Hutchings rules out a play-off place

Walsall boss Chris Hutchings today admitted for the first time the play-offs are out of the Saddlers' reach.

The 2-0 defeat at Leyton Orient left them 19 points from League One's top six in 13th – with just 33 points left to play for.

And Hutchings conceded the gap is too big for the Saddlers to bridge.

He said: "It's a long way off. It's going to be a hard task if we perform like that. The challenge to the players now is how many games can they win until the end of the season. That's what it's got to be from now on.

"There's a cluster of clubs ahead, the top 10 clubs are a million miles away from the rest of us."

The boss saw his side gunned down by two Sean Thornton strikes midway through the second half and reminded his players they must fight to earn new contracts.

He said: "Their futures are at stake. First and foremost they play for a shirt every week, they don't want to sit in the stand, they want to play and it's about contracts.

"The message is you have to try to the best of your ability every day. That's what we expect and come Saturday they leave it behind sometimes."

The Saddlers failed to trouble an Orient side who moved to within three points of them with victory and Hutchings says Walsall massively underperformed but confidence isn't a problem.

"There's a way of going about it and too many players didn't reach their full potential. Confidence hasn't been hit, we won at Leeds and Bristol Rovers," he said.

"But it's where we are, with the amount of points we've got, look at all the divisions it'll be the middle of the table.

"Sometimes it's confidence, you concede and it knocks you and gives them a spring to give them more confidence. We tend to forget that."