tells you everything.

Hernandez twists away from his full-back, reaches the byline and hangs an inch-perfect cross into the box. Mo Faal is there, utterly unmarked, seven yards from goal with only the (make-believe) Tranmere goalkeeper standing between Vale and a two-goal cushion.

The hard work has already been done. All that’s left is the finish. Only it never comes.

Faal gets underneath the header, the timing is wrong, the technique worse. Instead of nestling in the corner, the ball climbs harmlessly into the stand behind the goal. It was much, much more than just a missed chance. It was an absolute sitter. It was a glorious, gilt-edged opportunity, and Mo got it completely wrong.

And before anyone accuses me of conducting a public execution, this is not an assassination of Mo Faal. There is a player in there. You can see it. He works hard, occupies defenders, links play reasonably well and occasionally produces a touch that suggests there is more to come. But goalscorers possess something different. It’s instinct. It’s intuition. It’s a predator’s understanding of where the ball will land and what needs to happen next. Faal does not have that.

The frustrating thing is that none of this should come as a surprise. We already watched the first half of last season. We have already gathered the evidence. Brady insisted during his pre-season interview with Phil Bowers that Faal had arrived “under-cooked” last season and that supporters would see a different player this time around. Well, I don’t think we’re seeing anything different. It’s the same player doing the same things.  And that, if we’re being honest, isn’t really Mo Faal’s fault. The fault lies with our summer recruitment.

So, what’s the solution?  As we prepare for what already feels like a massive game against Crewe, Brady’s options resemble a collection of unanswered questions. Tyreece Simpson has scored five goals over the previous three seasons. Ben Waine remains, well, Ben Waine. Watters is still somewhere beyond the horizon. Oli Lynch’s story does not properly begin until Swindon away.

Which leaves Mo. And despite everything I’ve just written, despite the misses, despite the doubts, despite the growing sense that we already know how this story ends, I’d probably start him on Saturday.

Let’s get onto the defending.

For Tranmere’s equaliser, Humphreys, Montsma and Smith combined to produce a heartsinking, soul-destroying moment of chaos. Smith gets the least blame from me. It can’t be easy being a goalkeeper when the two centre-halves in front of you spend so much time caught between decisions, neither committing nor communicating, both waiting for the other to take responsibility.

Honestly, you could dress Humphreys and Montsma in double denim, stick them on Top of the Pops singing This Ole House, and they still wouldn’t look as shaky as they did on Saturday afternoon. It just isn’t working as a defensive partnership. There comes a point where evidence outweighs hope. One of them has to come out of the side. Persisting with a combination that repeatedly looks vulnerable feels less like faith and more like stubbornness on the part of Brady.

Then there’s George Byers. What can you say that hasn’t already been said? Once again, that all-too-familiar sight: Byers pulling up injured and trudging off, replaced with an all-too-familiar lacklustre performance from Rhys Walters, whose contribution, once again, struggled to alter the trajectory of the game in any meaningful way. Byers is a class player, I know some people don’t like him, but he is class. The heartbeat of the team. We just do not see enough of him.

Meanwhile Ryan Croasdale remains somewhere in footballing limbo.

Croasdale was built for League Two. The running, the bite, the ugly side of midfield work that wins matches. This should be his natural habitat. Yet Brady keeps him on the periphery. Maybe there are reasons Croasdale is hidden from public view, but from the outside looking in, it feels increasingly as though he’s been quietly marked down as surplus to requirements. And that worries me.

We’ve already seen the consequences of Brady nudging Jayden Stockley towards the exit. For me, that was a significant mistake. Not just because of the goals he might have scored, but because of the experience, presence and personality that walked out of the building with him. Repeating the process with Croasdale risks another self-inflicted wound.

And then we arrive at Onel Hernandez. When Tom Amos was having a bit of a pop at Onel on the Ale & Vale podcast last week, I found myself instinctively thinking, “Steady on, Tom. This is a national treasure you’re talking about.” Saturday, however, was less a defence of Hernandez and more a vindication of Amos.

Every time Hernandez received possession, we were treated to the full performance. The twist-and-shout. The soft-shoe shuffle. The irresistible urge to beat the same defender not once, not twice, but three times before finally deciding what to do next. It was football as interpretive dance.

Time after time, the opportunity presented itself. A first-time cross. An early delivery into the box. A chance to force uncertainty, panic, chaos. Time after time, the moment passed. Instead there came another feint, another drag-back, another extra touch.

Of course, in Onel’s defence, there is an obvious counter-argument. What’s the point of putting the ball into the box? It’s not exactly as if we’ve been overflowing with goalscorers. More often than not, a hopeful cross feels less like an attacking weapon and more like a surrender of possession.

But still. Surely football is a game of probabilities. An own goal. A defensive ricochet. A goalkeeper spilling the ball into the net. A moment of madness. Strange things happen when you ask questions of defenders. At present, our attacks often die before the question has even been asked. And given our apparent inability to score from open play, perhaps our greatest attacking threat isn’t a perfectly crafted move at all. Perhaps it’s simply giving the opposition enough opportunities to make a terrible mistake. That, at least, would be on brand. And, of course, Hernandez has to be in the starting line-up. No-one else in our squad can generate excitement quite like Onel can. Amazing things will happen, just maybe not nearly as often as we’d like them to.

So, anyway, the game with Tranmere ended 1-1. They played virtually the entire second half, plus 14 minutes of stoppage time, with a makeshift goalkeeper (some bloke just seemed to wander onto the pitch from the Lorne Street with a pair of goalie gloves and that was that) yet we rarely asked a meaningful question of him. There was no sustained pressure, no barrage of shots, no sense that we were capable of exploiting the situation.

Instead, the afternoon drifted towards an underwhelming conclusion and, at full-time, the boos rang out from sections of the Paddock. Two games into a new season and supporters are already voicing their frustration. This makes Saturday’s lunchtime game with Crewe feel way bigger than it probably should this early in the campaign. Brady needs to find answers quickly because the mood is darkening, patience is thinning, and the atmosphere around the club risks turning toxic.

It’s mad that we’ve reached this point just two gigs into the season, and I’m slightly struggling with the fact that, right now, I’m not feeling a great deal of sympathy towards Brady. I’m just not seeing what it is that needs to gel, or what has to fall into place, for everything to suddenly click. That probably doesn’t make much sense, but I’m not looking at this team and seeing a work in progress that’s a few tweaks away from functioning properly. It feels deeper than that. More fundamental. As though the issue isn’t fine-tuning what’s already there, but trying to identify what, exactly, we’re supposed to be building in the first place.

I’m not unreasonable, though. Far from it. He has eight more league games to convince me. I genuinely hope he does.

The pressure is building already. Things have to change.