Dean Keates urges Walsall to show belief
Manager Dean Keates has told his players to believe in themselves more after Walsall proved a match for in-form Sunderland on consecutive weekends.
The Saddlers secured a 2-2 draw against the Black Cats in League One on November 24 before then playing out a 1-1 draw in the FA Cup on Saturday.
That second result means both teams will be in the hat for the third draw which takes place tonight.
Keates though wants his players to take encouragement from both performances with Sunderland still receiving parachute payments and operating on the biggest budget in League One.
“Those performances need to give them confidence,” the boss said.
“They are a young squad, I’ve said that a lot over the last few weeks.
“But they need to start having a little bit more belief in themselves.
“Every week they understand that we are rarely favourites to win a football match. But we can be unfancied. That is what we are as a football club.
“We are giving these players an opportunity to play regularly. We showed against Sunderland we have nothing to be scared of.”
After Aiden McGeady opened the scoring on Saturday, Walsall pulled themselves level through boyhood Newcastle fan Andy Cook.
The striker had been left out of the starting XI for the trip to Portsmouth last Tuesday, but was restored for the visit of Jack Ross’s side. And Keates was delighted with the 28-year-old.
“He (Cook) is a Newcastle fan – he’s a Geordie lad and he took great pleasure in that goal,” the boss continued.
“I left him out at Portsmouth. He was disappointed.
“He understood the reasons, what we tried to do at Portsmouth and I thought for periods of that game it worked.
“He’s came back in and was outstanding. He enjoyed that.
“I stick by what I did at Portsmouth. We look at every game individually and I just thought we would catch them on the break a little bit more with pace, and for long periods of that game we did.
“Cookie knew, I had a chat with him, explained the situation.
“He didn’t like it but it’s part and parcel of football, you’re not going to be guaranteed to be playing week in, week out any more. You just deal with it and he knew he would be coming back in against Sunderland.”
