Youth team slip to home reverse...
THE SADDLERS' youth team went out of The Football League Youth Alliance Cup with a 3-0 home defeat at the hands of Oldham Athletic."Against very good, strong and organised opponents, we had a shaky start," admitted Academy Manager, Neil Woods. "We came back into it and had a ten-minute spell where we played some of the football that we know we are capable of.
"We created a couple of chances that we were unable to capitalise upon before Oldham got back into the stride and went on to out-work and press us.
"They took the lead on 25 minutes and added a second within ten minutes. At that stage we just wanted to get to the break at two goals down so that we could regroup, but Oldham were able to add a third goal right on the stroke of half-time to knock the stuffing out of us.
"We were second-best for long periods, but we competed a bit better after the restart.
"It was a big lesson for us; the boys have proved that they can play football, but our visitors were strong and competitive and we struggled to deal with it.
"It taught us that if we can't get control of the game, we have to be able to compete better both physically and mentally. Hopefully the boys will learn from this and gain experience from the manner in which we lost the game and subsequently went out of the Cup."
WALSALL: Jezeph, J. Smith, Henry, Sangha, K. Rowley, Probert, Kouhyar (Oliver), Delaney (R. Smith), Shakespeare, L. Rowley (Pooni), Reid Subs not used: Ottley, Owen.