Competition for places?

All About Walsall
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Three games in and there is a sense of optimism around Walsall. A positive start to the season, and potentially a selection headache for Mat Sadler.

Throughout the squad we have seen competition for places, and we think that for the first time in a while, there is a fight to make the bench.

We discuss those staking a claim for first team football, and a development plan for the younger players.

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Apple Podcasts - ‎Yellow Ribbon Podcast: Episode 13: Competition for places? on Apple Podcasts

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I’d honestly rather sign another midfielder think we have enough defensive options if we are only going to bring in one more player.Riley Knowles and Foulkes can all play right wing back we have Williams Daniels Priestley Hussey and Mcentee who can all play centre back.Ideally I’d like two more signings but it doesn’t look likely

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Being a bit of a pedant here, I would certainly call it an encouraging start - but 1 win and 2 defeats isnt particularly positive.

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But, the players ARE playing positively, none of this “we are only here to make the numbers up hoping we don’t lose by many” approach that has plagued our team for the past number of years.
I’ve said before on other threads, we may not be favourites for the top spot, but we are at last scoring goals, with DJ, Draper & Oteh most certainly going to tear up a few defences this season…

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Its mad how quickly people forget the start to last season. Its like it was a decade ago.

Walsall 4 Hartlepool 0
Walsall 2 Swindon 0 (league cup)
Newport 0 Walsall 1

I don’t want to put a dampener on things, but lets not rewrite history

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Swindon & Newport we created nothing and got lucky - that was the warning sign, against Blackburn we looked like we were going to score every time we went forward. That’s the difference for me. Morecambe (A) aside we look more positive in the final third than last season

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So it was pure luck that we were a few points off the play offs in January? Christ

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I’m not saying we would have made the playoffs but I think we’d have stayed up there if DJ had been with us all season. It was such a kick in the balls, we never really recovered from it.

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Looking back at last year and saying it was all awful, and this year is all rosy all of a sudden, is a typical case of Walsall FC positivity goggles. And it’s total nonsense.

Already fed up of seeing it.

Nobody loves to rewrite history more than Walsall fans. Its survival mindset :joy::joy:

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yes? when we went on that unbeaten team did we win any game comfortably? no we didn’t. Needed a 90th minute winner against crawley, scraped a win against Rochdale and had some rocky moments against Wimbledon. Just to highlight 3 games. The signs were there but nobody looks at that when your winning games. Myself included but it’s painfully obvious now looking back on it

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Okay, so in the Ray Graydon season we went up by winning the majority of games 1-0. Fine margins. You get 3 points for a 3-0 win or a 1-0 win. Makes no difference.

We won a game 4-0 and Chris Nicholl, another of our great managers said, I would rather have won 4 games 1-0!

If your winning nobody cares - there are no ‘signs’. Many teams are promoted by keeping it tight and knicking a goal.

Fact of the matter is had we not lost Bennett and DJ, Flynn would have had us around the play offs. I dont think we woll be anywhere near this year from what I’ve seen

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But we’ll be playing some attractive football whilst getting dicked, because we played that way in 1978, so it must be what we need to do now. Forget that all our promotions in the last 30 years have been achieved with solid, well drilled, and organised teams.

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not old enough to remember the graydon season well enough but I did see last season and I’m all for winning games 1-0 by being organised and well drilled if we’re creating chances and look like we’re going to score, we didn’t really ever look like that last year