WATCHING Michael Symes must be both a source of comfort and a heavy dose of nostalgia for Steve Fletcher.

As club legend, big striker and general, all-round handful, Fletcher would have watched Symes at Bescot Stadium on Saturday and seen much of himself in the Liverpudlian forward.

As Cherries’ assistant manager, he would simply have been glad to have key man Symes back on the pitch after a stop-start season blighted by niggling injuries.

Fletcher had already flat-batted suggestions Symes would be the man to don his crown when he decides to call it a day as a player.

“People compare us because of our height and stature but we are two very different players,” Fletcher told the Echo on January 26, after Symes had made his first start for 15 weeks against Brighton at Dean Court.

Indeed, it would be a lazy and easy assumption to simply label both players ‘target men’.

However, Fletcher probably understands his own game better now at the ripe old age of 38 than he did when he was arguably in his pomp around the time of Cherries’ stunning play-off final win in Cardiff eight years ago.

He knows his limits and he knows his strengths and some of that philosophy appears to be rubbing off on Symes, who due to injury and otherwise, didn’t have the best of times under Eddie Howe.

Symes’s strengths, of course, are numerous.

He has the ball-to-feet skill of players two-thirds his size, can dribble, is dominant in the air and, like Fletcher, seems to relish roughing up opposition defenders.

Yes, he will get his fair share of yellow cards, but he gets away with more than he is flagged up for. A dig in the ribs here, a tug on the shirt there… It all provides him with room to manoeuvre and the opportunity to bring others into play.

Saddlers fans would say it is dirty, but it’s not – it’s clever. And besides, Fletcher has been doing it since Symes was a seven-year-old punting a ball against a wall outside Goodison Park.

It was the real Michael Symes on show at Bescot, for the second week running after his fine performance against Leyton Orient, and Saddlers defenders Andy Butler and Ollie Lancashire had little answer to the 27-year-old’s strength, trickery and, more importantly, football brain.

As Symes himself would probably say in his broad Scouse tongue: “I ahd them in Dicky’s Meadow, La.”

Ironically, Symes’s strike partner in the 2003 FA Youth Cup final, Wayne Rooney, was hogging the headlines after a majestic bicycle kick finish in the Manchester derby at lunchtime on Saturday.

But Symes’s own strike in the Midlands yesterday could prove as important to Cherries’ promotion quest as Rooney’s was to United’s own Premier League ambitions.

The 1-0 victory stretched to six games Cherries’ unbeaten run under Lee Bradbury and if the wins over Swindon and Plymouth were fortuitous, then this one was both hard-earned and well deserved.

Bradbury’s tactical style still appears to be more gung-ho than that of Eddie Howe and Cherries were wide open for the home side to exploit for long periods of the first half.

Step forward Shwan Jalal, though, who was once again in imperious form in the Cherries goalmouth.

His save to deny Butler on the half-hour was spectacular enough, Jalal diving full stretch to his right to push the defender’s looping header round the post.

But after Jason Pearce had watched his own header come back off the woodwork at the other end, Jalal saved brilliantly from point-blank range to deny Jon Macken moments later.

Symes, whose ‘header’ after 11 minutes was ruled out for deliberate handball, broke the deadlock seven minutes into the second half when the hosts failed miserably to defend a textbook Cherries corner routine that must have been missing from manager Dean Smith’s scouting reports.

Liam Feeney stepped over Marc Pugh’s delivery and, having left his man standing at the far post, Symes buried a left foot shot into the far corner from just inside the box.

Symes’s strike partner Danny Ings should have doubled Cherries’ tally moments later when clean through but was denied by Jimmy Walker’s trailing leg.

And substitute Ben Williamson, lively from the moment he stepped on to the field, could have marked his second Cherries appearance with a goal 20 minutes from time but, like Ings, was thwarted from close range by Walker.

Jason Price cleared off the line from Symes as a pulsating second period continued to enthrall, while Price clearly felt hard-done-by when his appeals for a penalty were waved away by referee David Foster following a Shaun Cooper challenge.

Fletcher’s introduction 12 minutes from time bought Cherries some much-needed breathing space as the Saddlers continued to press, Fletcher using all his experience to help nullify the threat of Matt Richards and Julian Gray in the Saddlers midfield.

In true Cherries fashion, some late drama saw the impressive Richards strike the crossbar with a free kick deep into stoppage time, but it was to be the home side’s final opportunity.