Football Season Guide

Over the last four or five seasons, Walsall have been a club that starts their campaigns with Play-Off ambitions and ends up badly disappointing their fans. After the club only narrowly avoided the drop over the last two campaigns, Dean Smith decided that he had seen enough and subjected his side to a big summer makeover. A total of 14 players left the club, most of them dead wood, but this list also includes some players Smith probably wanted to keep, such as Emmanuel Ledesma, Darryl Westlake adnd Manny Smith. The pick of the lot when it comes to the players to have signed is certainly Florent Cuvelier, who signs on a permanent deal after starring in the club's survival push last season, during which he was playing on loan from Stoke. Otherwise, the Saddlers have signed a number of players who either never played in the division or did so without really establishing themselves, and Smith's idea is to try and develop both the players he already had at his disposal and the summer signings. The biggest problem for the Saddlers at the moment is certainly the lack of experience in the squad, and Smith has admitted that he will try to sign one or two experienced players in the first few weeks of the season. Obviously, the summer transfers were made with the long-term future in mind, but that will be of little consolation if the Saddlers end up getting relegated as a result.