Express & Star

Analysis: Walsall boss Matt Taylor must stop rot before it’s too late

The pressure is building and Walsall boss Matt Taylor needs to come up with the answers as a matter of urgency.

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Ultimately, the buck stops with him. This is his team and they have lost five straight matches to fall to 19th in League Two.

This 1-0 defeat to 10-man Bristol Rovers was utterly abject.

A fan appeared to enter the pitch and verbally confront Taylor after the final whistle.

The unrest is growing and, again, it is up to Taylor to find a response.

It is a results business, of course, and this run cannot continue for much longer.

We all know what will happen, Taylor included, if things do not change very quickly.

Let’s be abundantly clear, the Saddlers’ problems are not all down to the head coach.

Walsall’s malaise has been a thing for several painful years.

Ever since the departure of Dean Smith – who threatened to get the Saddlers up to the Championship and also took them to a Wembley final – the club has been in a steady state of decline.

Last season, dropping into the National League looked possible – and it does so again.

The scars of Jeff Bonser’s ownership remain as Walsall pay him hundreds of thousands of pounds every season to rent the Banks’s Stadium.

Leigh Pomlett has now been the owner for two-and-a-half years, but until that freehold is secured, you sense the Saddlers will never properly move on.

It is an albatross around their neck. A dark cloud.

But on the pitch, things are nowhere near good enough.

Sitting 19th in this division, which honestly is not at a brilliant standard, truly is a sorry state of affairs.

Taylor continues to reaffirm his confidence in the group of players at his disposal, pointing to the fact they have put in some impressive displays.

In fairness, Port Vale away was a great night.

Victories over both Colchester and Mansfield at home were fun, too. But the fact of the matter is that Walsall have won seven, drawn eight and lost 12.

Joey Barton and Hayden White have words

At this stage of the season, the table does not tell any lies.

The Saddlers deserve to be in their lowly position.

They have lacked any sort of invention or quality in attack for many weeks now, while a series of catastrophic errors have been made in defence to gift teams points.

Walsall’s players – it has been said before and is again now – need to take a long, hard look at themselves.

Many of them have played at higher levels or at least competed at the right end of this league.

However, while they carry on falling short, the onus is on Taylor to get things going because the clock is ticking.

This campaign was never going to be plain sailing given all the change last summer.

Appointing a technical director in Jamie Fullarton, giving Taylor his first head coach role and bringing in more than a dozen new players represented a hard reset.

It was always bound to take a bit of time.

But instead of perhaps starting slowly and improving as the season goes on, the Saddlers have gradually got worse and keep finding ways to plunge the campaign to new lows.

Taylor said after the loss to Rovers it was a reflection of their season, and he is right.

It was everything that is wrong with Walsall.

Luca Hoole was sent off the hosts after two silly bookings in quick succession, but the Saddlers failed to capitalise.

Taylor – not for the first time – opted not to stray from his 4-2-3-1 formation against the 10-man Gas when putting two up front seemed a fairly obvious move.

Walsall could not carve out a clear-cut opportunity and then, an under-hit header from Donervon Daniels put Carl Rushworth into trouble and allowed Aaron Collins to win it for the hosts, who had been pretty poor themselves.

Brendan Kiernan

Taylor now has to prepare his team for the visit of fifth-placed Northampton Town on Saturday.

It is the game after that, though, which looks more crucial by the day.

The Saddlers travel to bottom-of-the-table Scunthorpe a week tomorrow in what could be considered a relegation six-pointer by the time it comes around.

At the minute, Walsall are 10 points clear, but that is hardly comforting.

Scunthorpe play second-bottom Oldham this weekend, too, so a win for either of those teams and a loss for the Saddlers to Northampton would lessen the gap.

Taylor is not the only one to blame. Fullarton’s recruitment has questions marks around it and the players have to show some mettle.

But we all know how football works by now.

Taylor swiftly needs some wins under his belt.