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" I wasn't entirely satisfied with the performance, when I compare it with the previous five games, which everyone keeps reminding me about, we've got something from the game. I felt that the first-half was a non-event in terms of getting at the races, we looked a bit sluggish, slow and a yard short of getting to things. In the second-half we picked that up and it's then finding your goal, once we found that, you are never comfortable at 1-0 because there is always something that can happen, which it did in this case.
" It was a good 1-0 though and it was an area where you thought that if we keep it right then Port Vale are not going to get a goal in free play and we are going to work it away, and there might be a second chance with Port Vale pushing on. We have shot ourselves in the foot though with a poor challenge around the penalty box, one or two of the boys have said that it wasn't in the box but the referee has given a penalty so it must be. It looks like a foul to me so I am not grumbling about that decision.
" I think that is poor play from us because we allowed the referee to make that decision. It's shooting yourself in the foot because decent defending would keep Port Vale out we felt, it didn't but we have a point more than we had this morning. So it's trying to balance up the emotions in that, I have got a dressing-room that feels it has lost the game. You do that when you are 1-0 up, if we had come back to 1-1 then we would have been happier although it was the same performance. We feel disappointed that we haven't got more than the one point.
" The season is 46 games long and you are going to have difficult days and good days, we are not going to win every game 3-0 or 4-0. It doesn't always stand to reason that home or away you beat the bottom team because you are at the top, nobody has got a divine right to beat anybody. We want to be better than we have been today, but we go away with something that we haven't achieved in the previous five away games and there is some sort of solace in that. "
" I want, and the players want, a better performance and a better result than that. It's the standards that we have set ourselves over this period of time. We're not satisfied with that at all but we will be where we are on merit and we'll finish where we do on merit but we've got to be better than that to finish higher than we are at the moment.
" We've set our own standards, I'm not worried about other people (Port Vale), and we've not played up to those standards today, but to say that we have been brought down to another team's level is not quite right. We play our own level and work at our own level, and we're not up to it, and certainly not in this game and certainly the previous results away from home suggest that we are not up to it away from home.
" If we can get our win on Tuesday though, and we'll need the crowd behind us there, if we can lift ourselves up and get a win against Huddersfield, which again won't be easy. I keep telling people that none of these games are easy to win, but if we can do that then maybe this one point added to those three can look good. At the moment though I can't justify that because we haven't played that game at home yet. We certainly need to be better away from home if we are going to maintain the thoughts of staying in and around the top parts of this league.
" He (Evan Horwood) is a good player, he can pass and he can play, we've had people around him that have not responded to some of that play. We thought that the left-hand side with him and Simon (Hackney) that we could get forward and get crosses in. Evan did a terrific one-two and got himself into a good crossing position in the first-half which we couldn't get a toe on. It was a good bit of football, he has had two good games now and he's showing people what we thought when we watched him that there is a good young footballer in him, and by playing more games he will just get better. "
" Cleveland Taylor on the bench was purely fitness levels, this is a pretty heavy pitch here, it's not a fast pitch and Cleveland suffered a wee bit last week in the first hour. We felt that his fitness levels weren't high, but he has had a good week of training. We just looked at it that we had got more strength around the team at the front part with (Danny) Graham and obviously he was on a high after last week, and Joe Garner and Scott Dobie can do that. We just felt that if we needed an injection of pace then we could do that with Cleveland. In general we went for that and we thought that we had done alright without getting ourselves the win.
" I don't think that I would have picked a different side at home, I've got Dobie, Garner, Graham and Hackney in the side going forward. I'm trying very hard to pick a team to win games every time that we play. I would never pick a team not to win, we might make it hard to beat sometimes but there is always a view to winning a game of football. I think that front forward line hopefully suggests to people that that is a winning forward line.
" We are going to be up and down because we are learning very hard at this level are some of these guys. We finished eighth last year, we want to be better than that and we put the pressure on ourselves, if that is the right phrase, by being in the top part of the league right the way through the season and we want to stay there. I have come out of a dressing-room that looks like it has been beaten but is hasn't, and they are the standards that the players set themselves, that I set them, and we are trying very hard to keep up to them.
" When we slip below them we feel it first and yet we haven't lost the game. People just say that they see that Port Vale are bottom so we are going to win the game, it doesn't work that way. We have to be a bit better than we were today but we said at half-time that if we have to grind it out to get our win then we do that but we couldn't quite do it. "
" It was a poor decision by (Peter) Murphy on the challenge, we really don't need that challenge, I'm not blaming Murphy but he is the guy that has made the challenge that is seen as a penalty. It looked like a foul to me basically from where I am looking at it and I think I have got a similar view to the referee, he has got his arms around the big guy (Kyle Perry). There is always that concern about if he is backing in but if you see arms down the front of the striker then you are going to give the decision to him. I don't know if it is in or out because I have not seen it again, but it's in, he's given it and that's the end of the story for me.
" I am disappointed because I want things to be better, I want the standards to be higher all the time, week-in and week-out. Knowing that sometimes it is not going to happen, and when it is not happening we still want to win our games. We've come reasonably close to it today but with a bit more quality from us we could have made sure that we had won the game.
" That's where you are disappointed because there are quality players out there that just weren't quite at the races. The first 45 minutes was a bit of a non-event when if we could have lifted it then then we might have put the game in our favour. There you go though, we haven't done, we've got to work very hard on Tuesday to try to turn that into a win.
" I think we have played some crisp passing football since I've arrived, we've stayed in the top three or four of the division for the last four months since I have been here. So I'm not really sure that we have stopped playing crisp passing football. We are trying to do that, we are trying to get people forward. I think that my players would disagree that we have stopped playing passing football, I'm not asking them to do anything different. We're just asking them to do things a bit better and we will keep doing that. "