Dean Holden

The Only Way is Up for Walsall, who can still achieve automatic promotion on Sunday.

We’ve got one game to play in the league this season at Walsall, an away match at Port Vale on Sunday where 3,000 of our fans are intending to travel and wear fancy dress. If we win and Burton Albion lose then we’ll be promoted automatically. Burton have a three goal better goal difference than us. Wigan Athletic have already gone up as champions, so it’s us or Burton, two of the smaller clubs in the league who’ve both have exceptional seasons.

Burton play at relegated Doncaster, who have some very good players including our old captain Andy Butler. I’ll be in the stand at Port Vale watching how Burton do and relaying the information to our manager. We don’t want a Steve Lomas situation, where Man City thought they’d done enough to stay up in 1995 but they hadn’t and went down.

When I saw the Leicester players celebrating on Monday it reminded me of what we have here at Walsall. We’re a band of brothers where the team comes first. I’ll give you some examples.

We beat Fleetwood on Monday and had training on Tuesday. The lads who hadn’t played had a full session. At other clubs I’ve been at, they would be an afterthought and end up having a five a side game. I’ve been there as a player, when the manager sits in his office as the first teamers do some light gym work.

At Walsall on Tuesday, manager Jon Whitney (below) gave every player who hadn’t played a full training session. The players feel part of it, like they matter as much as the chosen XI. And they do.

We showed our lads a clip from an NFL game at the weekend. It featured a player running the length of the field with a ball before being tackled at the last minute as he was about to get a touch down. We watched it back. The player who tackled him ran even further than the man with the ball. To him, it was about getting his mates out of the shit. That’s what we do. When we lose the ball, we get back quickly. We call it negative running. There’s no room for a player who puts his hands on his hips and waits for the ball to come back to him.

We recently took a player on loan who fitted in superbly with our mentality. Matthew Pennington came from Everton and his class showed. I’ve no doubt that he’ll make a top level defender. He’s fast, strong, good in the air. He can pass the ball well, he has excellent positioning, he’s aggressive. He’s a bright boy, someone who has done all his exams. The lads said he was going to be a doctor if he wasn’t a footballer.

So we became a little nervous when we saw Everton’s injury list getting longer. When a player is sent on loan, his club usually have the right to call him back after 28 days. On day 29, Everton called him back. I don’t blame them. He was on the bench in the FA Cup semi-final and then played at the weekend, where he was praised and analysed for his performance on Match of the Day. We called him and wished him well. He was outstanding in every game for us, but better than that was the way he embraced the team. He’d stay in Walsall the night before games when he didn’t need to, he socialised with the lads when they went out for chicken. When I was a lad players went out for beer. All for one…

Losing Matt was a blow but we were fortunate in that another defender Jimmy O’Connor was coming back from injury. We’ve kept up our good form, winning seven from our last eleven matches. We were hammered 4-0 at Bradford. You get days like that in football. And we lost 1-0 at my former club Oldham. John Sheridan has done really well there since taking over from David Dunn and I. He brought six or seven experienced players in and they’ve moved away from the relegation zone.

Walsall will either go straight up or into the play offs on a run of good form. Barnsley, Millwall, Scunthorpe and Gillingham are the other teams in contention for the play offs.

And then my contract is up. I’ve been sounded out about other places and offered one job, but I’m very happy at Walsall. There’s an incredible spirit here, where everyone has the same ambition and drive. How else can you explain why a club with average crowds of 5,000 and one of the smaller playing budgets in the league are doing so well? Bigger budgets can make clubs lazy when they come to recruit, while our philosophy means we look to our youth system first and foremost. we have to use our youth system. The first team is full of lads who’ve come through the academy, we’re a bit like Crewe were years ago under Dario Gradi. There are former Walsall players like Scott Dann and Troy Deeney captaining Premier League teams, while we have a few flair players who we know are being watched by bigger clubs, too.

Romaine Sawyers is a midfielder from nearby Birmingham who plays international football for Nevis and St Kitts. Rico Henry, an 18-year-old defender, is another Brummie. He also plays for England under 19s. While Tom Bradshaw (above) is a 20 goal a season striker who made his Wales debut this year. More reasons for all the optimism at Walsall.