Port Vale vs Arsenal, 24 September 2025
There are only two teams in the football league which aren’t named after the places where they’re located; and yesterday they met for only the second time in 30 years. Port Vale (Stoke on Trent) and Arsenal (London) are currently 61 league places apart, and to be fair it showed: Arsenal just weren’t as good as they should have been on paper. The wage bill for one of Arsenal’s players is more than the entire Port Vale team’s wages; after last night’s performance, I wonder if Arteta is getting his value for money?It was a disappointing performance from the London side, who seemed to have trouble doing anything with their overwhelming levels of possession. After grabbing an early goal, they struggled to do anything positive or meaningful with the ball, despite the professional encouragement from their fans, and the consistent support of the officials. The Arsenal goalkeeper, Kepa Arrizabalaga, passed a pre-game fitness check, which was more than could be said for the linesman monitoring the Port Vale defensive line. He continued to show signs of an ongoing shoulder injury, which prevented him from lifting his flag anywhere above horizontal for the entire first half, while the Arsenal forwards frequently found themselves receiving the ball with nobody but the goalkeeper to beat. You think I’m kidding? There were zero Arsenal offsides in the whole game.
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| The linesmen, whose shoulder shows signs of improving |
The referee too seemed in awe of the Premiership team’s visit to Vale Park, admiring their ‘strength on the ball’ and ‘technique’ which frequently left the Vale players getting a close up of the turf as they were ‘tackled’ off the ball. Strangely, this was not a symmetrical arrangement; whenever an Arsenal player was dispossessed, this was seen as a sign of rough treatment and was typically identified as an illegal challenge.
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| The referee reminds the Port Vale strikers to be kind to the Arsenal goalkeeper |
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| He's not offside, ok? |
One thing I must confess, though, is that Arsenal didn’t employ cynical and overly defensive strategies after obtaining their opening goal. They kept moving the ball with good technique – they didn’t anything particularly productive with it (they achieved over four times the number of passes that Vale did), and most of their second-half corners were passed all the way back to the halfway line – and wore Vale down with efficiency and energy. They saved their timewasting for more subtle tactics, and one of the most egregious was with the substitutions. I’m not expert at football, but watching one of the Arsenal players (and an England player too) dawdle his way off the pitch when he was substituted was more gamesmanship than sportsmanship. Maybe he wasn’t looking forward to the long drive home? Maybe he just wanted to stay and play a bit more?
 It's a long walk to the touchline. So long, that even I could get my camera out, focus it, and take a photo. |
He wasn’t the only one in no hurry to leave the field of play, as other substitutions took longer than was probably fair. There were delays taking throw-ins, there were in-team discussions about whose turn it was to take this particular corner, and maybe you’d like to try it this time?
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| Here's an Arsenal corner. Coming soon. |
Port Vale, for their part, showed considerable effort but also looked to be in awe of their visitors. During the second half, the Vale front line got a hold of the ball a couple of times – at one point in a very promising position facing goal on the edge of the penalty area, only to flounder at the last minute. In fact, the data shows that Vale didn’t even achieve a single shot on target. It was going to be one of those nights.
While being a significant disappointment for the Arsenal, who only scraped an early goal and a late one, the game was entertaining for sure. One of the funniest parts of the match came in the second half, when, after a Vale substitution, Arsenal were expected to restart play with a throw-in. There was a breakdown in communication between the referee and the Arsenal player: the referee pointed persistently to where the throw-in should be taken (approximately 5 metres ahead of the halfway line, on the Arsenal left), while the Arsenal player was standing around 10-15 metres further forward of that point. There then followed a confused discussion between the Arsenal player, trying to take the throw in, and the referee, vehemently pointing 10 metres further back. This happened in front of where we were sitting, and with the crowd around us (did I mention this was virtually a sell-out?) we did our best to point out the miscommunication.
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| Taking a throw-in. It's supposed to be from where the ball went out. Who knew? |
Even though miscommunication is frequent in football matches, and it was noted among the fans. Arsenal brought almost 3,000 fans to Vale Park, and they stood, sang and shouted with a high degree of organization and professionalism. There was genuinely no unpleasantness between the two sets of fans, none of the jeering or rude gesturing I have observed at other grounds, and everybody got on with shouting for their team. At least I think that’s what we were doing – in some cases I struggled to turn the chanted syllables into phrases, or even specific words, and on a couple of occasions I managed it, then regretted it. Football fans can certainly employ some colourful metaphors.
Speaking of organization and professionalism: the Arsenal players certainly showed this, at a completely different level to the Vale players. At one point in the first half, Vale gained possession (legally and everything), and in order to hold possession, passed it back from the midfield to the defenders, where it was carefully passed along the line. But not for very long: with alarming efficiency, the Arsenal players deployed a 10-man press, with the defenders moving up to the halfway line and the forward players squeezing possession. Vale almost crumbled in the face of this threat, and did well to keep the ball away from their goal: Arsenal in possession were interesting; Arsenal chasing possession were terrifying.
The size of
Arsenal’s squad was clear to see, with players at the match wearing numbers
like 41, 49 and 56. This was probably the Arsenal B-team. I hope so, for Arteta's sake. On the other hand, the Port Vale shirts didn't even show a sponsor.
Football is an 11-a-side sport, with shirts numbered 1-56.
The stats tell the story fairly well:
Arsenal dominated all the main numbers, and have to be disappointed with
the output from their efforts. A lucky
early goal, and one at the end made it for them. The game was billed as a
David vs Goliath clash—except David forgot his slingshot and Goliath turned up
wearing Crocs. Arsenal, sitting proudly at 2nd in the Premier League, took on Port
Vale, languishing at 19th in League One, a full 61 league places below. The
result? A narrow and nervy 2–0 win for the North London giants. Yes, really. They say that you can only beat the team in
front of you, and that’s all that Arsenal managed, when a much more impressive scoreline
was expected. Sad times for all.
Possession
Arsenal 81%
Port Vale 19%
Passes
Arsenal 789 (731 completed, 93%)
Port Vale 183 (115 completed, 63%)
Shots
Arsenal 11 (7 inside box , 4 outside)
Port Vale 3 (2 inside box, 1 outside)
Shots on Target
Arsenal 4
Port Vale 0
Corners
Arsenal 6
Port Vale 1
Offsides
Arsenal 0
Port Vale 2
