A scintillating exhibition of attacking football, culminating in a deserved win. And England weren’t bad either!

Seriously though, the Saddlers got three well deserved points today courtesy of a wonderful performance from new signing Eric Skora. The Frenchman’s career has been stalled recently at Preston, but today he showed why he got his France under 21 caps, as he strode around the Bescot pitch as if he owned it.

Don’t get me wrong, this was far from a perfect performance from the Saddlers, as they gave their very poor opponents far more of the ball than they should have and were indebted to Joe Murphy for a very good save to keep it at 1 - 0 in the second half, but some of the attacking play was superb.

Honourable mentions have to go to an excellent performance from Jorge Leitao in his unfamiliar position on the right wing, for Ishmel Demontagnac for again showing glimpses of his potential on the left (and he must have impressed the legions of watching scouts more than the nervous looking Matt Fryatt), the excellent holding job done by Kinsella and the surprisingly good job done by Chris Westwood as an emergency right back, but Skora was easily and far away the best player on the pitch.

Demontagnac put the Saddlers ahead with a ferocious shot in the first half following some pathetic defending from the Gills and Skora put the cap on his performance with a low drive from the edge of the box in the second. He barely wasted a pass all afternoon and gave a wonderful example of how to play the defence splitting pass without continually giving away possession. More than one member of the Saddler’ squad should watch and learn that the “glory ball” is only glorious with an end product. On top of all that, his set piece delivery was superb, confounding the Gillingham defence all afternoon. This was possibly the best midfield performance I’ve seen from a Saddler for many a long year and I gladly joined in the chants of “sign him up”.

My man of the match? Need you ask? Eric Skora.

French midfielder Eric Skora has today signed a one month loan deal for the Saddlers and is, therefore available for the Gillingham game.

The Metz born attacking midfielder is 5 foot 10 and 11 and a half stone, so will add some welcome physical presence to the Saddlers’ midfield, given the size of Osborn and Taylor. He is a former French under 21 International and was signed for Preston from Nancy by David Moyes. His career at Deepdale has not taken off, however, and he has spent some time on loan at Kilmarnock. They were offered the chance of signing him on a free, but that fell through.

Although he is supposedly two footed, the Preston sites all class him as a central midfielder and our official site, which has finally caught up with the news, says he can play central or wide right, so it is difficult to see quite where he will fit in with Merson’s plans at the moment, but we shall doubtless find out tomorrow.

It’s back to League action this week for the Saddlers and a game at home that they really should win. While Walsall were passing their first round FA Cup test at Merthyr, Gillingham were, of course, suffering one of the shocks of the round, going out to non league Burscough. The question may well revolve around how well their manager has picked them up from that particular disaster.

Gillingham Manager Neale Cooper would be tearing his hair out, if he had any. He has inevitable selection problems with Flynn (banned), Hessenthaler (hamstring) and Cox (international duty) out. Paul Merson has also denied the on loan Paul Smith permission to play against his current club. The opposition will, most of all, be hoping for the return of some strikers, as that is where they have suffered most from injuries this season. All in all, however, the Gills will still be missing ten players, for one reason or another, but Cooper can welcome two players back into the squad. He said: “Darren Byfield, Andy Hessenthaler, Paul Smith, Jason Brown, Danny Jackman, Ian Cox, Brent Sancho, Alan Pouton, Steven Hislop and Michael Flynn are all out. That’s not a bad side! The positive is that Daniel Spiller has been back training this week, along with Paul Shields. They have not done a lot though, so it is a big task for them to come straight in.”

Gillingham’s injury problems do make ours pale in comparison, especially given that they have a much smaller squad to start with and the Manager has been desperately trying to bring in some loan reinforcements this week, seemingly unsuccessfully.

The ex Saddlers in the team will, therefore, both be missing tomorrow, but there may be better news of the Saddlers’ ex Gill, Simon Osborn, who looks like he may be fit following his hamstring injury. The Express and Star said yesterday that he might have recovered enough to take part. Chris Westwood and Dario Larrossa are also expected to be ready to return, Joe Murphy will be back after being unavailable for the Cup Tie and we are still waiting to hear about the possible loan signing of Eric Skora from Preston. With any luck, however, we might see a much stronger looking line up, something along the lines of:

Murphy, Gerrard, Roper, Westwood or Bennett, Fox, Broad, Osborn, Taylor, Demontagnac or Skora, Leitao and Fryatt, with a bench including Gillmartin, Kinsella, Westwood or Bennett and Larrossa.

Whatever the Saddlers’ line up, it has to be stronger than the Gills, especially as they must be short on confidence. Their away record is one of the poorest in the Division, as it is:

Played 7, Won 0, Drawn 4, Lost 3, Scored 5, Conceded 11, Points 4

They can’t score away from home and are leaking goals. I keep saying that I’m going to give up predictions, but this surely has to be a comfortable home win.

Paul Merson was interviewed on Talk Sport this morning on the Breakfast Show, mainly about the England vs Argentina game. It’s his comments about the First Division race that Saddlers’ fans will be interested in, however.

When asked which was the best team we had played this season, he replied that there hadn’t really been one and that there was no outstanding side this year, as there had been before. He went on to say that, if ever there was a year to get out of this Division, this was it.

The interesting thing is, of course, is that does seem to contrast with what the Chairman has been saying, when he said that we were building for the future and he didn’t think promotion was an option until we were ready to make sure we stay up.

For once, I completely agree with the Manager and think Jeff has got this one wrong. So, what do you think? Join in the discussion on the message board.

The Trust have kindly sent us a report of the club AGM, which took place Monday morning. The details are on the message board.

I will point out that, of course, these are the views of the Trust representative at the meeting, not this site, but they do give an insight into the current workings of the club.

As we exclusively revealed on the message board this morning, following Roy Whalley’s admission at the Fans’ Forum, Chippenham Town striker James Constable has arrived at the club on trial.

The Express and Star are carrying the story this morning, along with the fact that Willenhall Town striker Dean Perrow has returned for a second week’s run out with the Saddlers, as has the goalkeeper target we revealed a couple of weeks ago, former Nigerian number Two Murphy Akanji.

Akanji is currently playing for Sliema Wanderers in Malta and should not present any work permit problems, as he has an Irish passport, courtesy of his marriage to an Irish woman. He wouldn’t be able to move until January, however, with the International window being closed at the moment.

On the finances, Roy Whalley said that it’s been a difficult time, but we’re working hard to rectify the position. All of the contracts entered into when we had the ITV Digital money have now ended. We have only survived without going to the extremes other clubs have thanks to the Chairman and Directors’ support.

The reasons are all to do with the collapse of ITV Digital. We did not spend any money we didn’t have, but were committed to spend on the basis of having it.

We did spend more than intended trying to stay up, but Roy was certain that is what the fans would have wanted us to do.

He did not say anything about having to sell players to survive, and did not seem pleased with the stories in the Express and Star.

He did say that the work put in on the youth system in recent years was now bearing fruit and that we had, probably, the best set of youngsters we’d had since the sixties, not just at youth, but also at schoolboy level.

In response to a question about the Stadium Suite, RW said it is generating more business, not just during the week, but before games too. He was very pleased with how well fans were looking after it and wanted to thank everyone.

The new stand. We are still working hard on finding an advertiser, but there are no time scales.

The hotel should be ready April/May time.

The deal for the hotel was a one off payment for the land, which will come through in the next set of accounts. That was the deal the company wanted, but our benefit will be the cash for the land and the increased business.

Roy confirmed that we had a clause in the agreement that Paul Smith will not be playing on Saturday and that was at the Manager’s insistence. The deal had been made because Smith had not relocated, which was part of the deal for him to come here. The constant driving was itself causing him injury problems.

The last Banks’ 2 for a tenner scheme was not a success, as some of their pubs had not participated. He would be taking this up with Banks’s.

Roy himself brought up the question of Ron Atkinson’s booking. He defended his actions on the basis of Mr Atkinson not having committed any crimes and being no worse than some others they have had on. However, he did seem surprised by the strength of feeling expressed by all fans, not just the Trust and ISSA reps there, that Mr Atkinson had done something which, if he repeated on match days, would quite rightly have meant him being ejected and, possibly banned. Roy also was unaware of the racist joke told by Mr Atkinson at Sheffield Wednesday earlier this year.

The club have been accused in the past of failing to communicate very well with fans. Well, this time they’ve left themselves wide open!

There is normally a Fan’s Focus Group Meeting following the club AGM, but there had been no announcement from Bescot Stadium about one this year. It turns out that it is happening, however, as it was announced at the AGM this morning that a Focus Group Meeting will be taking place this evening at 8.00 pm in the member’s lounge at the Saddlers Club.

I’m sure many fans will want to go, all other things being equal, following one of the replies to the questions posed at the club AGM by the Supporter’s Trust.

The Trust asked;

“Walsall FC Ltd. is currently reporting net liabilities of £1.128 million. The auditors report that it is reliant on the directors’ ongoing financial support to continue as a going concern over the next twelve months. Under what circumstances would the directors withdraw their support”.

The club’s answer was that the Directors had agreed to support the club for the next 12 months as the alternative was administration. This begs the question, just how close to the edge are we?

It’s going to be the 15th November before the Saddlers find out their second round opponents.

Ball number seven was first out of the hat this afternoon, as Walsall got what all teams crave, a home tie. We have been drawn against the winners of the Yeovil vs Macclesfield replay, due on Tuesday 15th November.

League One player of the month Phil Jeavons got a late equaliser for the West Country club yesterday.

Paul Merson now has the proceeds from the televised tie, with which to do some rebuilding, and a winnable second round tie. Progess into the third round would be a massive confidence boost for players and fans alike.

The second round ties will be on the weekend of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of December.

Never Mind The Quality, Feel The Win

The Merthyr vs Walsall FA Cup tie was decided in the end by the superior ability of the League side, but this was hardly a great advert for the game.

Walsall lined up Gillmartin, Gerrard, Roper, Staunton, Bennett, Fox, Broad, Kinsella, Taylor, Leitao and Fryatt, in what turned out to be more of a 5 3 2 than a 3 5 2. Despite Merson saying that Fox would be captain, it was Staunton who got the armband. Maybe the rumours are true and this will be his last game for the club before departing to Eire?

Paul Merson has already said on a couple of occasions this season that he cannot understand why the players are ignoring instructions and playing the ball long. He must be despairing this morning, as Walsall time and time again fell into the trap of lumping the ball forward. What made this even worse was that every time we did get the ball down and pass it, we opened the Merthyr defence up at will. Fryatt and Leitao looked dangerous whenever they got possession, but that was all too rarely.

Instead, for long periods, there was little to choose between the teams, with Merthyr, if anything, playing the better football. Fortunately, they were fairly toothless, the centre of the defence was rock like and Gillmartin did everything expected of him (including one excellent second half save from a ricochet - never easy).

The details are quickly told. Fryatt was bought down early on (and for those doubting it, replays showed it a nailed on penalty) and duly tucked away the spot kick.
A few minutes later, Merthyr failed to clear the ball properly, Fryatt produced a sublime lay off to Kinsella, who struck the perfect dipping volley into the corner for his first goal for the club.

It was a superb strike from Kinsella, but he made up for it not long afterwards when Staunton gave away an unecessary free kick on the edge of the box with a clumsy challenge (not for the first or last time on the night) and Kinsella moved to one side to let the admittedly powerful shot through.

The second half was instantly forgettable, with Merthyr making virtually all of the running and Walsall just giving possession back to them by trying long balls down the channels. A better team would have made us pay.

Man of the Match? Honourable mentions for Gillmartin (did everything asked), Roper and Leitao. However, this was the Matty Fryatt show. Earned a penalty, scored it and got an assist for the second, he frightened the life out of their defence every time he ran at them.