Lee Beevers calls for 'mini league' success

Lee Beevers today insisted Walsall will survive if they become champions of their own mini league.

The Saddlers are 20th in League One and are in danger of losing touch with mid-table ahead of Saturday's trip to play-off hopefuls Brentford.

Nine points separate the bottom seven teams below Tranmere – who are seven points ahead of the Saddlers – in 17th.

And defender Beevers said Walsall need to pick off their drop rivals and reel in those above.

He said: "You can see there's a bit of a gap appearing but we have to go on a run and drag those teams back into it. If we do that it'll naturally help us.

"We need to climb and put as much distance between us and the bottom four but there's a few teams battling do to that now," he said.

"We'll look forward to the next five games and we know how many points we want – regardless of how they come about. We need to push forwards and look in little blocks.

"It's been disappointing and we're not happy about where we are and what we've done. We need to turn it around in the second half of the season."

But utility man Beevers, who has played across the back four and in goal this season, insisted the Saddlers feel the table is still false half way through the campaign.

"It's a relaxed atmosphere and everyone is still confident," said the 28-year-old. "The league table doesn't represent how we feel we've done as a team. We had a couple of unlucky results earlier in the season and a couple where we conceded late on to have the points taken away from us.

"On the other hand we scored twice late on against Sheffield Wednesday to win.

"It's swings and roundabouts but we're a very confident bunch of lads. If you look at the first half of the season then we do feel a little hard done by."