United are proving to be a difficult team to beat this season, with just three league losses to their name, and their current unbeaten run of four on the spin in all competitions has been the product of hard work and determination.
But, and as we’ve come to expect this season, manager Paul Simpson is still demanding more, highlighting again this weekend that we could and possibly should have more points on the tally.
“I know we should be better off, but sadly we’re not,” he told us. “There’s no point looking back at it now.
“There are areas where we know we could have been better on Saturday, for example, and I’ll watch the game back and we’ll review it, as we always do.
“What we can’t do is get strung up about it. We said in the changing room at full time that it might turn out to be a good point. On other occasions it’s the kind of game we might have lost, against a big, physical Walsall side.
“We traded some half blows, maybe slaps as opposed to punches, and we maybe looked at each other ready for the next one in a couple of week’s time. Hopefully that will be a better game of football and we can create more, and finish off the types of chances we had.”
“From games like Saturday you have to take any positive you can, because I don’t think it was a great spectacle at all,” he added. “It was probably two teams who cancelled each other out a little bit, and I think we probably had the better opportunities in the second half, particularly from set plays.
“We had some absolutely fantastic deliveries from Owen Moxon but, on the other side of it, credit t their defenders because they got all over our players, they blocked them, they grappled with them, and unfortunately when that happens and the referee doesn’t give free kicks or penalties then there’s not a lot you can do about it.”
With two draws from the last two games, he also confirmed that there was a sense of frustration in the dressing room.
“The noises I heard from the lads tell me that they were frustrated that they didn’t get the win,” he commented. “I don’t know whether they felt as though we deserved it, but they’re definitely frustrated that it didn’t happen. That’s a good sign, to be fair.
“They want to demand it and that’s what you want to see. I’ve told them that we go again this week, we’ve had a good start to the season, we’re in a decent position, but it’s about getting through what is always a tough spell.
“When you start the season there’s an energy and enthusiasm that goes with the early games, the cup competitions, and all of the different things that come with it. At the end of the season there’s the excitement of what can and can’t be achieved.
“You have to get through these mid-season months, the cold November and December where it’s raining and pitches can be heavy, both in games and on your training days. It’s a bit of a grind at this stage for every team, but we’re all really fortunate to be professional footballers.
“It’s a grind when you’re in a normal day to day job through these winter months, so we have to appreciate where we are and what we’re doing. We have to be really professional, get ourselves through it, and make sure we’re in a position and ready to go on and have a proper finish to the season.”
But he did concede that turning even one of the two draws into a win would have made things seem even brighter.
“It would have been huge,” he said. “I knew Walsall was going to be a tough game today, these are one of the form sides - they must be because the manager’s just got manager of the month.
“It’ll be tough when we go there to play them in the FA Cup. I just think we had more to offer than we ended up seeing. I can’t fault them for the way we kept going and trying to get a result from the game though.
“I don’t think we really had that spark that we wanted from everybody, and that’s something we have to look at in terms of our preparation. It’s always difficult when you go Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday, that’s not an excuse, I’m just saying these are thing things we have to weigh up and take into consideration.
“Hopefully this week now, with a week of training, a county cup game on Tuesday where some lads will be involved, we’ll be in a better physical state going into the game at Salford than maybe we showed on Saturday.
“I bet every single manager in our country will be looking and thinking if only we’d done this or that, but there’s no point doing it. We’re judged over 46 games in the league and, so far, we’re in an ok position.
“The challenge is can we make sure we do even more to be in an even better position, so we’re challenging ourselves and each other to be the best we possibly can, to be the best professionals that gives us the best chance of being higher in the table.”