Dean Smith backing his troops to fire

Boss Dean Smith today insisted he will ignore the Walsall sceptics as he backed his side to hit back at Oldham tonight following their opening-day defeat.

The Saddlers began their League One campaign with a 3-0 loss to Doncaster at the Banks's Stadium on Saturday.

But they are back in action at Boundary Park with Smith ready to cock a deaf ear to pundits who are tipping his team for a season of struggle.

"People can look at it and think what they like, I don't really care," said Smith.

"We'll get on and do the job we want to do.

"We won the first game of the season last year and towards the end of the season we were struggling.

"We lost this one but can we recover from it? Yes. There are 45 games to go.

"At the moment it hurts because it's the first league game of the season but on another day we could have come away with a favourable result."

Defeat to Doncaster left the Saddlers reeling after they had kicked off the season with a Capital One Cup success at home to Brentford.

But Smith is confident his young side will be firing again when they take to the field tonight.

"We won't get too downbeat about Saturday," he said. "We got beaten 3-0 but we're a work in progress at the moment and only time will tell where we end up.

"We'll build them up again. We won't lose sight of where we want to go or what we want to do.

"We'll dust ourselves down and recover. Yes, we got beaten 3-0 but there were a few bad scores in the Premier League.

"It's the way football is, you go again and get ready for another battle."

And Smith has offered his backing to goalkeeper David Grof, who was at fault for Doncaster's opener before being lobbed from the halfway line by David Cotterill.

"The first goal was unfortunate for David because the lad scuffed a shot and it was a horrible one for the goalkeeper.

"I've seen the other two goals on TV and he's certainly not at fault. It was a little bit of class from their players."