Ever-present centre-half Jon Guthrie aims to keep improving at the heart of Walsall’s defence ahead of our return to action at home to Oxford United tomorrow.
The Saddlers host the Us at the Banks’s Stadium in our second game of 2018, following the narrow defeat at Plymouth Argyle on New Year’s Day.
Guthrie is the only player in the Saddlers’ squad to have played every minute of every game this season, with the 25-year-old playing 31 games this season, the same number of appearances as left-back Luke Leahy.
And the summer signing is looking ahead to Oxford now, looking to get back to winning ways at the Banks’s.
“I’m glad to have played in every game, because that was my aim when I moved to the club in the summer,” said Guthrie.
“Hopefully my performances keep improving so I can keep helping my teammates and the staff on the pitch.
“The gaffer has been keeping everyone positive. It wasn’t the start to 2018 that we wanted against Plymouth but we felt we could have got something out of the game.
“We’re now looking at Oxford on Saturday and it feels like a while since we’ve played at home!
“We expect a tough game but we expect one of those every week in League One. Oxford are a team who have largely been doing well - they had a tough result before Christmas - and we know they like to get it down and play.”
Oxford have won their last two League One games, recording home wins against MK Dons and Blackpool since the turn of the year.
Last time the two sides met, The Saddlers ran out 2-1 winners at the Kassam Stadium through goals from Erhun Oztumer and Tyler Roberts.
“We had a good result at their place last time we played them,” said Guthrie.
“We played well for the majority of the game in fact, and to be honest we felt disappointed to concede as we were pretty comfortable at that point.
“In that game everything just clicked for us. The general performance was really good - we moved the ball around nicely, got two good goals and it ended with three points.
“We’ll be doing more work heading into the game on how to stop them and we want them to be doing the same for us.”