Darrell Clarke: Walsall are stronger
Walsall manager Darrell Clarke has praised his side’s mental strength, which he believes has improved throughout the season.
During the club’s six-game losing run in October, Clarke was particularly critical of his players’ mentality.
After the 2-0 loss away to Oldham, he even threatened to transfer list the ‘weak-minded’ players in his group.
But a resurgence among his side has seen them go undefeated in five league games, with the FA Cup loss to League One Oxford their only defeat in the last 10 games.
“Mentality (is) strong, no problems,” he said.
“The changing room and the spirit of the camp absolutely outstanding, that’s where I’ve built my success as a manager and this is the way I’ll be building this football club.
“Eventually we’ll start getting more consistent performances and results and start climbing the table.
“I think for a long period of time, 10 or 12 games that we have got stronger as a group.
“People can pick their own bones out of that, but I feel like we are getting there.
“Siege mentality about the place is really good.
“If you go into the October results, there’s reasons why we lost those games – there’s a lot of individual mistakes in those – but since then put that to bed but we’re doing alright and we’ll keep going.
“They’re working hard, they’re competing hard and the spirit in the camp is really good so we keep chipping away. Performances have been pretty consistent over a period of time, we’ve got to keep all areas of the pitch improving along the way.”
Meanwhile, striker Caolan Lavery is eager for the side to keep the momentum as they go in search of more points during the busy festive schedule.
“We’ve just got to keep going and keep getting points, whether it’s a draw or a win,” he said.
“As a group, we’re starting to come together and build on what we’ve been doing all season.
“As a group, we only want to head in one direction so over this Christmas period, it’s a big time for all of us and hopefully we can kick on.
“I think a lot of lads have come a long way.
“It’s just about starting to believe in each other, it takes time, probably taken longer than we would have liked but mentality is mentality.”
