Listen to full match commentary of the match on ShrewsPlayer
Marcus Braddock previews the game
With three wins in a row under our belts, Shrewsbury Town welcome near rivals Port Vale to the Greenhous Meadow. Marcus Braddock previews the game...
Port Vale aren't having a great time this season with all sorts of things going on off the field adding a distraction to the team, but Mickey Adams team has been turning in some decent results regardless. The season has been a bit up and down for the Valiant Staffordshire club, making any graph of their season look like a 6 year olds sewing project. Their league 2 campaign started pretty well with a draw at home to strongly fancied Crawley, followed up with an away win against Barnet. An away draw with Burton came next, followed up with another home win against Accrington, which gave Vale an unbeaten record that hinted at a top 6 finish. But defeats at home to Southend and away against Wimbledon pushed the Valiant's down the league toward mid-table, before a couple of wins pushed them into 3rd place, their best position so far this season. A home defeat against ourselves put them back out of the play-off positions, and although they have flirted briefly with the top positions a couple of times, the upper middle portion of the division has been their home since. For every decent run of form that Vale have had, they have had a poor run to match it, as can be seen by their last 8 games which consisted of 3 wins, followed by 3 defeats, then another 2 wins. Considering their off the field problems, I think Port Vale have had a good season so far, a weaker team may well have been pushed nearer to the bottom under such conditions.
Head to Head
In 39 league games so far, Port vale have beaten us 11 times, 13 games have been draws leaving a remainder of 15 games that have been won by us. Our highest scoring encounter was a 7-3 win for Shrewsbury at the Gay Meadow in September 1970, whilst Vale's best win against us came in a 4-1 win at Vale Park in 1960.
Top Scorer (all competitions)
Marc Richards 10
Sean Rigg 7
Doug Loft 5
Gary Roberts 5
Assists
Tom Pope 6
Doug Loft 4
Adam Yates 3
Marc Richards 3
Clean Sheets
8
Performer
23 year old forward Sean Rigg started his career at Bristol Rovers, and became a regular team member in the 2006/7 season, and appeared in the Play-off final at Wembley that season against ourselves. The following season was a good one for Rigg with nearly 40 League 1 appearances, but the following season he dropped down the pecking order a little and ended up on loan at Grays, Forest Green and Port Vale over the next couple of seasons. Vale decided they liked the look of him and signed him up when he was released at the end of the 2009/10 season. So far in his Port Vale career, Rigg has scored 10 goals in 49 appearances, and this season he is wearing the number 17 shirt.
Squad news
Shane Sherriff and Reuben Hazell are not fit enough yet although Hazell is back in training.
Referee
Andrew Madley from West Yorkshire. Games this season 19. Yellow cards 53, red cards 3.
Prediction
With a pitch inspection planned for the game at 2pm today, the game may not even go ahead. But if it does, I can't really go for anything other than a Town victory. It will have to be a robust performance though, Vale are a difficult team to beat and in front of a larger than normal away crowd, they will be well motivated. But with us in a great run of form and having already beaten Vale this season, I can't predict anything other than a 2-0 win for Shrewsbury Town!
COYB!!!
Marcus
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ShrewsWeb spoke to Graham Turner to get his thought's ahead of the game
On the Hereford victory...
It was not the best of conditions to be trying to play football under, particularly the longer the game went on as the pitch cut up. We did all the hard work in the first 45 minutes and I thought it was a real scrappy second half, but we had already done enough to win the game. We felt comfortable from a defensive point of view, one or two half chances that we might have done better with , but we as a defensive side, didn't let many chances in, I think Chris Neal only had 1 save to make.
On Port Vale...
In my experience of Mickey Adams' sides, they are all very organised, always very competitive. He's got some decent players there, they're only 2 points off the play-off spots and I would suspect that they have been slightly disappointed with what has happened in the first portion of the season. So if you put it all together, they are a threat and we have got to again emphasise about discipline. Don't give them the opportunity to put their two big central defenders into our box for set plays. But at the same time, every side at this level has weaknesses.
Watch Graham Turner's prematch thoughts on ShrewsPlayer
