Walsall setting up for promotion shoot-out

Saddlers head to Port Vale on Sunday knowing a victory, together with a defeat for Burton at Doncaster, could see them win automatic promotion to the Championship.

Over the past few seasons, Walsall have been criticised for the the lack of threat they carry from dead balls.

But they impressed with their set-piece delivery in the 3-1 win over Fleetwood on Monday – with defender Paul Downing netting his second goal of the campaign from an Anthony Forde corner.

Whitney revealed: "We are spending quite a bit of time working on set-pieces.

"We are known as this football team that passes the ball with tempo but I think sometimes our dead ball game needs to improve.

"When I became interim boss, I told the players that I got promoted at Lincoln with John Beck just on dead balls. We won a lot of games because of the threat we carried from set-plays.

"If we can add that to our game it gives us another threat and I think we showed against Fleetwood that we are a threat from set-pieces. That was a real pleasure for us coaches."

Downing, whose other goal this season also came following a corner, is also pleased to see Walsall improve that area of their game.

He said: "The way we play and the way we dominate the ball we will always have a lot of corners. So it's really important we don't waste them.

"That is something Whits (Whitney) has been big on since he has taken over as interim boss.

"We have started to work on them more and more in training and doing video analysis to look at how the opposition will set up.

"It's a strength we need to keep working on and improving and hopefully we can score from another set-piece at Port Vale."