Walsall cup exit inquest

Last nights 83rd minute winner from Macclesfields McNulty capped another poor performance. However whilst these under par performances have seen us stretch our lead to six points in league (how has that happened????)last night we got our just desert.

The main issue was complacency, whilst the defeat has been met with a shrug of the shoulders by most saddlers, others are knashing teeth and ringing alarm bells. Whilst I don’t believe DD weakened the team to lose the game, the changes he made sent out the wrong message to the players. We thought we would win without too much effort, wrong. Hopefully some layers of paint have been stripped off the walls in the home dressing room. The fringe players such as Constable and Bedeau have no reason to be knocking on the managers door asking why they are not in the team. The answer lies on the evidence of last night.

So what happens now, well we have a big match against a team who is impressive away from home in league two – Notts County. How we bounce back from this defeat is important as another defeat could open a jink of doubt that has been planted by three years of failure. Lessons have to be learnt. The last defeat against Grimsby was followed by a 11 match unbeaten run. The same would be nice. The fact despite our dip in form we have won 4 and drawn 2 of our last six games gives hope. However at Grimsby we were the better team undone by two pieces of poor defending. Last night we were sluggish, uncreative and generally poor, that is a state we can except in the short term but a continued run could undermine our promotion push. That would be unexceptable.

So the message from the fans to players and management. Put it behind you, learn from it, and remember we have to work hard to earn the right to play, nobody will come to Bescot and just lie down, no matter how poor they are, and make no mistake Macclesfield are poor. We are better than this. DD knows the areas of the team that need strenghtening the question is can we wait until January!!