With all the doom and gloom around the first team it’s nice to see the youth team improving. Beat Coventry yesterday.
Seems lleras doing a decent job so far with a key area of our club. Well done!
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Great news, because they’ll be playing next year the rate things are going.
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I wonder if he wears the same size shoes as Clarke?
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Good old Mickey Carry
I can’t remember the last time we had an ex Sheffield Wednesday Centre half as gaffer, can you? 
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I have thought for a while he will end up as our manager, I don’t know why but got a feeling he would be a better fit for us and do a good job
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If I’m honest, if Llera wants to be a manager then I’d take a year of ■■■■ under Clarke to let Llera build a bit more experience and a philosophy through the youth to then bin DC in the summer to give Llera the job.
Kid down the end of my road actually plays for the youth team, Ben Friel for anyone who watches them.
Loved Llera as a player. Always thought he’d be a good playing fit for us.
Glad he’s seemingly off to a bright start coaching the yoof.
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I’ve got exactly the same gut feeling about that, and what will happen in the future. Its early days with him, but he does seem to be doing a very good job and comes with a good reputation. Lots of people will hate this but I would take him and Jon Whitney as a management team to build us from whatever level we bottom out at. As I said on the other thread I feel sorry for Whitney, contributed loads and was rewarded with feck all unlike ROK (who I love by the way) who probably now gets silly k’s a week for being the daft bloke that talks funny, and goes “come again?” when john Terry’s talking with his hand over his gob to some pigeon-english speaking 60k a week substitute.
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Good post. I just don’t think Whitney would come back to Walsall. Another one abused by the fans to the point where he wouldn’t want to be here. He was never ready for the job of rebuilding a complete squad after all of the good players left at the end of that first season. But he played a very important role over many years at the club, not as a “physio” as most would like to call him but as “performance coach”, which was about so much more, including making sure players were 100% ready for each match, physically and mentally. I remember watching our warm ups years ago and they were light years ahead of the kick abouts other teams had.
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We are getting lots of injuries this season. I, for one, would have Whitney over Czucman any day of the week. The worst thing that Whitney did was appoint Sharps. Cutler was an outstanding goalkeeping coach and Whitney was an amazing strength and conditioning coach. Sadly, he was no manager though…
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He was assistant manager at a time we can now now only dream of. I’m sure he was very good at representing the manager in the dressing room, and the players in the manager’s office. Sadly, it all went wrong when he got control of , among other things, recruitment and matchday tactics.
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Another good post. No manager? Certainly not the finished article but maybe he had potential? His biggest fault at that stage was that he could work with players who bought into his way but didn’t seem to be able to handle others. Smith, on the other hand, understood that every player needs something different to bring out their full potential. But that first spell when he took over from o’dismal suggests that he could manage with the right group of players.
But, as you say, how we could do with him back now as performance coach.
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Whitney was the best physio the club has ever had. I would have him back (in that role) in a heart beat.
He certainly was not the best manager we have had, the team he managed was the fittest in the division.
He knew strength, conditioning, nutrition and diet like no other.
He was a fantastic servant to the club he dearly loved, gave everything he had to whatever task was assigned to him. I was sad when he was appointed manager because I knew a some point they would have to let him go. Unfortunately, the results didn’t go well for him, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.
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I hope that Jon Whitney reads this: he showed great loyalty to the club, even when Wolves came calling. Cutler and Smith both took better offers when their stock was high. I think most fans now realise what a tough job managing Walsall is. Looking back,!perhaps expectations were too high…
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JW was probably the best physio ever to grace a football club, he was probably the reason we had some of the best injury ridden players that ever graced our pitch, whoever thought he would make a good manager was at best deluded, but we know who that was 
, in appointing him as manager they effectivley ended a great relationship
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I agree re Whitney - certainly better than output current crop of physio and strength/conditioning team.
I would also have him back, if he would come
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JW was easily the bestest ever physio ever to have walked upon this earth. His ability to take people with no legs and transform them into Olympic 100m gold medalists is the stuff of legend.
Apparently Isiah Osborne has been dead for 2 years before he signed for us.
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After the the crap he took from some quarters here he wouldn’t contemplate coming back. I would be inclined to think he is probably laughing his socks off at the predicament we are in now but then again he is a bigger man than that. A bigger man than those who thought they were incredibly witty by referring to him a ‘Whitless’ and the like on here.
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