Walsall are still waiting for a permanent successor to Mat Sadler, with Lee Grant among the names linked to the job more than two months after the club moved on from the former head coach in March. The search has stretched beyond the end of the season, and the wait has now passed the point Darren Byfield indicated an update should have come.

Sadler was dismissed when Walsall were only three points off the play-offs, but the season ended with the club 13 adrift. His last run had brought only two wins from 14 matches, and it included the first sequence of three straight defeats in his two-and-a-half year reign. Walsall needed a late response after that, and Grant is one of the names now being weighed against the size of the task.

Grant left Huddersfield Town in January after eight months in charge, having posted a 41.7 per cent win rate while the club sat sixth. That background has kept him in the frame, even if the job at Walsall comes with a different set of pressures. The club have already released 12 players, leaving the next head coach with an immediate rebuild as well as the usual demand for results.

Byfield, who oversaw Walsall’s final 10 matches as interim head coach, gave the team a brief lift with five unbeaten games at the start of his spell. But the finish was harsher, with four defeats in his final five matches. After the season, he said he was unsure about his future, and his temporary charge now sits alongside a recruitment process that has dragged on longer than supporters were led to expect.

Head of football Stewart Mairs said last week that the appointment was close and described the process as intense and thorough. That sounded like the finish of a search. Instead, the club have remained publicly silent since Byfield suggested before the final game that an update should arrive within a week. That week has passed without a public development, and Walsall are still left with no permanent manager and a squad that has already been cut back for the summer.

Grant is not the only name to have come up. South Shields boss Ian Watson has also been mentioned, although Geoff Thompson has twice dismissed the idea on social media. Luke Garrard was another name linked with the vacancy, but he signed a new contract on Monday, removing one more candidate from the list. For Walsall, the delay now matters because the next appointment has to do more than settle the dugout; it has to reset a club that finished the season well short of the position it occupied when Sadler was removed.