Express & Star

Saddlers Social: Walsall fans have their say

A group of Walsall fans have their say after the club lose two matches in a row.

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Jon Taylor

I said last week I thought we were very Jekyll and Hyde and Saturday's performance demonstrated just that.

A solid first half combined with an abject second half up there with some of the horror shows of last season, of which there were many.

The trouble is when we are good we are ‘alright’ not a top seven team as Clarke keeps reminding us but with enough to get us by but when we are bad we are atrocious and looking like a National League side.

Clarke said midweek he’s not scared to shake it up and change personnel and systems, whilst he changed the system on Saturday going with one up top he kept perhaps the two weakest players in the squad in the starting line-up in Liddle and Holden.

Clarke needs to keep shaking and settle on his best line up which I don’t think he has found yet which is a scary thought over a quarter of the way through the season. A big performance is needed on Saturday not only to improve results on the pitch but improve the mood off the pitch.

The positivity of July is withering and social media grumblings are getting louder and the only way to improve this is by performances on the pitch, which I do hope Clarke is the man who can deliver.

Ian Newbold

What sort of performance are we in for this Saturday? And I’m not on about from the players.

The matchday entertainment has been somewhat inconsistent this season. We’ve really not stuck to a formula and it has ended up all being a bit naff. The half-time stuff has been especially rank.

It’s unimaginative, half-baked and not worthy of being called entertainment. The last three home matches we’ve seen different people with, or without, the microphone at half-time.

They grab a random from the crowd to kick at goal from varying distances, for prizes most people in the ground will already have, like tickets for the next home game. The game would be a challenge for our watching substitutes let alone for a half-cut fan wearing a pair of Converse.

It’s not funny, not entertaining, there’s no jeopardy, no engagement with the crowd, nil points WFC.

And for the first time in 30 years, I’ve absolutely no idea what tune we run out to. Not that I’m so old now I’d have to Shazam the song. I’m not convinced we play the same tune each week.

We can’t solely rely on the football for entertainment, especially at the moment, the club really wants to improve the matchday experience where it can.

To end on a positive, the powers that be must be commended for ditching the ‘Super Saddlers, Pride of the Midlands’ rallying call. That’s the one change I think we can all applaud.

Jack Talbot

What an up and down season. Two weeks ago we were all on a high and going for a fifth win in a row and now we could be facing a third defeat in a row on Saturday.

I wasn’t there on Saturday but from what I have heard we played as good as we have done all season in the first half but just fell apart defensively in the second. Who is to blame for conceding so many goals and being so poor at basic defending. The players? The coaching staff? I believe it is a combination of both and has to be addressed as soon as possible.

I still believe in DC but he is not helping himself with the strange substitutions and tactics and for the fans booing? I do not agree with this as we should all win together and all lose together and support the team no matter what!

Kevin Paddock

Our supporters have been through the mill for the past three years but continue to be one of the few positives at the club. 852 fans made the long journey to Orient on Saturday and were served up a disgraceful second half performance that’s become quite the norm this season.

Of the seventeen goals we have shipped in the league this season, fourteen have come in the second half - that is a very worrying statistic. What is happening during those half time team talks? Are opposition managers out thinking Darrell? Are players becoming complacent or tired as games go on?

Anyway, back to the fans...we sold out Northampton, 1,000+ at Crewe, the increased home attendance proves that the fans are doing their bit to try and turn this faltering club around, however despite the overhaul of the playing and coaching staff this summer it still feels very similar to the chaos of the past few years.

It won’t be long before the fans begin to lose their patience.

The next few months are crucial for the new regime - once you lose the fans it’s very difficult to get them back on side.

The fans are doing their bit, it’s over to the players and staff to do theirs.

Stuart Cox

Ouch. A painful second 45 minutes on Saturday after feeling pretty confident at half time that we would see it out.

Jules and McDonald in particular in the first half were excellent. The defensive stability that has been talked about for large parts of the season though seems to be disappearing at a rapid rate.

Fair enough, the first goal on Saturday was a decent strike, but the third goal was poor defending in general and the second was absolute Sunday League madness. What worries me now is the lack of confidence throughout the side.

Four wins seemed to ignite everyone and the top seven seemed to be within our reach. Now we have strikers who (apart from Adebayo’s tap in) are still yet to score and are bereft of any confidence at all (Adebayo’s miss in injury time sums it up) and a defence that has shipped six in two matches with fans who are wondering if this is any better than last year.

What was obvious on Saturday and has been all season is how much better we are with Guthrie in the side. When he went off, Liddle in the middle is not the answer. We needed someone to bring that attacking threat and I’m not sure what Hardy has to do to get on that pitch as he (and Alfie Bates last weekend) look like they can unlock something.

I’m still confident that we can be ‘there or there abouts’ at the end of the season, but I feel that will come from a solid and consistent starting 11. All of our successful sides in the past have been pretty much a repeated team sheet every week and at the moment you have to ask whether DC’s ‘tinkering’ with players and formations is having an adverse effect.

Nick Etheridge

When Darrell Clarke took hold of the reigns in the summer we quickly found out that he has a reputation of a tinker man. He'll adjust formations and tactics to counter the opposition and won't be afraid to change that during the game if things are going awry, which we were crying out for under the previous regime. I'm all for a manager chopping and changing things but at some point we need to put a stake in the ground and stick to it

Following our four game winning streak, it feels like the manager is back to square one. It's hard to tell if Clarke always intended to play a 4-4-2 formation, given that there is an element of square pegs in round holes on the right wing. It may be a coincidence that we put together our best run by sticking to that formation but it feels like it has been abandoned at the first opportunity. After the first half on Saturday it seemed like Clarke was spot on with his selection, but a poor second half showing means the same questions with regards to altering formations are being raised again.

Chris Saunders

Usually in October I am writing angry letters to supermarkets about putting Christmas stock in far too early, not this year though!

My focus is more on trying to second guess what direction we will take in January who will leave and who will come in and try to kickstart an otherwise monotonous season ahead.

The start has not been great and we don’t seem to have a squad that will mount a charge this year, barring any sort of mass upturn January onwards. I don’t like to criticise individuals but some of the team selections seem baffling currently and I guess that is in part due to the unbalanced nature of the squad when one or two players are not available due to injury.

What is concerning is Guthrie seems to be key to any success for us and if he has a sustained period out, we may struggle to hit any sort of form at all. I can’t see this being a season to remember but wouldn’t it be nice to have an FA Cup run to give us something to cheer about this season?

Robert Dearn

Well that certainly wasn’t the type of response to a bad loss against Salford that we were all hoping for. Once again the fans turned up in their numbers, and once again we were let down massively.

All the momentum from four straight wins has now seemingly gone, and what looked like a solid defence now looks extremely leaky. Six goals conceded against the two newly promoted teams isn’t great, especially as neither team has hit the ground running. Oh and the goals still aren’t flowing.

So how does DC bring about a change? Personally I don’t know. I feel that in a very short space of time, we have seen the best and worst of a lot of the players.

This is what makes this Walsall team so frustrating. Saturday was a tale of two halves. The first we looked fairly solid, and we were chipping away at the Orient defence, we were getting forward well and trying to create.

The second half, well we conceded three, that’s all that needs saying about that. There is a big lack of consistency from all of the players, and that’s what is concerning. We don’t have anywhere enough players able to put in a solid 7/10 week in week out.

James Kenealey

What on earth is going on in that dressing room at half time? Across the last two games we’ve shipped five goals in the second half alone. This against two utterly unremarkable, bog-standard League Two outfits who we’ve somehow contrived to make look like world-beaters. I’m not seeing a lot of these ‘dressing room leaders’.

In the first half of the Salford and Leyton Orient games we looked like we were marginally in control - workmanlike but steady. But from the second Orient curled in their equaliser after half time, you just knew the writing was on the wall.

It’s really simple stuff that has killed the games too. Dan Scarr’s horrendous miss-kick to allow Salford’s second. The complete mauling of a basic 10-yard pass down our left that Guthrie just inexplicably stopped chasing to put Orient clean through.

I don’t expect to get much against Cheltenham but Oldham are a complete basket-case club and we need to be looking to take at least a point from Boundary Park if our aspirations extend beyond 22nd.

Finally, a special mention regarding the Acorns pledge made by Pomlett, a charity close to my heart. Isn’t it nice to have a chairman who engages in the community rather than skulking in his lair counting the pennies?