Enjoy!
The four teams relegated from League 1 the previous season were Walsall, Hartlepool, Swindon and Milton Keynes, who took the top four places, with as EN says, a 10 point gap to Lincoln in 5th.
MK lost in the play offs but won the league comfortably the following season.
That suggests to me that the league that we dropped into was poor, and my memory of the many games I watched, with obvious exceptions, supports that view.
Fox didn’t play left-back that season either (maybe dropped in the odd game) Kris Taylor was left-back, Fox played left midfield. He moved to left-back the following season, where he was actually far more comfortable.
It doesn’t really take away from the original point though, we were solid, we were drilled to be solid. If we scored a goal we were very likely to go on and win the game. Dann and Fox would be either in or very close to being in my all-time Walsall 11, they were that good in my opinion.
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At least a keeper more likely to whack it
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Psyched myself up to watch the highlights this morning. Their first goal was serious snoozing by Adebayo but we see it time and time again where a striker (or other player) doesn’t track a player into the box as they are too busy ball watching.
Our goal was very good, to be fair. A great ball by Guthrie (again, have to be fair) and then Norman got a good ball in that Wes finished well - good goal.
The penalty miss wasn’t as bad as I pictured from what people said last night. Yes, it should have been better and hit harder / at a more difficult height for the keeper to save.
Norman’s slip / trip didn’t help for their 2nd and if he hadn’t would probably have snuffed out that attack. The fact the player had so much room in front of our own box to pick his shot was more an issue for me tbh.
As others said last night, we are just a bang average 4th division team who won’t have enough consistency to be up there in the play offs or beyond - we’ll get some good results and also some infuriatingly bad results.
10th-12th place more than likely.
Meh.
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Didn’t Dickie have to blood Manny Smith that season too? It was lucky he turned out decent.
Dosh had some luck in it was clear we had some quality players at that level but he made us hard as nails and it never felt like we wouldn’t win. Not always great to watch but great to support.
Goes back to set pieces being so important, we had several players who could put good balls in that season
Not sure this league is poorer though, there was some utter dross the year we went up.
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I think he might have played a game or three as a sub, but I don’t think he appeared much.
I was hoping, really hoping we could get out of this awful league this season.
After last night’s performance all hope has been woefully curtailed.
I’ve said this a few dozen times, we’re missing Holden, badly. He’s the cog in our wheel, he drives us forward and we seem to fall apart without him. Unfortunately, we’ve come to rely on him to heavily and we now see the results of his absence.
I don’t know how long he’s going to be out, but Tom Marlow observed him wearing crutches just 20 feet away. Not good news!
Ok, we lost to a decent Salford side, but losing to lowly Scunthorpe was a very bitter pill to swallow.
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I just remember his debut, he was chucked in at deep end but played really well.
Long time ago though I couldn’t remember if he had featured much
I think he was only a bit-part player until 08-09. Not sure if it was Mullen or Hutchings who first made him a regular. Based on his play when he was a regular, I expected him to have a much better career than he had. Non-league by his mid twenties shouldn’t have been in the script.
Perhaps injuries were behind it, I can’t remember.
Not really interested in the past, or ‘who killed who’ in 2009 or 1987.
What really matters is here and now, regrettably the here and now is dreadful.
And yes, I could have scored that pelanty, surely you just put your boot through it, very few goalkeepers could save a current Deeney pelanty!
That lost us a home game against relegation candidates, it just isn’t good enough, a win last night could and should have seen us in the Play Off places, instead we are back to mid table mediocrity.
I think many have excused last night as a ‘meh’, perhaps we have all got used to the fact that we are the mediocre poor relations of the Midlands and it will always be that way.
I have seen many fellow Walsall followers fall by the wayside over the years and fear that our gates, when and if we are ever allowed back will start to dwindle substantially unless we can suppress this attitude of “well it’s little owd Worsul aye it”. End of rant 
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Very poor first half where we were clearly second best and deserved to be behind, totally overwhelmed in midfield. While we improved second half they still created the better chances and Jack rose kept us in the game. Guthrie can still pick the odd pass but is so immobile it’s like playing with ten men when we don’t have possession. Really struggling to dominate teams without Holden, as we did when Gordon was injured and Rory was shoehorned out wide.
The great man agrees with your good self.
Clarke’s interview they “frustrate him so so much”
“Could do with one or two new faces in the window to freshen things up.”
Even bigger gap from the 95 promotion winning team have a look at that side.
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Frustrating seems to be the reflection on last night, for most of us and DC.
Well, I think that will be the defining word for our season and DCs tenure at the moment.
I think I’m right in saying we are yet to win a game this season that Holden has not started.
I think we have also scored 7 out of 22 pens in all competitions.
The problem is not effort, it’s quality and we don’t have enough.
Several fresh faces needed and all needs to be quality, not untried kids from Championship clubs.
I think Saddler, Clarke and Dutton also need to go on a defensive coaching course.
That really is appalling.
They practice regularly don’t ya know! (like they obviously do shooting practice!)
I think history is important.
In this context us older but not completely “ancient” () ones have seen us get out of this league three times and up out of the league above three times. In my case that is six promotions in 45 or so years of watching us. That is a lot of lower league football watching for not much return.
What that perspective enables is a relatively foggy but nevertheless worthwhile exercise in trying to work out what happened in those six seasons that didn’t happen in the other thirty nine(in my case). You can then bring it right up to date by doing a spot the difference in trait between those six teams and this one. Or, if we chose you could just do it based upon the three I’ve seen get out of this league and this one.
A relevant start could be penalty takers. Buckley/Penn in 79/80, O’Connor in 94/5 and Keates in 06/07. A lot of points to be won by having somebody good a pens in your team. Darrell says we practice pens a lot. In which case, it is an ability thing - which explains a lot about our current status.
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Yes. I think most penalties have an 80% scoring success rate?
Even 50% would have seen 11 go in.
7 out of 22 is beyond inexcusable.I’d go as far as to say if a UTS poster was chosen at random to take the penalty, we’d get more than 7 out of 22
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