Well, after the Lord Mayor’s Show, the dustcart well and truely arrived at Bescot last night.

It’s been a long time since Walsall played at home, and they have been undefeated in three away games since, but, as we said in the match preview, breaking teams down at home is a completely different proposition. This was a dreadful performance, in the absence of the two players, Mills and Osborn, who had been holding the midfield together recently.

Broadhurt went with a 4 4 2, of Oakes, Wright, Gerrard, Roper, Fox, James, Leary, Smith, Demontagnac, Barrowman and Devlin. Yeovil lined up 3 5 2 and the Walsall formation couldn’t cope.

Let’s make no bones about it, the key to this game was that the middle four were terrible. Leary and Smith were mostly anonymous, giving the back four no cover at all and creating absolutely nothing. James was dreadful and hardly put a foot right all night, even his set piece delivery being woeful and fulfilling the warnings several Forest fans had given about him, while Demontagnac went missing for long periods and his main contribution to the first half was a deserved bookng for a late tackle on their right wing back. But more of him later.

The performance soon spread to the rest of the team. With no one covering, Roper got more and more nervous and his performance dropped in quality dramatically, Oakes was indecisive and worried the entire back four and Fox’s only answer was to lump the ball forward, as no one was coming to collect it from midfield.

Eventually, Fox and Demontagnac failed totally to close their man down, as he jinked his way into the box and crossed for the first goal. Poor defending and, although Fox was badly exposed, I’m afraid no full back should have let him get that cross in.

Shortly afterwards, Roper, now havign one of those occasional poor games he has, when he looks a complete donkey, let the ball bounce instead of heading it clear and it went over his head for a Yeovil player to latch onto and score.

All this might not have mattered too much, as Yeovil were pretty awful themselves, but we were offereing little if no threat up front, as the midfield gave no quality posession to Barrowman (who spent the evening trying to win impossible headers) and Devlin.

2 - 0 down at half time, then and Braodhurst decided to change things to 3 5 2, bringing on Timm for Wright, then Westwood for Smith later on, with Fox moving into the centre of the park. He was obviously thinking that James and Demontagnac would push further forward, making sure it didn’t turn into 5 3 2, buit he was to regret not taking Ishmel off and putting Fox out there. As for Smith and Wright coming off, it could have just as easily been Leary and James, for all the good they were doing.

Unfortunately, the crowding of the midfield didn’t have the desired effect and the game just got very scrappy. The only way a goal looked like coming was from a mistake and, quite frankly, it was Oakes and Roper who looked like making it and we had several lucky escapes, rescued by Anthony Gerrard, or the (when he did get on) excellent Westwood.

Barrowman started getting stick from the crowd, although how he was supposed to score when the midfield created nothing is beyond me, and Timm was reasonably ineffective, as the game looked like petering out. Enter Ishmel Demontagnac. A break down our left, Ishmel covers it, forces the player to turn away from goal (as he should), then he hacks him down from behind for absolutely no reason. Completely justified second yellow, as the player decided to go wild at the ref and his own team mates drag him away. That boy has problems.

Positives? Very few. Gerrard never stoped trying and his head didn’t drop, Devlin looked dangerous on the odd occasion we gave him decent possession and Westwood was excellent when he came on. As for the rest, on that performance, I’d send Leary back to Luton, as he gives us nothing different from what we have already, James was ineffective and might as well go back to Forest, as he’s no better than Wright, Timm is a luxury player who is wasting wages (although he was, at least, the only midfielder to try and keep the ball on the deck) and may as well go back to Old Trafford and Demontagnac should be told he has no future at the club, with that attitude.

Thank God Mills and Osborn will be back after Bradford.