Saddlers social: Walsall fans have their say

Richard Kendrick

Saturday was an absolute shambles and showed this team has relegation written all over it.

Forget that ref has made a hobby out of giving penalties against us this season – we got what we deserved.

A few players seem to have given up, which is absurd. The fans are behind you but you’ve got to fight for each other.

That afternoon, there were people ambling around the Arboretum with their kids that broke into more of a sweat than our front three. That is unacceptable.

We basically played with eight men.

If you want to pretend to be a footballer, stay at home and play Fifa, don’t do it while wearing the shirt of Walsall FC.

For those fans that were there, Saturday showed us all that there are more important things in life than football, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to care.

Tom Miner

After what was by far the most disappointing performance of the season on Saturday, every day I wake up with a change of heart as to whether I think we will be facing Sunderland or Stevenage next season.

My head still tells me we’ll escape narrowly, but Dean Keates needs to find players that he can rely on week in week out.

Keates is picking up the same rhetoric that Jon Whitney used to love, demanding passion and fight when what was needed so desperately on Saturday was the opposite - cool heads and composure.

Bravery comes in different forms, but to get on the ball under pressure and find another red shirt is more important than diving into rash tackles.

Give me 10 George Dobson’s over 10 Nicky Devlin’s any day of the week.

Nick Etheridge

For the first time in what seems like a really long, drawn-out season, I’m really fearful of our League One status.

A win on Saturday against AFC Wimbledon would have seen us safe in my opinion.

However, given our second-half capitulation, we are well and truly in trouble.

The blame can’t fall at the feet of Dean Keates, or the referee, as a season is made up of 46 games.

Looking back at our most recent flirtations with relegation, we were the team playing catch up, who had the momentum going into the final few games of the season.

We also had players like Emmanuel Ledesma, or a young Jordan Cook, inspiring others around them and taking us up another level.

This time around it feels completely different, and that is very worrying.

Kevin Paddock

Well I'm sat here wondering how we managed to lose that on Saturday but the reason is quite simple, some of these players aren't fit enough to wear the shirt and play for this town.

At first I blamed the board for the season, then I blamed Jon Whitney and then I blamed the board some more but these players deserve as much criticism, probably more than the other two factors.

Their "effort" second half on Saturday was nothing short of pathetic.

They keep filling the columns of this paper saying they will do all they can to stay in this league - well do something! Talk is cheap.

Some of these are already looking at their next move - well good riddance, however, some will be thinking they have a chance to still be here next season if we go down. Wrong.

You fail and you can shut the door on your way out. Do I think we will stay up? No.

Those 45 minutes on Saturday have all but secured our relegation.

I hope I'm wrong and these players for all their wrongs can put it right and put in a shift until the end of this season and secure our safety - it's over to you the class of 2018 to prove me wrong.

Dan Gilbert

I'm still shocked and gutted by Saturday's result.

Sometimes something happens and you just know it's going to be massive.

Before we played Bury, I felt we needed five points from three huge games. Honestly, I expected six. So to come away with four is really disappointing.

I still expect us to drag ourselves to safety but the more I think about it, the less confident I am.

Let's be honest, we got lucky against Bury and we limped over the line to a point against Oldham in the end, despite looking better in parts.

It's going to be close, we're going to need a bit of luck, a lot more fight and a lot less individual errors.

I don't want many of these players here next season, I just hope they can find something within them to keep us up.

Most aren't League One quality, we all know that.

All I am wishing for now is that they play like their careers depend on it so that we still have a League One club.

For every Richard Money-like Walsall, there's a Chesterfield, there's a Tranmere, there's a Wrexham.

There are no guarantees that we'd bounce back again