Saturday’s result was an important one for the Saddlers. A defeat, following Scunthorpe’s win against Forest on Friday night, would have left the team perilously close to the relegation zone again. Instead, another clean sheet and three points from a game in which we played badly and were second best in midfield means that something has changed from earlier in the season. So what is it?

Back in August, Anthony Gerrard was only making the bench and Ian Roper not even in the sixteen, despite the fact that they were the successful centre back partnership at the back end of last season, when we had our all important winning run. Through circumstances, not least the injuries to Staunton and Westwood and the need to move Fox to midfield and Bennett to left back to cover, they have become the de facto first choice partnership. It is no co-incidence that our current run of form has been since they came back together.

Saturday’s performance against Hartlepool was not a good one. The midfield was over-run for most of the game and Hartlepool had the majority of possession. Granted they had three first choice strikers out with long term injuries, but the on loan Dean MacDonald looked a real handful in his last game for them before his recall by Ipswich. Despite that, Hartlepool didn’t really look like scoring, other than on the odd occasion they got some width into their attacks and that was, in the main, down to the superb performances by Gerrard and Roper. First message to Mr Merson: Paul, don’t break up this partnership when Westwood, Staunton and Bennett are available to play there again, as it is easily your best one.

The other difference? Matty Fryatt. His movement on Saturday was superb and he took his chance as well as any player could have been expected to. The game had 0 – 0 written all over it, if not for his intervention and he was the only player on either side who looked like scoring. In fact, if he had been playing for the opposition, as well as Gerrard and Roper were playing, the result would almost certainly have been the other way round. If he does go in January, I just do not see how we could replace him for the sort of money we would be offering for players and, let’s not forget, he has scored at a rate of 0.52 goals per game this season and that is a tremendous record for a 19 year old. Second message to Mr Merson: Don’t sell him unless it’s a ridiculous offer and 350,000 isn’t ridiculous enough.