Playing the right way

Isn't it amazing what football teams can achieve when they actually try and play a bit of football? writes Saddlers blogger Mark Jones.

Now the above question may seem a bit stupid to the uninitiated, but there hasn't been a lot of the beautiful game on show for Saddlers fans in recent times. Unlike some, I don't blame the manager, I put it down mainly to the hand he's been dealt.

So to see a Walsall team keeping the ball on the floor, passing and moving and trying to maintain possession and be rewarded for doing so with a decent result made a pleasant and very welcome change.

At around 8.05 pm on Tuesday evening it's fair to say I was not in the chirpiest of moods however. 1-0 down to a shocking (from our point of view) goal against another team notoriously difficult to play against; on the back of one win in seven which had dropped us back into the danger zone; and with the memory of those two flukey Yeovil goals, Sheffield Wendy's dodgy late equaliser and our inability to rise above Stevenage's odious brand of Anti-Football still fresh in the mind. All was not well.

Come 9.40 and the negative thoughts had been banished. A 3-1 victory in a game which was, regardless of what Deano said beforehand, a mossive six pointer; one defeat in ten games and the boys creating their own luck. Playing the right way certainly paid off. Things were much much better.

The returning Emmanuel Ledesma was rightly crowned man of the match, he was the catalyst for the comeback and he dictated both the pace and style of our play. When you have a player capable of placing a free kick in the back of your opponent's net with a precision normally associated with someone who plies their trade in the Nou Camp, then obviously you use him to your advantage.

But to single out just the one player would be doing everyone else in the Walsall team a disservice. Everyone who played the other night deserves a mention. Following the pinball defending for the Colchester goal, a move which started from our own corner, the back four got almost everything else right. In particular they did all the ugly stuff that inevitably comes with playing a team managed by John Ward, who must have been praying for a floodlight failure by the end of the evening.

David Grof is staking a genuine claim for the number one shirt next season, although I hope he's still contesting it with Jimmy. You know exactly what you're gonna get from Lee Beevers , a solid, hard-working professional performance, yes there's usually one point in a game where he's having to make a futile chase to track back on the opposing left winger but Lee deserves his cult status. While Andy Butler put in the kind of shift we've come to know, love and expect.

Mat Sadler had arguably his best game as a Saddler, creating then missing a chance in a move that was positively Kenny Mower-esque, then scoring his first goal ever (ever? really?), getting forward whenever possible before topping it off with a superb goal line clearance. Whether he's done a bit of growing up in the wake of Twittergate or he's simply aware that Olly Lancashire is more than capable of keeping him out of the side given half a chance, Manny Smith seems to have upped his game in the last few weeks. Good for him.

In midfield, it was clear last Saturday that the two on-loan boys were beginning to notice the difference between Saturday- Tuesday football in our league and the version played at Premiership Reserve level. Thankfully Mantom and Cuvelier were back to their best, with Sam probably having the best game of his spell. Kevan Hurst always looks a threat when he gets fully involved in the game and Alex Nicholls is playing like a man who knows his contract's up and he's got a lot of younger competition coming through.

Jonny Macken's injury is a worry, but it's a measure of the man that he stayed on until we were back in the game. Credit has to go to George Bowerman for a performance full of effort and aggression, he deserved his goal. There was a neat little cameo from substitute Jamie Paterson, a player who you imagine will learn the most from Ledesma's presence.

The victory took us past the psychological barrier of the 40 point mark, put us two points (plus a healthy goal difference) ahead of Wycombe, opened up a big gap with the bottom three and dragged a couple of the sides above back into the mix.

All in all we go into the big fixture at Rochdale in a lot healthier position, I'm almost looking forward to it. If we stick to trying to play football we can be optimistic about our chances. At this rate I might even go and get my season ticket money out of the bank after all.