If there’s one thing that has been proved time and time again over the last two and a half seasons at Walsall is that, if you try and make players of our standard do anything different, it’s usually a complete disaster. Today was no exception.

As we predicted yesterday, Mick Halsall was indeed tempted to go 3 5 2, with three central defenders playing so well at the moment and, it turned out, to match Oldham’s line up.

The team was Oakes, Mills, Gerrard, Roper, Pead, Leary, Keates, Smith, Wright, Barrowman, James. This meant that, irony of ironies, in a team formation that doesn’t use wide men, we lined up with two right wingers!

It didn’t work. Pead and Wright were not able to get forward enough to provide the attacking threat that the Oldham wing backs did, non of the middle three looked really that comfortable and, worst of all, Barrowman and James were completely incapable of holding the ball up long enough for the wing backs to join. We were awful.

Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t because Oldham were any good. In fact they weren’t. They were just more used to playing the system they were using.

Unfortunately, they also carried a goal theat, in the shape of regular nemesis Luke Beckett.

For the record, Warne went close for Oldham in the first half and James had one shot saved. That was about the sum total of the entertainment.

In the second half, James had a free kick curl very narrowly wide, but the game was looking like heading for a completely boring bore draw, before Luke Beckett robbed one of the defenders of the ball and rounded Oakes, who seemed very slow to react and slotted home.

Two minutes later, Gerrard attemted a clearance in a nothing situation, which seemed to ricochet around before bouncing into the net off Warne.

Oakes didn’t inspire any confidence all afternoon and, quite frankly, no one escaped from this exhibition with much credit. Unless we find a goal threat, we are in trouble deep, as no one looked like scoring.