Job done, writes Walsall blogger Mark Jones.
I thought Saturday was a classic away performance and offered further evidence of how quickly we’re growing as a team.
As you’d expect, Northampton put us under a bit of pressure, but nothing we couldn’t handle.
We passed the ball well, there was some quality movement and it was topped off with two tremendous goals.
There is a danger to labelling young teams.
When you’re a Walsall fan you become accustomed to things not turning out the way you’d expect them to.
As we saw last Wednesday, the term ‘Golden Generation’ is one to avoid, especially given that Roy Whalley already has.
‘Money’s Marvels’ has been used in the press and I’m sure there are plenty of words beginning with the letter d to go with Dicky Dosh.
Maybe we should settle for something less catchy but less likely to rebound on you, like ‘kids that could be quite good … possibly’.
Whatever we call them, it is becoming a pleasure to watch Dann and Gerrard looking meaner by the week.
Foxy is easily having the best spell of his career and Ish is shaking off the ASBO tag and starting to hurt opponents with his footballing ability alone.
I thought Mark Bradley had a relatively quiet game on Saturday - and he still ended up with a fine goal and a superb assist.
And it shouldn’t be forgotten just how young and relatively inexperienced these five actually are.
Whether our youngsters are inspiring the senior players or vice versa, there were some fine performances from the ‘oldies’ at Sixfields too.
Clayton has been back to his best for some time now, Wracky is showing there’s intelligence to go with the versatility and Mikey Ricketts is providing the occasional bit of class that your average League Oners don’t know what to do with.
Tommy Mooney has earned cult status with Saddlers fans already and it was fantastic to watch an experienced pro like Tom play with a smile on his face on Saturday.
Oh yes and I must mention a promising debut from Peter Sweeney – a possible ‘guvnor’ in the making, he made the opposition fans ‘shut it’… and he hadn’t had any dinner.
The only down side of course is that we can’t possibly expect to beat Northampton again next week, it’s just not the Walsall way!
5 Comments
Bearing in mind your tendency to bash Colin Lee at every chance, are you by any chance going to recognise his role in the development of the current crop of young kids. Taking into account that he really pushed the club to start investing in youth development and put a lot of the ground work into place 5 years ago that we’re now seeing the benefit of? Or are you going to ignore that?
I’m right with you Saddler, I don’t care what anybody may say Colin Lee did a dam good job for us. Too this day I still believe that the boards move to get rid of him was total wrong… well just look at what we got after him !!!!!!
Just to play Devil’s Advocate here doesn’t Merse The Curse deserve some credit as well! It was he who gave a pro contract to Scott Dann and he who signed both Ant’nee Gerrard and Daniel Fox and gave Ishy his first go in the first team to boot (usually whoever was marking him!).
The man was a visionary and we just didn’t see it!
Actually, by his own admission, Merson was going to release Dann because he didn’t think he was good enough.
A lot of credit has got to go to Mick Halsall and Bill Jones for their work with our youngsters.
Long may it continue!
nothing wrong with Colin Lee bashing. He did nothing to foster youth development, just frittered it all away. The only young players to get a decent run during his time at Walsall were Gary O’Neil & Chris Baird. Pity neither one of them were Walsall players. Next thing you’ll be telling us is that he did the same job bringing talent through in WV1!