Walsall players' day off cancelled by furious Smith

The Saddlers squad, who would usually have Wednesday free, were instead at the club's Essington training ground picking through the bones of a harrowing defeat.

First-half goals from Matt Done, Ashley Eastman and Ian Henderson effectively ended the game as a contest before Stephen Dawson completed the scoring in the second half.

And a visibly angry Smith did not hold back when assessing his side's performance at the back.

"The words to describe that is it was atrocious defending – that is what is was," he said.

"Any time you give goals away like we did you are going to get walloped.

"We have an established back five there and we spoke before the game about what they (Rochdale) would try to do.

"With the first goal we had Andy Butler and Paul Downing going for the same ball. The second goal we gave a free-kick away and we work on defending those but we were unorganised and the third goal we lost the ball and they play it through. You can't go and play any sort of football when you give goals away like that."

In addition to the four goals they scored, the home side missed a host of chances and Smith admitted he feared an even greater humiliation.

"I was worried it could have been six or seven at half-time because of the way we were defending," he added.

"It is massively frustrating. I spoke to the players after the game and I don't normally do it but I have got them in on their day off because the defending is unacceptable.

"Paul Downing was run riot, he really struggled but it was not just him."

"It was schoolboy stuff at times."

Both skipper Adam Chambers and Tom Bradshaw missed the game after failing to recover from injury in time.