Mon Nov 13, 2006 11:04 pm
Saw the game live on Sky, no commentary thankfully, so I didn't have to suffer fools.
My thoughts? The side were appalling, had no idea what to do with the ball, no game plan, little in the way of defence or impact, a bit dirty when they inevitably got frustrated at being so useless, and never, ever a threat.
Enough about Macclesfield. We should have dominated that game, and should have buried what was one of the worst teams I've seen, NZ Knights aside, although only just.
My comments from my scrap of paper:
Pead's distribution is atrocious, he's better to run with the ball and try a short pass instead of hoofing it into touch.
Playing hoof up the park does not work when the forwards are slow / slight.
Walsall cannot pass straight - have we beren training on playing the angles all week, as it was very pretty, but ultimately useless - very few passes found their intended target, and it was only because Macc were so poor that we stayed in the game. The answer to our poor possession statistics (stat attack thread) is obvious once you watch a match.
Hector Sam. What can I say? He's slower than my dad, who's got an artificial hip, and falls over at the faintest touch. On the evidence of this display he is also a very lazy & selfish player, and it's a shame that our two best chances fell to him instead of Butler. He does have a good first touch when the ball is played to him, but too often he's not creating space, or running off the ball, and that's a passenger in my eyes. Butler on the other hand never stopped running.
Midfield played deep, which I gather is the norm, and it looked as though we were going straight from wingback to forwards, with the midfield protecting the defence rather than supporting the attack. No teeth in that department, and it shows.
Comedy moment - when all the extra footballs came flying over the home stand! Very funny.
Lots of our play going forwards ended up going down the left channel. Do our team not trust Mark Wright, or were Macclesfield paying so much attention to him that the natural outlet was the other flank?
Pead's red card - idiot. Saw him try to back out of a challenge he was already committed to, but he was way too late. I think this was born of the frustration in Walsall at being so much tidier than Macclesfield, and more evidence of that came with the yellows later.
Overall, a poor display, but one goal could have made it an away win (I don't think we were ever in danger of losing). There's enough there to give me hope. Clean sheet, organised defence, but we're in desperate need of a midfield that knows it can attack as well as defend, some work on direct passing in training, a striker who is better than Sam and a little extra pace if we're going to try wingbacks away. We're quite tidy, we clean up well, mostly support each other, are very fit, and continued to chase for the full 90, even when down to ten men, and macclesfield really didn't deserve more than the draw we gave them.
I think we'll be lucky to keep Money beyond the end of the season - he's worth more than this, and I hope he has targets for the January transfer window, and funding in place - promotion is the only way he'll hang around, I think. Ince on the other hand must feel like Merson did - as if he's inherited a load of dross that he's got no idea what to do with. Best of luck to him - they were absolute pants.
So, in the end, I know we're not great, but we looked better than the divisional standard, and that's all we need to get out of here. Just a couple of tweaks to this team and it'll run rings round everyone in league two, and should be more than capable of staying up next year.
