Walsall Head Coach Michael Flynn felt his team should have been even further out of reach before Hartlepool United’s late fightback on Saturday.
The Saddlers found themselves 3-1 up at the Suit Direct Stadium thanks to goals from Tom Knowles, Isaac Hutchinson and Matty Stevens as the clocked ticked down to 90 minutes but two quickfire goals in stoppage time from the hosts saw them dramatically rescue a point.
Flynn was frustrated to see players make costly errors in the game but insists his team should have also scored more goals beforehand.
“We should have scored six, we should have been three up in 15 minutes,” Flynn said.
“We scored three good goals, they haven’t scored one good goal and it was poor from us defensively and we need to be better.
“Defensively, we’ve been outstanding all season and the irony is we score three and the defence goes missing. They’ve taken the plaudits the defenders have but (now) they need to take the criticism.
“I can’t believe I’m stood in front of you and we haven’t won this game because we were by far the better team, we should have been out of sight. Even conceding one, I wasn’t happy with but conceding three, I don’t think we’ve conceded three all season so I’m not happy.
“I’ve had a few kicks in the teeth in football, it happens but I can’t get my head around that. The individual errors we made was shades of last season and we haven’t had that. It won’t be coming back – I promise you.”
Knowles and Hutchinson netted their fourth and fifth goals of the season respectively while Stevens notched up his first since joining the Saddlers.
Flynn was pleased to see him open his account but was disappointed not to see him on the winning side.
“I’m gutted for him, gutted that he hasn’t got us a win but he’s off the mark,” Flynn commented.
“He’s getting sharper day in, day out. We go on to next week now.”
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