"Robust and resilient" - Stewart Mairs hopes Walsall tweaks will pay dividends

Walsall head of football Stewart Mairs says he is aiming to build a “robust and resilient” group ahead of next season.

New head coach Lee Grant is currently spearheading another major summer rebuild alongside Mairs, after Walsall drifted out of play-off contention last season.

The Saddlers have so far welcomed in four new faces: James Connolly, Sven Sprangler, Lewis Simper and Andrew Dallas.

And Mairs is hopeful that the tweaks made to the way the club operate will pay dividends on the pitch next season.

Mairs on quest to be “more robust and resilient”

“Certainly, I think there is an overriding feeling of disappointment and frustration more than anything else being in those positions,” Mairs explained.

“Obviously you don’t get into those positions and at the top of the league at Christmas by chance. There must be something going right.

“It’s very fine margins in the game, but we’ve probably identified some areas within the group and the staff as a whole that we can improve on.

“And maybe tweak and change to give us more of a robust and resilient group moving forward.

“That was probably one of the things that was lacking a little bit. We hope to remedy that for next season.”

Mairs started his post in mid April and witnessed the latter stages of Darren Byfield’s 10-game interim reign.

Mairs on importance of his first weeks in the job

And he felt that the opportunity to observe during that period was crucial to helping him plot his plans for the future.

He added: “It was a good opportunity to come in with three or four games left. It’s a situation I’d been in before in terms of other clubs.

“You always like to get an idea of how people work, their standards and their behaviours, before everyone breaks up for the post-season.

“It gave me a good two-three week runway into an idea of what we maybe need to change and what we need to double down on.”