Part of the preparation for the next game is a review of lessons learned from the one just gone, with that being no different following Tuesday night’s away trip to Harrogate.
“That’s one of those were I think I said enough the other night,” manager Paul Simpson said. “I have reviewed it, I’ve gone over it, and it hasn’t changed anything by me doing that.
“What it has done after letting the dust settle is reminded ourselves that we are actually doing ok. We’re in a really good position, probably better than we expected to be, and probably in a better place than the club expected us to be.
“It isn’t all doom and gloom, we’re in a situation where I’m not suddenly going to stop demanding that standards should be higher. I don’t want anyone taking their foot of it and thinking everything is going to be fine.
“That isn’t what I want, and it isn’t how I work. We drew on Tuesday, we weren’t at our best, but I’m not going to get too down about it.
“I didn’t watch the game back on the coach on Tuesday, which I sometimes do, I wasn’t in the mood for it. I watched it first thing on Wednesday morning, but once all of that’s done it’s about Walsall.
“We can’t change Tuesday, all we can do is count heads, check how all of the knocks and things are, then pick a team to hopefully give us a better performance.”
Mentioning that things aren’t all doom and gloom, we pointed out that we’ve had just three league defeats (only one team is better than that in this division), scored 26 goals (right up there at this level) and that we sit comfortably in a top-half spot.
“It really isn’t doom and gloom when you consider that,” he agreed. “We’ve got a good group here, that’s players and staff, and every single one of them wants to do well.
“They know we didn’t achieve the level of performance we want from ourselves the other night, but I think when I reflected on what I said after the game I was actually disrespectful to Harrogate.
“It was possibly with the position they’re in, you go there thinking, right, let’s get this done. I’m led to believe that’s their best performance all season, which is bloody typical that they do it against us, but I really did think they were a good side.
“They caused us some real problems. There was a little bit of a tactical issue which I thought about during the warm-up, and I considered making a change at that point.
“I thought about it and I felt it might confuse the players, so I didn’t do it. I then had to do it during the game, with another change at half-time, so these are all things that I’m learning about as well.
“You see different things and you pick up how best to deal with them, and I’m hoping the players learn from it too. If they are, then hopefully we’ll be able to adapt better the next time we face something like it.
“Thankfully we came away with a point when it could have been nothing. Mind you, it could easily have been three points as well if we’d finished the good chances we had.
“There really aren’t too many problems here, we’re in a good place, we feel we’re going to get better, and hopefully with more players becoming available that’s exactly what will happen.”
Character was talked about a lot after Tuesday, particularly with the way the lads kept going and pushing for the equaliser.
“It’s been there in nearly every game,” he commented. “There’s probably only a couple of times where we could question the character, but that certainly wasn’t the case on Tuesday.
“We looked like a team who believed we could get something out of it, and it’s just a little bit disappointing that we had to be 3-2 down before we really got going.
“We had chances from set plays, open play, we had great deliveries, so the chances were there. The big thing from it is that the players kept going, they kept working and they kept wanting to do the right things. That’s all a real bonus.”
