Matt Taylor: Walsall lacked bravery

The Saddlers are now without a win in six matches on home turf after Brendan Kiernan’s opener was cancelled out by Tom Nichols on the stroke of half-time, with the latter pouncing on slack defending.

Rollin Menayese squandered the chance to win it for the hosts after the break when he failed to make clean contact six yards out.

Taylor said: “When we went ahead, the team have then got to make sure we get to half-time with that lead intact and we didn’t do that.

“We’ve had arguably the best chance in the second half and not taken it. I didn’t think it was a particularly good game of football and the weather most definitely had an impact.

“But we weren’t brave enough on the ball tonight. We picked a safe option too often. When we did have possession of the ball, we built too slowly.

“You have to play quicker. I just felt this was a performance where the players weren’t brave enough to risk the ball.”

Kiernan fired the Saddlers ahead in the 40th minute when he latched on to Emmanuel Osadebe’s through ball and finished impressively.

But a mistake by Jack Earing and slack defending from Menayese allowed Nichols the chance to level.

Taylor added: “We’ve played better than that this season and lost but we’ve also played better than that and won – we should come away with a 1-0 win because the goal is totally avoidable so I’m extremely disappointed that we haven’t got three points tonight.

“The performance levels have not been consistent enough this season – we’ve threatened to put together a run of performances but we haven’t done it well enough.”