Dean Keates spoke of his immense pride in his players after the Saddlers’ hard-fought 2-1 victory at Rochdale.
Goals from wingers Josh Ginnelly and Zeli Ismail, who was later sent off for two bookable offences, secured a fourth successive win for Keates’ men, despite a late tap-in from Callum Camps.
“It’s hard to describe how I’m feeling,” said the boss, whose side now sit fourth in League One.
“As I’ve just said to the lads, I can’t be any more proud of them – of the work-rate they give and the shift they have put in.
“We will look back at it – and it is something we need to look at massively – because we got 2-0 up and we need to be braver with the ball.
“We could have made passes and we didn’t. We got sucked in. We got pushed a little bit too deep and they are the bits we need to effect and that we will learn from.
“But the character again, and the desire to arrive on things – if they didn’t arrive on the first one, they would arrive on the second one – was brilliant.
“As I said the other night, there’s a togetherness again in there and you saw that.
“We go on about clean sheets, we want a clean sheet and we are disappointed that we have conceded towards the end.
“And it’s not through fatigue, it’s not teams overrunning us – we just need to look back and strip it back to when we have got the ball.
“Can we make the better decision to make sure the second phase doesn’t end up in our box or, especially, end up in the back of our net.
“But full credit to them. To a man, they were outstanding.”