Dean Keates felt Walsall should’ve killed off Tranmere even earlier
Posted Wednesday, August 15, 2018 by PA
Walsall boss Dean Keates felt his side could have made things more comfortable for themselves after advancing to the second round of the Carabao Cup with a 3-1 victory at Tranmere.
Morgan Ferrier gave the League One Saddlers a first-half lead before further strikes after the break from ex-Tranmere winger Josh Ginnelly and Zeli Ismail sealed progression.
Larnell Cole grabbed a late consolation but it was too late for Rovers.
Keates said: “I think we could have made it a bit easier if I’m honest. We had a lot of chances and didn’t really kill them off.
“But I thought second half we played well and got a good couple of goals. It’s still early days, we’re happy with the performance, but we’ll get ready for Saturday now.
“We believe in the conditioning we’ve done with them pre-season and that we’re in a good place. They’re only going to get stronger and fitter over the course of the season. We’ve come through again tonight with no soft-tissue injuries.
“Cookie (Andy Cook) will be devastated not to have scored but I want that. Morgan only turned up on the Friday before the start of the season, so he’s straight in at the deep end.
“But they’re great lads, there’s a great buzz in the changing room. We just need to keep developing and that will happen by putting in good performances.”
League Two Rovers had offered stiff resistance in the first half and were unlucky to go in at half-time trailing, but the Saddlers showed their quality after break.
Tranmere manager Micky Mellon said: “It is what it is. We’ve made a lot changes and given a lot of lads match time, which was important.
“At times we played some good football, created good chances. We always looked a wee bit vulnerable on the counter, probably too much for our liking to be fair.
“But it is difficult because there were a lot of changes and we have to take that into consideration.
“Losing a goal from a long throw when people are detailed to do jobs on the edge of the box is frustrating, but fair play to the boys, we made a lot of changes and they put a good shift in.
“We’ve got a lot of games to play, of course we wanted to go out and do well but there’s a lot of football to be played. We’ve lost (Ritchie) Sutton now and we’ve got Zoumana (Bakayogo) with a calf injury so it’s important with the squad we have that we share the time around because we can’t be losing many more.”
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