Clayton Ince today urged Walsall to start performing and stop the season drifting into limbo.
The Saddlers ground out a 0-0 draw at Gillingham on Saturday to record their first away clean sheet in League One since September but have gone six games without a win.
Despite the point they slipped down one place to 13th – 14 points from the play-offs – and Ince says they must prove they are good enough to climb the table.
“We can’t live on reputations, you can only live on results and look at results at the end of the season,” said the goalkeeper. “That’s where it counts and shows what type of team you are and what quality you have.
“We can’t say we’re too good and then don’t perform. Performances show how good a team is and we need to show we are good players and we deserve to be in that top 10. We can’t keep relying on word of mouth, we have to go out and perform.
“Performances get you places, we can always say we’re better than them but in truth performances help you get places.”
And the 37-year-old insists they cannot rest in fear of getting pulled into a relegation scrap as they sit six points above the drop zone.
He said: “You might not deserve to be there but if you don’t play for it and don’t play to get out of it you’ll dragged in.
“We can’t think of those behind us. We don’t want to be dragged down in the second half of the season, we should be comfortable in the top half and it’s good to see we’re getting results.”
Ince kept his eighth clean sheet of the season, a first since November, at the Priestfield Stadium and was pleased with the defensive display.
“It’s good to be back on it, we didn’t play particularly well but to go all that way and get a point gives us something to build on,” he said.
“We worked hard defensively and the guys deserve to be in that back four, even with myself as a back five we worked together and we worked hard.
“We have something to build on for the Charlton game tomorrow. If we didn’t have something to build on we would have been disappointed with ourselves.”