Walsall manager Jon Whitney has spoken to club journalists ahead of this weekend's League One clash with Bradford City, and has discussed how he and his team prepare for games, revealling that they break the club's fixtures into blocks of five games at a time.
Speaking via Saddlers.co.uk, Jon said; "We try to block it into five’s. Before the Sheffield United game, apart from a block in October when we did really well and picked up 11 points, we were averaging five points every five games.
"You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that isn’t good enough. Over a season, that’s relegation. So I asked the players what they thought were realistic targets.
"We can either keep fighting relegation or you can average seven points per five games which means you’re pushing towards mid-table. Or you can average ten points every five games and you’ll have a chance of the play-offs.
"From Sheffield onwards, we’ve started to increase our averages. It’s nice for us to have some kind of target because we need to know at the end of each block of five why we didn’t obtain our points.
"Was it simply performances were good but we didn’t get our rewards? We need some kind of objective to look at and we’ve got two games now where we can still return seven points from the last five. We’ll have five games left then to get as many as we can."
"You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that isn’t good enough. Over a season, that’s relegation. So I asked the players what they thought were realistic targets.
"We can either keep fighting relegation or you can average seven points per five games which means you’re pushing towards mid-table. Or you can average ten points every five games and you’ll have a chance of the play-offs.
"From Sheffield onwards, we’ve started to increase our averages. It’s nice for us to have some kind of target because we need to know at the end of each block of five why we didn’t obtain our points.
"Was it simply performances were good but we didn’t get our rewards? We need some kind of objective to look at and we’ve got two games now where we can still return seven points from the last five. We’ll have five games left then to get as many as we can."