Walsall Head Coach Mat Sadler feels tomorrow’s opponents Sutton United have fallen the wrong side of the fine margins this season and insists his team will have a difficult task coming up against them at Gander Green Lane on Saturday.
The Amber and Chocolates are bottom of Sky Bet League Two and are without a league win since the opening day of the campaign.
Sadler is focused on his own team’s approach to the contest and is prepared for a tough afternoon against an experienced League Two team.
“Sutton know what the league is all about,” Sadler said.
“They haven’t started it in the way they would want to start it but, in the build up to the MK Dons game, I got to watch Sutton in that game and they had a right ding-dong with them.
“They’ve fallen the other side of results at times this season that could have quite easily gone the other way so I’m under no illusions of how difficult a place it is to go to Sutton away.
“The manager and assistant manager there will be trying to get absolutely everything out of their players to turn things around for them so it will be, as it always is in this league, a tough game and we have to be right on top of it, right on top of ourselves to impact and effect the game.
“We have to go there under no illusions whatsoever that it will be a tough game and we have to be right on top of ourselves but as it always is, it’s about focusing on us, what we can do, how we want to hurt the opposition and that’s how we’ll approach the game.”
The Saddlers will be playing their third game in seven days tomorrow, having accumulated four points from the last two matches.
Sadler feels he has a flexible squad at his disposal which gives him the ability to make tweaks as he looks to manage the load on his players.
“It might be the opportunity to do that (freshen it up) with our third game in a week and the third of two previously tough games where the lads have given absolutely everything in both of those games,” he explained.
“We’ve had positive results in both of them and we go into this weekend’s game with the ability to freshen it up if we want to do that and I’ve got players that are champing at the bit to be part of that and to play so it’s up to me to make the right decisions of where do I freshen it? Do I freshen it? And who do I freshen it with? We have the ability to do that.”
The Saddlers still have a handful of players sidelined with injuries but Sadler is pleased with how Brandon Comley and Priestley Farquharson are progressing as they edge closer to a return.
“They are both coming along really well,” he said.
“It will be a welcome back for Coms, it’s been a little bit of time out for him but he’s not far off and he’s getting closer.
“Rollin is getting closer as well so some of those boys that have been out for a bit of time, they’re starting to work their way back into the group.
“Taylor (Allen) will be available after this game and David (Okagbue) is at Stoke at the moment so he won’t be available but won’t be a million miles off.
“I want more selection headaches, that’s what I want. I want more options to play and to effect different games that will come. If you look at the week that we’ve had, Bradford is a different challenge to MK Dons, Sutton will give us a different challenge to Bradford and MK Dons so different horses for different courses.”
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