Tue Mar 24, 2015 10:45 am
It's a funny thing being a Walsall fan these days. Distance and lack of games is obviously an advantage because people seem to have got a little stale, partly due to style of play and partly due to expectations for the club. As someone who doesn't get to many games a season these days, I can only call it as I saw it.
First and foremost, Bristol are an excellent team with, player for player, far more skill and intelligence than we have. If you'd put Freeman, Agard and Little into our team, it would have been very different. But, of course, those players come at a cost (a loss of over £9m in the last accounts apparently!). So, whatever you think of our performance, we can only play as well as the opposition allows and they didn't allow it. You have to give credit to them. Plus, right or wrong, Smith knows that we can't play a pressing game because we don't have the players and Bristol did have the players to ruthlessly exploit us if we tried. 2-0 could easily have turned into 4 or 5 and I think Smith had an eye on that.
Other observations;
i) I thought the defence played fine for the most part. The first goal was more about Bristol tactics and O'Donnell. They'd had a corner just before the goal, and their player had stood right on O'Donnell to stop him coming out for the ball. Come the corner they scored from, both O'Donnell and Taylor were preoccupied with trying to shove the Bristol player out of the way rather than watching a ball coming into the 6-yard box.
ii) After the first 15 minutes, I didn't think we were overrun in midfield. For that first 15 minutes though, we were all at sea. Chambers and Mantom wanted to play in a flat bank of 4 midfielders but Freeman and their other midfielder interrupted that, with one dropping into the hole between defence and midfield and the other dropping back a little. They passed straight through us and, initially, our only response was for Chambers and Mantom to drop almost into the back 4 which gave them all sorts of room. We eventually got ourselves sorted and I thought, thereafter, Mantom performed well up to around an hour and Chambers was my MOTM for breaking up play the way he did.
iii) A key factor in the result was our left side. Because Little was charging forward, it left all sorts of room for Cook. To a significant extent, the result and the performance came down to whether Little or Cook made most use of the space. Whilst Cook was willing, made some good runs and asked for the ball, he was sadly lacking in possession. Little, as we know, did a bit more with it!
iv) Up front, Bradshaw wasn't fit, you could clearly see it. He had no impact on the game at all. However, Hiwula didn't show enough to say he would have made a difference either. Again, compare with them and you can see why we lost.
v) Which brings us to the enigma, Sawyers. He really splits opinion, doesn't he? Well, as others have said, I thought that he came out with some credit in that anything good came through him. He clearly has great vision and passing ability and he used it at times. But here's the problem, I believe - played in that position, it's fine for him to drop and pick up the ball and spread it about but, having done so, he is the second striker and he MUST be in the box as crosses are delivered. He needs to be the one making the dash in to be on the end of a ball whipped in by Forde or Cook.....but he never seems to make that run. Is that coaching? Is he being told to hold his position? I'm not sure, but it doesn't work because we end up with one player in the box surrounded by 3 or 4 defenders. The only other option is that one of the midfielders surges past Sawyers and makes that run, but neither Chambers or Mantom are that type of player.
Someone mentioned about how poor our crossing was. I see it a little differently. We got in good positions at times, players had a yard on the opposition and a cross was called for. But more than once, I saw players looking up in that position to find that there was nobody to aim at and thus delaying. Often, mistakes in football are not about the player in possession, but those around him who fail to provide correct options.
I can understand the frustrations. We're playing a defensive style of football based on trying to keep it tight and snatch something but, unlike in previous times when we've done that (under Mr Graydon, Nichol and even Smith a couple of seasons ago), we don't have the right personnel to pull it off most of the time.
It was disappointing to have so little to cheer about on the day but, unlike others who are understandably more weary, I don't think we're a million miles away from having a decent team. It needs a couple of players and it needs some tweaks to formation which the manager doesn't seem to have any inclination to make. It needs something to change for next season. Part of me wonders whether, as much as I thought Sawyers was head and shoulders above the others in terms of football awareness, him moving on could be a catalyst for the team to progress as a whole?
