Pudding, Chips & Gravy

Comfort eating. Easing a troubled mind through the heavy consumption of high caloried, artery blocking, delicious food. Seeking solace through fat. It may be frowned upon, but it works wonders.

Pudding, Chips & Gravy is one of my personal faves, mushy peas optional. Traditional and cheap. And this is what I immediately turned to after yesterdays frustrating defeat at home to Torquay. Was it a bad day at the office? Were we unlucky? Or were we simply beaten by a better team?

There's an element of truth in all three proposals. We can point at the performances of certain individuals - Stuart Tomlinson was clearly suffering from the 'Fulham Experience', and looked a shadow of the 'keeper who had produced heroics at QPR, John McCombe and Gareth Owen always look susceptible when up against pace, and Torquay had it in abundance. The ever reliable Lee Collins struggled at right-back, Griff - despite his 20-yard screamer - once again proved himself a very limited midfielder, and Louis Dodds delivered another shocker.

Subs Rob Taylor and Sam Morsy joined the battle late in proceedings and offered next to nothing. On the subject of substitutions we need to examine the circumstances behind Torquays second, and decisive goal. Gareth Owen had to go off after suffering a cut to his face, possibly the result of an elbow, with the ball out of play for a Torquay throw-in. As Owen was leaving the pitch substitute Adam Yates was still getting himself sorted, and consequently Torquay took the throw before he came on. The thow resulted in a goal with us down to ten men. Micky Adams was rightly irritated by this when interviewed by Radio Stoke, why was Yates messing about putting his top on when he was needed immediately?

We could have had a couple of penalties in the first half, Justin Richards getting thrown to the floor twice in off-the-ball incidents with a cross ready to be delivered. Astonishingly the Ref was having none of it.

Ultimately though, Torquay played better football than us. Some bizarre criticism of Torquay appeared on the OneValeFan forum last night - citing that our visitors were 'one dimensional' and simply 'hoofed' the ball up the field for their pacy strikers to chase. Really? Ok, whenever the ball landed in the vicinity of the Homer Simpson-esque Guy Branston it was, by the laws of nature, hoofed back with interest from where it came. Branston has been doing this for several years now, and yesterday did it effectively. But that aside Torquay showed they could play with the ball on the ground, and could do it at speed. In truth they could perhaps have scored more, our defenders looking like rabbits caught in the headlights on several occasions.

We should have found an equaliser close to the end. A free-kick was parried out to Lee Collins, who had the option of lifting the ball over the grounded keeper or playing the ball into the path of better placed colleagues for a simple tap-in. He did neither - opting to blast the ball as hard as he could straight at the keeper. It summed up his day.

Fortress Vale Park breached once again. The fast food merchants of Stoke-On-Trent may well be seeing too much of me again this season.