Preview - Walsall versus The Under Achievers

By Neil Ravenscroft
September 10 2004

Sheffield Wednesday are the next visitors to Bescot Stadium, as Walsall look to get their defencesive woes sorted out before they fall too far behind.

Walsall will have one or two more options for curing their current defensive woes tomorrow, ready for the visit of perennial under achievers, Sheffield Wednesday.

Walsall are the equal highest scorers in the Football League, along with league leaders Luton Town, yet no one, but no one, has let in more goals. Player Manager Paul Merson, stating the bleeding obvious, has said that this has to change, and has also said that he is prepared to change the formation for away games, but the home game tomorrow is likely to be more of the same, but with different personnel. With no real left sided wide man in the squad, a move to 4 4 2 is probably out of the question, anyway.

Ian Roper returns from his second suspension of the season, new boy Bewers is likely to play some part and Merson has said on the official site that Mark Kinsella will be appearing. Walsall's only doubts concern leading scorer and teenage sensation Matt Fryatt, who only reports back from England Under 19 duty today, and fellow teenagers Nathan Jameson (ankle) and Taiwo Atieno (flu).

There are rumours that summer signing Kofi Dakinah will be making a start tomorrow, but a completely untried back line of Bewers, Dakinah, Bennett and Aranalde seems to be highly unlikely.

Wednesday have been inconsistent so far this season and have been leaking goals on their travels lately, so I'll be completely awkward and go for a 0 – 0 draw, in the confident belief that that will be the most unlikely outcome of the game. Let's hope for a little more quality and a lot less comedy than we have seen from defences at Bescot so far this season.

Well, from ours, anyway