Not a bad week for the Saddlers

It's been a long wait . . . (a) for a cup win in August (b) for a home win in the JPT and (c) to beat a team from the bottom division, writes Saddlers blogger Mark Jones.

To finally achieve all three against the Sloppys was very enjoyable.

In a slightly perverse way the fact that we just about scraped through with a stuttering second half performance made it even sweeter. Tough luck you Shrews.

Equally encouraging was the response of Dean Smith, who was fuming about the way we gave the ball away and failed to take the game to our lower league opponents.

I say encouraging because for far too long the club has needed a manager who demands consistently high standards and who won't settle for anything less.

It's good to know that while we were all celebrating the win and asking each other about what happens next (apparently there's another 'draw' and we have to go play someone else in a few weeks time), the players were getting a grilling from the Ginger Special One.

To be fair to our lads, there are quite a few who played less than 30 games last season (Adam Chambers, Ryan Jarvis, Kevan Hurst to name just three) and that must have an effect at the end of a busy first month of the season, especially given that we've played almost one and a half games so far with 10 men.

We were also missing Jon Macken and Will Grigg, who would both have given us extra options up front, especially when we needed to put the Shrews on the back foot.

But, most importantly, Ryan Jarvis and Richard Taundry scored two cracking goals and thankfully they didn't have enough quality, particularly in central midfield, to take advantage of all the possession they enjoyed. Graham Turner can go back to concentrating on how to fail in the Play-Offs yet again.

Talking of opposing managers, it was interesting to see that Lee Bradbury's post-match comments were as wide of the mark as his shooting when Colon signed him for us. Suffering from the old second season syndrome methinks.

For us though Saturday's win at Bournemouth was a cracking result and performance, providing further evidence that the team is heading in the right direction.

Finally it was interesting to see Blackburn paying a reported £5 million (rising to £8 million) fee for a centre half yesterday. If only we could have somehow got ourselves a piece of that particular pie. Still it was good to see the Transfer Window close without any panic selling on our part.

Happy days.