Walsall survival fight is still on, says Dean Smith

Boss Dean Smith today urged Walsall to forget another setback and insisted the survival race is still wide open.

The Banks's Stadium chief wants his men to ignore their 1-0 home defeat to Tranmere on Saturday and focus on the future. It left them three points above the League One relegation zone with three games left after fourth-from-bottom Wycombe only drew 2-2 with Oldham.

Lee Beevers was also sent off in injury time and Smith believes safety is still up for grabs.

He said: "It always has been, it's very tight. We've been on a good run of form lately and we've just played two teams (Charlton and Tranmere) and got no points from them.

"I feel we've played well enough to win both games. It's just the way football goes sometimes.

"We're still confident, we've played the team who are going to win the league and bossed the game and then Tranmere. If we had taken out chances we would have won comfortably."

But Smith questioned the level of protection his men received from referee Mark Brown after Andy Butler was caught in the face in the build-up to Andy Robinson's free-kick winner.

He said: "The referee's job is to protect the players. I heard Ronnie's (Moore, Tranmere manager) comments before the game about (Emanuel) Ledesma that he'll be going down whenever he is touched like a typical Argentine. If he wants to play that game and he's had an influence on the referee then the referee should know better than that."

Beevers was sent off for two yellow cards and will miss Saturday's crunch trip to Exeter but Smith is hopeful Richard Taundry will recover from his hamstring injury in time to replace him.

Moore backed Walsall to stay up after admitting his men were lucky to win.

He said: "Without doubt they are a good side and they won't go down. We were fortunate to win and Dean has done a good job."