Dean Keates: Inexperience costing Walsall

The Saddlers, who host Sunderland in the second round of the FA Cup today, have conceded two or more goals in nine of their last 10 outings.

A large percentage of those could have been prevented with a host of players making individual errors over the past few weeks.

And Keates feels those mistakes wouldn’t have happened if there was more experience in his squad.

“Decision making in football is massive,” the boss said.

“You talk about a young group, if you put an experienced group out there those goals wouldn’t happen.

“A lot of them are silly individual errors – you have just got to try and rectify them.

“Mistakes happen, but if you can learn from your mistakes and make sure they don’t happen again, then it’s not an horrendous mistake.

“But we need to start learning, it’s too many now. We’re having a big hand in our own defeats and the lads know that.” Walsall clashed with Sunderland just seven days ago with the two teams playing out a 2-2 draw in League One.

Now they meet again in the FA Cup. And Keates hinted he may use the game to make changes to his side.

“We have picked up one or two niggles – there is a possibility we can shake it up,” the manager continued.

“The team has been fairly set over the past few weeks and they have performed okay.

“It’s a quick turnaround, we had Portsmouth on Tuesday and Sunderland last weekend.

“Both camps are clued up on each other.

“But it’s the FA cup and we all know what happens in the next round, the big boys come into it.

“That is something this football club wants to be a part of.

“We are going to go for it and all being well, we can be in the hat.”

Keates also confirmed George Dobson is available for today’s game despite the midfielder picking up a fifth yellow card at Portsmouth.

After December 19, players have to have received 10 bookings to earn a suspension.