Point a game not enough for Walsall
Wednesday 30th March 2011, 11:25AM BST.
Fearless Walsall boss Dean Smith has admitted the Saddlers need more than a point a game to survive – but is relishing the fight.
The manager has ditched his worries about the relegation battle and insisted his side should not be scared.
Dagenham & Redbridge’s 1-0 defeat to league leders Brighton last night kept them one point ahead of the fourth-bottom Saddlers with two games in hand.
The Saddlers, who sit on 40 points, have a free weekend before going to Plymouth on April 9 to continue their League One run-in.
They play Brighton, Sheffield Wednesday, Oldham, Charlton and Southampton in the final five games and, while he knows they need more than 47 points to stay up, Smith is up for the fight.
He said: “I don’t think a point a game will be enough. We will need a couple of wins out of the seven certainly with some more results as well.
“If I had looked at our run-in at the start of the season it would have scared the life out of me. But looking how those clubs are doing now I am excited by it.
“The next six games are a challenge, but one I think the players will definitely rise to. They’re all big clubs.
“But, as I have said before, they are League One teams.”
Swindon lost 1-0 at Exeter and Sheffield Wednesday slumped 3-1 at home to Brentford to cap a decent night for Walsall – despite Yeovil’s 1-0 win against Carlisle.
And Smith insisted his men have excelled to even be in with a chance of beating the drop.
He said: “We have definitely given ourselves a fighting chance. It’s nice to be looking over our shoulders now and seeing Plymouth and Swindon six or seven points below us.
“We have put ourselves in with a really good shout. There are a lot of clubs looking over their shoulders.
“We are a tough team to play against.”
UK Sport
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My opinion Dean is you need your team to go out there and score more goals than the opposition this will motivate your players and entertain the fans. sod playing a defensive type game and keeping clean sheets this will see us struggle, if we go down lets go down fighting and with some style. good luck dean
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Yeah forget clean sheets, who needs um! They’re crap, lets let the goals flow man, like loads yeah!
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To be fair to the team and deano I think we’ve seen quite often that we have the ability to create many chances and score goals. % in half an hour against what has been a stubborn hartlepool defence this season is just one example. It could have been anything at MK Dons by all accounts too. Super Jim saved us a few times but we had 10 or so shots on target ourselves. if we maintain this kind of form we’ll have no problem scoring the goals even if it does mean we let one or two more in at the other end. Everyone has a lot of faith in you Deano and hope that you can keep us up, but if it’s not to be come May 7th then we have 200% more hope for a quick return to League One!! UTS!
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