Darrell Clarke demands more ruthlessness from Walsall players

The Saddlers, who host Bolton on Saturday, currently sit 14th in League Two, four points outside the play-offs.

But they have drawn nine of their 16 games so far with a lack of cutting edge having stopped them from picking up more wins.

Last weekend, though, they were clinical in an impressive 3-1 victory at Tranmere.

Many fans labelled that performance as the Saddlers best of the season.

Clarke, though, feels they have been just as impressive in other games but haven’t gone on to get what they deserved.

“For me, we’ve been dominant in quite a few games if you look at the stats,” the boss said.

“At Tranmere it came together a bit more with the goals.

“But we just keep working away with the group, we’re not getting carried away

“I thought Newport was a complete performance. I think Stevenage only had about six or seven minutes of that game. But we drew both games.

“We have to find a level playing field, don’t we? It’s a tough, old competitive league.

“We haven’t lost many but we’ve drawn too many games, we’re well aware of that. We’re not daft.”

Clarke continued: “It was a good win at Tranmere and if we can keep getting them those draws are going to look decent in the future.

“We’ve been missing that ruthlessness in the final third, we know that. We’re well aware of that.

“And we’ve been giving individual goals away, otherwise we’d be on a lot more points than we are.

“As a football manager you keep working with your players to get the top end of the pitch right.

“And you keep hoping players don’t make silly individual mistakes.

“There’s two thirds of the season left, loads of games, so we’ll just keep working away.”