This is the thing with finishing just three places above the relegation zone. There are so many 'what ifs?'
Vale made it to safety under John Askey but for much of last season, Boreham Wood, Maidenhead and Bromley felt far more than hypothetical.
A couple more injuries, a refereeing decision here and there could have seen the Vale off, but the player most celebrated for preserving Vale's Football League status was Scott Brown, the keeper on his debut season who swept the board at the end of year awards.
In fact, Brown did so well he might feel he has nothing else to prove at the Vale in Season Two. Rest assured, that is not the case.
For example, Askey wants to play out from the back more so, at 34, Brown is adjusting.
He said: "I have played for managers in my career that tend to go quite direct more than not. So, it has not really been me playing out from the back.
"But as you have seen, the two centre halves are splitting, Luke Joyce is dropping in and the full backs are going wide. So, playing with my feet is something I have had to work on a lot more.
"Even for someone at my age you never stop looking to improve. Usually you just boom it straight down the middle to the striker but sometimes I am asked to hit Monty or Dave Amoo or whoever is the wide man, and if you kick it out of play then the manager is not overly bothered because you are aiming for that sort of area.
"It is another tool in your box I guess if you can do that. I think modern academies now are going a different way. They don't do so much goalkeeping, they do more playing out from the back.
"What do you want from a goalkeeper? Do you want one that keeps the ball out of the net or one that is brilliant with his feet? It is about finding the right goalkeeper for every team. But I never stop trying to improve and work on things, I even passed one out with my left foot the other day so that was a surprise to me!"
That attitude and ability has sustained Brown through a career of more than 450 games, on the books at Bristol City then making his league debut at Cheltenham and going on to Aberdeen, Eastleigh and Wycombe before he signed for the Vale last summer.
Not bad for a player who thought his professional career was over before it had started when he was let go by his home-town club Wolves.
He said: "I got released from Wolves at 18 and you think your world's ended. One minute you are a footballer and the next you are not.
"Then I worked at a sports shop in the town - Ron Flowers Sports - it's still there now. I was training Tuesdays and Thursdays with Welshpool and playing on a Saturday then luckily a call came.
"Otherwise you don't know what could have happened. It's all about luck."
That call was from Mike Stowell, a keeper briefly on loan at Vale but who Wolves fan Brown had idolised playing at Molineux.
Brown explained: "He was centre of excellence coach (at Wolves) and did one night a week. When I signed at 16 for two years he was released and went to Bristol City then eventually became goalie coach there. Somehow he found out I had got released. He phoned me up and asked if I wanted to come down.
"I ended up signing for the year and stopping with him and his family for nine months.
"He was my hero growing up, he played 400 games for Wolves so he is a legend. So, to go and live with him and his family.....he'd take me down the pub and I was thinking 'I'm having a pint with Mike Stowell!'
Brown's other heroes are his parents, mum Liz, a former England squash player, and his dad Pete, a tennis coach who died five years ago having had Parkinson's disease in his final years.
Brown added: "He was the fittest man I knew and to see that happen was horrible. It was for about five years, for the first two years he was okay and then in the last three years you are going to visit him in a home. It was really difficult to watch someone you love disintegrate like that. Your mum and dad are your heroes and they were brilliant to me.
"My dad eventually passed on a Sunday morning and our little boy Max was born on the Friday. It was an incredible low to high, the strangest time of my life."
As Brown points out, Parkinson's affects people who have it in different ways, from far more mild to severe. His father died shortly before Brown signed for Aberdeen and the keeper supported local Parkinson's and also Alzheimer's charities there to the extent he won the club's Community player of the year.
He spent two years each at Aberdeen and Wycombe but wanted to move back closer to his roots and family in Wolverhampton last year. So, the Vale were able to take a keeper who was an ever present for a Wycombe side who had won automatic promotion from League Two.
Neil Aspin had made a keeper a priority and had also inquired about Chris Neal who was out of contract at Fleetwood. Neal would sign for a Salford side who were spending big to get out of the National League but, even had money been no option for Vale, Aspin had already decided to go for Brown.
He'd admired him playing for Wycombe and had the perfect contact in the Wanderers boss, his former Vale team mate Gareth Ainsworth.
As Brown recalled, the one time Vale winger still has huge affection for the club from his 14 months spent bulldozing past full backs from 1997-98.
Brown said: "I remember when we came with Wycombe to Vale a couple of years ago and won 3-2. The manager was saying what a great club Vale was and how much he was looking forward to coming back.
"He's a fantastic manager and a great bloke, but after the game we were all raging because we were at the ground until about 7pm afterwards because he was still there talking to everyone!"
Brown's own club is Wolves. He's occasionally made it back from a Vale game in time to see them at Molineux in a late for TV kick off, and Vale's chief executive Colin Garlick was put on red alert for FA Cup final tickets before they were knocked out in the semi-finals by Watford.
So, there's certainly no grudge about being let go by them.
Brown said: "They released me at 18 because they said Carl Ikeme and Wayne Hennessey were going to be better than me. To be fair they were spot on."
Modest as he is, you'd be hard pressed to find a Port Vale fan who would swap Scott Brown.
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