Walsall Head Coach Mat Sadler praised the mentality of his players after their emphatic 6-1 victory away at Grimsby Town on New Year’s Day.
The Saddlers scored six in a league game away from home for the first time since April 1948 on a historic afternoon in Lincolnshire.
Sadler’s men recorded their third consecutive triumph after impressive wins over Crewe Alexandra and Wrexham previously and the Head Coach was pleased with how the players came through those matches to produce the performance they did at Blundell Park, particularly after falling behind.
“Coming in to this game, I was aware of the ‘after the lord mayor’s show’ mentality around the place but the lads showed they’re not in for that, they were absolutely unbelievable for loads of different reasons, probably most impressively for me coming from behind,” he said.
“The whole atmosphere was dead and it needed us to bring it life to it and I thought Douglas (James-Taylor) did that with an incredible injection of pace which changed the course of the game.
"I’m so proud of them, so proud of the supporters who enjoyed that and had that moment.
"To come up here on New Year’s Day, for us it was hard work because of the travelling we had to do off the back of an emotional night on Friday night, so for the supporters to do that was amazing so I’m glad we had that moment with them.
“For the players to do what they did is testament to them. We asked them to go and do everything they can do recovery wise but with that, we all knew with the emotions and amount of effort they put in to Friday night and Tuesday, it was going to be a tough afternoon physically but they rose to the challenge and I thought we were absolutely outstanding.”
It was a depleted squad that made the trip north with only six substitutes named on the bench.
The likes of Ross Tierney, Aramide Oteh and Joe Riley have been absent for a number of weeks while Oisin McEntee and Ryan Stirk missed the Wrexham match on Friday.
The Saddlers were also without Jamille Matt and Harry Williams through injuries on New Year’s Day while Freddie Draper came off during the contest with a knock but Sadler is confident that the majority of his absentees are short term rather than long term.
“We’re fortunate that the only long term one is Oisin, he will be out for a little bit time,” he confirmed.
“The other ones are two and three weeks. I don’t know about Freddie (Draper), hopefully we’ve caught it a bit early and I think his is born out of fatigue. It’s all come at once because of the number of games we’ve had to play over this period.
“It’s not me standing here as a manager who’s lost games bemoaning it, it’s me saying it after the three wins we’ve had.
“It’s a lot of football that they’re being asked to play, especially for us, our squad is all of us contributing but it’s a lot for them to do.
“In terms of January, we’ll see, we’ve got work to do that we always said that we wanted to do. I won’t be rushing into anything, there won’t be any snap decisions on that.
"We want the right players to improve things, to buy in to what we’re trying to do and with performances like that, they’re going to have to be really good to get in to this team so there will be no stupid decisions made.”
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