Walsall defender Stephen Ward insists performances must improve quickly following what he described as the ‘most disappointing’ display so far this season.
The Saddlers fell to a 2-0 defeat to Hartlepool United on Saturday and are still searching for their first victory of the campaign.
The 36-year-old is keen to continue working hard and turn the team’s fortunes around quickly as they look to put last Saturday’s below par showing to bed.
“It was probably the most disappointing performance we’ve had,” Ward said.
“It looked like they wanted it more, which shouldn’t happen and for whatever reason we were disappointing. It’s a long way and fans have come and we’ve not performed. It’s got to change quickly and something we didn’t expect to happen.
“It’s hard to put your finger on it, there’s a number of things at the minute. There’s been performances where we’ve done well and got into some great positions but we don’t finish our chances off and at the other end, we’ve not been clinical in keeping clean sheets.
“It’s not through lack of work on the training pitch because we’re working tremendously hard. We feel a responsibility to get a result for the Head Coach and the staff because they’re working so hard. They’ve brought everyone to the club, training’s been outstanding and the way the team spirit is, you couldn’t say one bad word about how we’ve gone about our business.
“For whatever reason, once we get over that line, it’s not going for us at all and that has to change because the fans deserve a result and the Head Coach and staff deserve a result for how hard they’ve worked as well.”
Attention now turns to Saturday’s home game against Stevenage and Ward is hoping the team can get a good, solid week of training under their belts despite being keen to get back out on the pitch quickly to try and bounce back.
“We’d probably prefer to play on Tuesday and get this result out of our system but we need to work really hard this week, get back to basics and get a good week of training ready for next Saturday,” he commented.
Watch his interview in full here.