Saddlers Head Coach Mat Sadler was left feeling frustrated following Tuesday night’s 2-0 defeat away at Barrow as he felt as though his side gave themselves ‘a mountain to climb’ after conceding an early goal.
The home side haven’t lost at the So Legal Stadium in the league all season and their fine run of form in all competitions continued on Tuesday night as goals from Ben Whitfield and Niall Canavan extended their unbeaten run to 11 games.
“It is a very, very tough pitch to play on and they are good at home because they know how to play the conditions,” began Sadler.
“What we didn’t do is give ourselves enough of a chance having conceded early to grow into the game and make them anxious.
“We gave ourselves a mountain to climb today which in the end we weren’t able to come back from.
“I will certainly never ever question our players for their heart and fight, I’ll never do that but today it was the intelligence of where to play and where not to play and we lacked with that, especially having gone 1-0 down.
“The game plan was to get the ball into the wide areas which we saw at the back end of the first half and the back end of the second half, that is how you hurt them but we didn’t do it anywhere near enough today and that is what is really disappointing.”
The Saddlers unfortunately lost goalkeeper Owen Evans to injury in the first half and the Head Coach said that upon conclusion of the game, it was too soon to know the full extend of the injury.
“We will have to assess him but he felt his calf in the first minute and he tried to play through it. He wasn’t able to unfortunately and that is a blow because obviously he has been fantastic for us.”