Saddlers boss Jon Whitney was happy with his side’s performance in tonight’s goalless home draw with Aston Villa.
Amadou Bakayoko had the game’s best chance in the first half but was unable to hit the target when played clean through by Adam Chambers.
Joe Edwards twice went close from distance, while Jordan Amavi had Villa’s best effort with a header which Mark Gillespie pushed wide.
“We’re happy to take a really solid performance,” said Whitney.
“The most pleasing thing for me and my staff was seeing some of the stuff we worked on yesterday coming into fruition today.
“It was a new back five, but tonight they looked as if they’d played together for a long time.
“The experience and technical ability meant we could keep the ball when we needed to. We want to be a footballing team but we had a purpose tonight.
“We weren’t very predictable, we mixed it really well and had the best chances.
“The chance for Ama was a great passage of play and we limited them, with their biggest threat coming from set-pieces, but we’ve got the height to deal with that now.
“It was just a pre-season game, but it was still nice to see and the fitness levels are where we want them to be at this stage.
“We’ve still got over two weeks to go to fine-tune a few things.”