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George Dobson: Walsall's confidence high for Shrewsbury

George Dobson insists Walsall are heading to Shrewsbury Town ‘full of confidence’ despite their midweek woes.

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The Saddlers are fresh off a 3-0 defeat at home to Rochdale, who are second bottom in League One, writes Joe Edwards.

They now make the short trip to the Montgomery Waters Meadow to take on Shrewsbury, who are second – five points behind table-toppers Blackburn Rovers – tasked with lifting the mood of the supporters.

Midfielder Dobson, 20, is taking heart from Walsall’s recent showing against Blackburn, although they lost 2-1, ahead of this clash

“It’s a similar game to Blackburn. First half we weren’t quite at it, the second half we should have got a point, maybe three,” he said.

“That obviously gives us a lot of confidence going into the big teams, we know we’re good enough to beat them and good enough to play against them.

“We’re going to go into it full of confidence despite Tuesday.

“We’ll give it a good go. Before Rochdale, we won at Southend and although we lost at Peterborough and against Blackburn, they were really good performances.

“Before that, we went on a four-match unbeaten run. The other day, we just put it down to a bad day. Shrewsbury are flying and they’re our local rivals. If we can go there and get a positive result, everyone will be a lot happier.”

Dobson returned to the club on a permanent bass in January after a fruitful loan spell last season.

The former West Ham and Sparta Rotterdam man is well aware the performance against the Dale was not good enough.

“Saturday we had the great (3-0) win at Southend and all the boys were flying high and then Tuesday, for some reason, we didn’t play at the same energy as we did in the previous five or six games,” said Dobson. “We’re not going to hide away from the fact it was a bad day and we weren’t good enough.

“We didn’t deserve the result so we’ve really got to bounce back for this massive game against Shrewsbury and give the fans something, repay the faith.”

Dobson is likely to start alongside skipper Adam Chambers in the middle of the park.

He added: “We’ve got to bounce back as a team and we’ll keep our heads high.

“We go to Shrewsbury hoping to pull off a good result, for us to continue what – before Rochdale – was good form.

“Consistency is the one thing we need to get better at as we’ve put in some really good performances – look a really good team with some really good players.

“Then some games we don’t match up to that.

“If we can find that consistency then we can be a very good team in this league. That’s the one problem at the minute.”

Meanwhile, under-fire Saddlers boss Jon Whitney has had some kind words for Rochdale manager Keith Hill, who came out after the game and defended his counterpart following chants of ‘we want Whitney out’ from the Banks’s Stadium faithful.

“Myself and Keith understand the position we’re in. Keith deserves a lot of credit as well,” said the Walsall chief.

“It’s nice to have mutual respect – and it’s the same with Paul Hurst at Shrewsbury. He’s another true, honest bloke and we’re ready for Shrewsbury.”