Blog: The mighty Saddlers?

Just over a month until the Mighty Saddlers kick off the 2009/10 League One season at Brighton; so, assuming everyone's fit and on form, here's my team for that first game (in a classic 4-4-2 of course),

GOAL – Clayton Ince

The obvious choice. Managers often talk about retained or re-signed players as being their 'best signing of the summer', Clayton gets this by default atm. In my opinion one of the best, if not the best keeper in the division.

And boy is he gonna need to prove it in the next 12 months.

RIGHT BACK – Chris Palmer

The jury's still out on 'Charlie', but he has got one whole season at this level behind him.

CENTRAL DEFENCE – Rhys Weston

More of a right-back who can fill in at centre-half than a full on centre half, but we are Walsall and we can't be choosers can we?

CENTRAL DEFENCE – Manny Smith

A good prospect who came on in leaps and bounds last year. I've got a feeling he'll miss Gezza though.

LEFT BACK – Netan Sansara

With a whole 11 first team appearances behind him (well 10 and a third if you count Brighton) Netan should be able use his experience to help some of the other players this season.

RIGHT MIDFIELD – Alex Nicholls

Not entirely sure it's his best position, but he did ok there at times last year.

CENTRE MIDFIELD – Dwayne Mattis

Never quite matched the form of his loan spell under DD, let's hope Dwayne can get a good pre-season behind him and stay clear of injuries.

CENTRE MIDFIELD – Mark Bradley

You've probably realised I'm taking the p*** here, but Bradders (at 21) is now our longest serving player so maybe someone is taking the p*** out of us. This is a massive season for him.

LEFT MIDFIELD – Richard Taundry

The Marshy of his generation. With Zoobedoobee still AWOL, Rich would have to fill in on the left. As with Nicholls, I'm not sure where Taundry will end up playing as his career develops, but he's a top prospect for sure.

FORWARD – Troy Deeney

Like so many of our lads Troy has bags of potential, which he showed in the last 4 months under Hutch and Mart. However I don't think anyone really anticipated he'd be our main striker for 09/10.

FORWARD – Will Grigg

A few goals in the reserves AND a subs appearance at Cheltenham nets Will a place in our starting eleven.

SUB GOALIE – Rene Gilmartin

Proved himself a capable number two to Incey last season, Rene will have to fill in a few times if T&T get close to the World Cup Finals.

Has been reportedly looking to get some expert coaching this summer in his native Dublin too – if only he'd known that for £30 you can get 10 weeks on the astroturf on a Friday teatime and a nice certificate at the end of it.

SUB DEFENDER – Darryl Westlake

Not being a frequent visitor to the Reserves recently I don't know too much about Darryl, but he did earn himself a contract so he's in the squad. I think he's a right-back, don't know if he can play centre-half but I get the feeling we'll have to find out sooner or later.

SUB MIDFIELD – Richard Davies and Sam Adkins

Spoilt for choice here as Richard and Sam have played well over 90 minutes of first team football between them.

SUB FORWARD – Josh Craddock

Will be a bit peeved not to be in the starting line up as he has two whole last day of the season sub appearances under his belt.

And after agonising over the team for, oooo, seconds I realised that the Football League in their infinite wisdom have permitted two more subs for next season. I suppose we could leave them empty, but with all that money the club's spent on ground improvements (a new dug out) we'd better fill them.

I thought about Sean Geddes and his mates from the Youth Team … or maybe some of the School of Excellence (the Under 12's are pretty good apparently), but then I realised (and this is why I never made it in professional football) the last two places on our subs bench have to go to:

Steven Roberts . . .

. . . and his crutches.

In the words of Tom Hark, 'you have to laugh or else you'd cry.'