Walsall have drawn up a shortlist of candidates for the vacant manager’s job and hope to make an appointment by Friday, says chairman Jeff Bonser.

The 30-plus applications have been whittled down to four or five and Bonser will be interviewing the candidates in the next few days as he aims to have the new man on board as a matter of urgency. 

“The timescale is to get a new manager on board as soon as possible and we’re trying to do our best to get the right man for the job,” Bonser said.

“We’ve had a long meeting about it and we’ve sifted through a lot of applications and narrowed it down to ones that are worth consideration. 

“There are four and five strong contenders for the job and I would hope to be speaking to those four or five this coming week.”

“I’d like to think that by the weekend we’ll have a new manager in situ and I’ll be disappointed if I haven’t appointed anybody by Friday.” 

Bonser stressed that the timescale is  vital because of bringing in new players after  this week’s clearout.

“It’s important to get a manager in situ as soon as possible because we’ve got a lot of players to bring in,” he said. “Obviously we’ve released quite a lot of players and we’ve got to bring in eight or nine players to replace those. The players wouldn’t sign for us anyway without a manager, so we need to act quickly.”

Caretaker Jimmy Mullen is one of the leading candidates on the shortlist, which is thought not to include David Kelly, who has not applied.