I WAS sat in my hotel room in Estonia on Saturday watching the news come through from Walsall – what a result that was.

The international break was a busy one for me as the Football Association sent me out to do scouting reports on their next opponents, Estonia.

I went out to watch them host Lithuania at the weekend and then went back out to see them in Slovenia in midweek.

With the wonders of free hotel wifi, however, I was able to stream live updates from the Bury game at the Banks’s Stadium.

It was great to see them get their noses in front so early but even better that they were able to hold on to the lead to beat the league leaders.

David Flitcroft described it as their first real “backs-to-the-wall performance” and I think that is a very encouraging sign.

Bury need to earn the right to play their football in League One and that means grinding out results and getting points on the board before maybe relaxing into it and expressing themselves a bit more.

I noticed a change in their style during the Leicester game in the Capital One Cup.

They seemed to go out in the first half with the attitude that “we don’t care you are Premier League, we are going to play our normal game”, but after going a couple of goals down they reverted to a tighter, more direct style and matched the Foxes after that.

That is right – you have to respect your opposition – and it looks like the players have taken that on board, going unbeaten in their last three games.

They should now take a lot of confidence to Bramall Lane, but also remember that they will be facing a form side in Sheffield United who will have 19,000 fans behind them.

If they continue to respect the opposition, however, there is no reason why they can’t repeat the result from last weekend.

I was interested to hear that Flitcroft has also been out looking at young players in the international week.

He is right to suggest Bury’s level is not with England Under-21s, whose players have generally not stepped foot in the first team yet but are already on huge wages.

There are definitely some great prospects who may be available on loan playing for the other home countries though, I have seen enough U21 games recently to testify to that.

I am a strong believer that there is enough untapped talent in the British Iles not to have to go further afield, such as the former Eastern bloc countries I have visited this week.

Craig Jones, Bury’s goalscorer at Walsall, is testament to that.