Port Vale Vs Swindon Town Official Matchday Thread

[JanTheMan]

[Peter Venkman]

As always I have read of the opposition forums, this is from the PV forums and there is an underlying theme as you can see from these comments......some good some bad and some ugly

We lost today but I came away feeling more satisfied and proud of the teams effort than some of the games we've undeservedly won this season! Swindon were horrible today for a number of reasons but still have some excellent players and will be in the Championship next season.


Swindon and their fans will know they were very fortunate to get the three points today.


I thought we dominated the 2nd half against a top side


Swindon looked a decent side


Encouraging in so far as I thought we gave a decent team a decent game.


Swindon are a good side


Lastly a note of the referee and Swindon, with both absolutely disgraceful in that 2nd half. For as good as some of there football was, I really hope they fail to get promotion purely because of their Chelsea-esque tactics. When will we get a ref with the balls to clamp down on blatant cheating like this? Why was it, as soon as there players were going down didn't he immediately order them off the pitch for treatment and let the game continue? When will they get rid of the rule of being able to choose which side goal kicks are taken from as it is clearly being used to waste time. And equally frustratingly, why the Hell are we stupid enough to give them the ball back???


Swindon really showed themselves up today. I suppose we could take it as a complement, as they obviously thought that we were a good team and were worried about losing the match, otherwise they would have just tried to score more goals.
The ref seemed to do nothing about their blatant cheating until very late on, it’s far too late by then. Tackle it early and they are less likely to do it.


The players should be proud of themselves. Swindon on the other hand..........


The ref was conned by their players today. The two 'injured' lads went down to break up the play and to allow their lads to go over to their manager and have a couple of impromptu coaching tips on the touchline. It happened in the first half as well. And the goalie's time-wasting was blatant from 20 minutes onwards, replacing every goal-kick, moving the ball from one side of the six yard box to the other time after time. If that wasn't wasting time, what is? They were also lucky on a few occasions when they were shirt grabbing and stopping Vale players from reaching high balls into their box but they got away with it.


After the first 15 minutes Swindon were showboating at times, they looked quality, but we stuck to it and were the better side in the second half. Where were the Swindon fans? Bristol Rovers took nearly 700 to Halifax ! Swindon brought how many? 450?


First half Swindon looked very impressive, however, second half they looked very ordinary.


Disappointing and frustrating and that was only the crowd both in numbers and attitude - little vocal support and plenty of moans and nit picking. I heard much more support for their team from the Swindon fans


The game was ruined when Swindon players started time wasting and diving everywhere and pretending to be injured.


Hate Swindon they always win !!


Swindon are horrible...but for a young team they had a lot of guile.


Until we can play like teams such as Swindon we have no chance. All their players were comfortable on the ball and were interchanging and finding space at will

[Batch]

To be fair I hate all the stuff the Vale fans are moaning about. But I'll accept it, if it gets us the best chance of being promoted.

[OOH! SHAUN TAYLOR]

It really pisses me off that the footage taken by some one in the crowd with their phone is about 100 times better than the 'quality' you get on STFC Player.

Re. the comments about time wasting/diving and so on. I wish they would cut it out really because I can't believe it increases our chances of winning games by that much. In a way, I'm surprised that Cooper puts up with it but when you remember that his old man played for the team who wrote the book about gamesmanship and had massive success with it, I don't suppose it's that surprising. But when you look at that Leeds team, they didn't need to do it either. It's quite frustrating really.

[Flashheart]

I've been trying to resist the idea but the more teams that complain about our dirty antics, the more I just can't help but accept that there's something in it. I wish we'd stop.

If any fan of any team told me that they'd rather stay down than play a bit dirty, however, I'd call bullshit.

[stfc1975]

I've been trying to resist the idea but the more teams that complain about our dirty antics, the more I just can't help but accept that there's something in it. I wish we'd stop.

If any fan of any team told me that they'd rather stay down than play a bit dirty, however, I'd call bullshit.

Agree with this . We certainly aren't making any friends which is a shame with some of the football we're playing.  But if it means we go up I will take it.

[Peter Venkman]

I've been trying to resist the idea but the more teams that complain about our dirty antics, the more I just can't help but accept that there's something in it. I wish we'd stop.

If any fan of any team told me that they'd rather stay down than play a bit dirty, however, I'd call bullshit.

Thats exactly how I feel, I don't like us playing like that and it wins us no friends, but this is about results not friend making. If it gets us promoted then great.

[OOH! SHAUN TAYLOR]

Thats exactly how I feel, I don't like us playing like that and it wins us no friends, but this is about results not friend making. If it gets us promoted then great.

If it really is the difference between going up and staying down then I will take it as well. But there is the rub - We can get promoted without the bullshit. I really believe that 100%.

[kerry red]

It all started with City fans being unable to take getting beat by us - there had to be a reason other than we were better. So the whole diving, cheating thing started.

This has been picked up by fans of other clubs via the forums and trotted out as the reason they, too, got beat.

As a fan I honestly don't notice us diving or rolling around, but I do notice it when opposition players do it.

There's the answer - it's always the other teams

[Nathan]

Well, just got home. Fucking shattered.

I had a great time and everyone in the away end was up for it. People were actively asking for balloons. The flags I threw out were up high plenty of times, just hope they bring them back to games. And the streamers went down well.

The banquet paper kept blowing away and tearing unfortunately so I think I might get some fabric for MK. And more streamers next time.

The players seemed to appreciate it and we got a win so it was a great day all around.

And in response to it looking 'pathetic' or 'half hearted', I think the fact it was a 1/3 full huge away end didn't help. Everyone was so spread out meaning a lot of it go lost. It was my first time organising anything like this so it's a first step towards creating a great atmosphere for our fans.

Hopefully those who were there enjoyed it.

Good work, Jay. The efforts of yourself and friends certainly made a difference to the players. Onwards and upwards - second place is still within reach.

[Tails]

I don't give a fuck about what other fans say.

1) Its really not as bad as everyone makes out. Its a convenient excuse and ultimately it makes no difference as we've been better than most teams we've played this season.

2) Everyone else does it anyway.

3) We spent an entire season getting kicked off the park and got nothing.

Brentford did the same thing. If you cant beat em join em.

[Batch]

Funnily enough Brentford were exactly the team I thought of too. And they are in the championship now.

[Abrahammer]

Fans moan when it's the opposition doing it and deny it/turn a blind eye when it's their team.

All sets of supporters are the same including ours

[FormerlyPlymRed]

The amount of times that we have had to suffer time wasting from minute 1 this season especially at home leads me to not give a shit about us doing it yesterday. 8 minutes of added time is a hell of a lot more than we ever get.

We scored and port vale didnt, tough shit

[Red Frog]

I think those Vale comments are pretty balanced on the whole. If they could see we were a quality side from that performance, then clearly something showed through. It's always galling when a team plays for time to hold onto a narrow lead, but the ref added 6 minutes for it, so they weren't cheated.