Walsall midfielder Alfie Bates believes that the team spirit and willingness to fight for each other on and off the pitch is what will help push the Saddlers towards the higher reaches of the League Two table.
Bates, 19, signed a new two-and-a-half-year deal with the club earlier this week and has set his sights on earning a career milestone with the club and believes that the tight knit group of players that is currently at the club can achieve great things.
“I have seen a development in myself this season and I think I have got more maturity in my game,” said Bates. I want to keep getting better as a player and I hope that the fans can see that and I am ready to kick on now in the next two and a half years.
“My aspirations are to get out of League Two, that’s the first thing that I want to do. I want to get us out of this league and get us promoted back into League One because that’s where Walsall needs to be.
“We’ve got a settled group here this season at the club. Last season I wouldn’t say that we were a settled group, well not as settled as it is now, and like I said, we are a really tight knit group and we all get on with each other and we all push each other in training and in games.
“Even though the last couple of results haven’t been exactly what we wanted, it’s all about having the ability to bounce back now and go for a win in the next game.
“As a group, we fight for each other off the pitch as well as on it and I feel as though everyone has been able to see that this year with the amount of times we have come back from being behind in games.
“We’ve gone one or two nil down in games as we saw with the Port Vale game a few weeks ago and we came back from that and that result just shows how much we are fighting for each other.”