Football Season Review

Walsall are coming from a summer of change, as they started the new season without some of the key players that starred in their promotion push a year earlier, and another play-off push seemed unlikely from the get-go. Their boss Jon Whitney had a different position, as he kept believing that a promotion push was possible throughout the season but his side's impressive displays were too few and far between, with their double over champions Sheffield United being their biggest achievement of the season, and the Saddlers eventually finished fourteenth and lost any hopes they had of battling for a top six finish with more than a month of the season left to play. Out of all sides that are in League One at the moment, only Oldham have a longer tenure than the Saddlers, with this being pretty much another season in which Walsall occasionally looked like having it in them to battle for something more than a mid table finish, but they ended just where they were expected to. The likes of Erhun Oztumer and Neil Etheridge have both had impressive seasons and proved to have been excellent signings, but the biggest problem that the Saddlers had was a lack of a top quality striker, with Amadou Bakayoko looking like having it in him to become that in a year or two, so one of their priorities over the summer will be to keep hold of the Sierra Leone born youngster.

Player of the Season: Erhun Öztümer