I don’t know what they put in the half time tea at Bescot, but I wish I could have some.

Following the debacle on Wednesday night, Merson had promised changes, but they turned out to be minimal as he went for a 4 4 2 of Murphy, Pead, Gerrard, Roper, Staunton, Wright, Osborn, Kris Taylor, Demontagnac, Leitao, in his final home game, of course, and Fryatt. For the first forty five minutes, it made little difference.

In the first half, the midfield, especially Taylor and Demontagnac, were anonymous, Osborn struggled and Wright looked, unsurprisingly, short of match fitness. The Saddlers conspired to make a very poor looking Blackpool outfit seem a threat, but, despite Keegan Parker’s continual falling over antics, Roper and the quite magnificent Gerrard were little troubled. With Pead having one of his poorer games and Staunton caught out for pace a few times when Blackpool did actually put an attacker on him, it’s a good job.

Things seemed to take a turn for the worse early on, too, as Fryatt limped off (to be holding an ice pack to the back of his thigh for the rest of the half), to be replaced by Constable. The youngster did, however, immediately look far more comfortable playing instead of Fryatt, rather than with him. A Leitao replacement he isn’t, a Fryatt stand in, he might be.

Walsall did create a couple of first half chances from nowhere, courtesy of Constable, but wasted them and were duly booed off at half time.

Merson, at half time, made the right choice by substituting the largely ineffective Demontagnac for Nicholls and putting Jorge out on the wing. Demontagnac had already proved he had not learned his lessons from Forest and had been very lucky to escape the ref’s attention for kicking out at Parker, when the Blackpool man was already heading for a card himself.

The first twenty minutes of the second half were completely different. Granted a goal helped, as an early free kick was flighted perfectly onto Constable’s head by Taylor, but the main difference was tempo. We actually picked up the pace of the game and, with it, our passing improved greatly, so that the Blackpool defence was constantly stretched. So much so, that a rank defensive error dropped the ball into Constable’s path and he lashed home his second.

We could have had more, but whatever we had put into the tea also began to work off and Blackpool came more into the game and Murphy was lucky to see a twenty five yard shot crash back off his bar when he was well beaten. He does seem to have problems with long range shots.

Ossie was subbed towards the end, to a warm round of applause from the F2Go upper tiers, for a much improved second half and Gerrard clearly was man of the match, by a street, but he last five minutes belonged to Jorge Leitao, as the crowd gave him a send off to remember. I even had a tear in my eye. Good luck, Jorge!