Graeme Lee discusses Hartlepool United's recent schedule after their eight game unbeaten run came to an end at Walsall

Pools were comfortably beaten at the Banks’s Stadium, bringing an end to their eight game unbeaten run in League Two, thanks to a double from George Miller and a Conor Wilkinson goal.

Omar Bogle pulled one back for the visitors with the score at 2-0 but in truth it was a deserved victory for Michael Flynn’s Saddlers as they eased past an off the pace Pools who were contesting their seventh game in just three weeks including long journeys to Crystal Palace, Crawley, and Colchester within that run, with trips to Exeter and Bristol also over the last month.

And the Pools boss has admitted there can be no denying such a schedule can have an impact on players but he won’t use that as an excuse for his side’s defeat at the Banks’s Stadium.

“I hope [that’s what it was down to],” said Lee.

“It’s been challenging for all of the staff and we haven’t been running round for 90 minutes but the travelling does affect you, I really do believe that.

“But there were fresh legs on there. I still think there’s miles more to give from us, and we know that.

“I saw little bits against Colchester to suggest it was coming. We’ve gone 1-0 down again. Even at Crawley we started like that and it can punish you and today it did.”

Lee’s side found themselves 2-0 down inside 26 minutes when Emmanuel Osadebe was allowed to advance from the halfway line deep into the Pools half unchallenged before finding Miller who was able to calmly find the bottom corner after riding a number of tackles.

And Pools failed to learn from their mistakes as Wilkinson picked up the ball in a similar position to Osadebe and he too was allowed to run towards the edge of the area unchallenged before unleashing a fine strike into the bottom corner of Ben Killip’s goal.

It gave Pools a mountain to climb at the break which they were unable to overcome on this occasion despite Bogle’s strike to hand them hope.

Instead it was Miller again who sealed the three points when he latched onto Gary Liddle’s short backpass ahead of Killip to roll into an empty net.

“We’ve had a great run but today isn’t acceptable and it highlights that if we drop our standards we don’t win games and make it hard for ourselves. And we dropped our standards today,” said Lee.

“We need to be at it if we want to win games, not just three or four.

“I can accept it when there’s a good performance. The Bristol Rovers game really affected me because we performed so well and had chances to score. Today I didn't see that.

“We had that moment after half-time where we got our goal but the whole performance was disappointing.”

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