Askey eyes play-offs after Port Vale win at Northampton

Posted Sunday, February 09, 2020 by PA

Port Vale manager John Askey has set his sights on the play-off positions in Sky Bet League Two after his side’s 1-0 victory at Northampton on Saturday.

David Worrall scored the only goal of the game 18 minutes from time as Vale became the first visiting team since Leyton Orient on October 5 to win at Sixfields.

Northampton, who dropped to sixth as a result of this defeat, created enough chances to win the game, but they were frustrated by the excellence of goalkeeper Scott Brown, who made three superb stops.

“It was a really good battling performance against one of the top teams in this league,” said Askey.

“Everything favoured the opposition in terms of the conditions and the way that they play with the long throws.

“They’re all over six foot, so to come away with three points in conditions like that is fantastic and the players showed a lot of guts and determination.

“Scott was tremendous in goal, but our defence handled their centre-forwards very well and won a lot of headers.

“Overall it was a really good team performance and it gives me a lot of satisfaction because you can’t always win pretty and today was far from pretty, but to a man everyone dug in and fought, especially in the second half.

“It was great to score such a good goal as well and now I think we’re level on points with the play-offs.

“It’s great to be in that position at this time of the season. We’ve talked about trying to get promoted this season and hopefully today will give the players confidence that we can get results no matter what type of opposition we come up against.”

Northampton lost ground on the top three following the defeat and now face a huge home game against leaders Swindon on Tuesday.

“Frustrated is a very apt word on this occasion,” admitted manager Keith Curle.

“We didn’t get into our flow in the first half and that was slightly down to the conditions but, we didn’t win enough first contact and didn’t land on enough second balls before half-time.

“But you’ve got to give Port Vale credit because they defended very well and denied us a few opportunities, and as and when he was needed their goalkeeper did excellently.

“There were some defining moments and I thought we had a strong case for a penalty when the lad got dragged down.

“We put enough balls into their box and we had some quality deliveries, but we missed that extra half a yard to get away from our man and make first contact.

“That’s something we’ve been very good at, but the important thing is for us not to walk away thinking we were unlucky – we have to understand we didn’t do enough.”