PEWSEY Vale manager Nick Maggs thinks that he’s been rewarded for shelving his ‘rose-tinted glasses’ by witnessing his side put in their finest performance of the season so far last weekend.

Vale claimed their fourth win in as many games as they put fourth-placed United Services Portsmouth to the sword on Saturday, with Tom Ritchie netting a brace alongside goals from Ricky Franklin and substitute Michael Martin as Maggs’ men ran out 4-0 winners at Ball Road.

The Pewsey chief was delighted with the efficiency of his players’ performance and believes that their display proved that dominant possession football isn’t a prerequisite for success in the Sydenhams League.

“I would love for us to play 90 minutes of tiki-taka football but at this level, you just can’t do that,” said Maggs.

“As I always say to people at the club, every day is a school day for me because I’m always learning. I think that when I started, I had my rose-tinted glasses on and thought that we could play like that.

“That’s not to say that we’ve gotten too far away from my football philosophy, which is getting it down and trying to play the right way – we don’t pump 40 or 50-yard balls forward to try and create goalscoring opportunities.

“On Saturday, we did the right things at the right time and it was fantastic in terms of game-management.

“It might not have been our best footballing performance but it was definitely our best team performance of the season.

“We’d been beating a lot of teams from below us in the table and I think we just took a lot of confidence from that.

“It was also our third clean sheet in the last four games and that was great to see – defensively, we’ve been superb recently and hopefully that can continue.”

Vale, who are currently eighth in the Division One table, make the trip to ninth-placed Ringwood Town next weekend.

Maggs will be without young midfielder Lewis Brown, who is away on holiday.

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