The Changing Man

Well, if we only learned one thing from Ben Boycott’s first (seemingly of two) statement, at least we know who is in charge. Blessedly, there was much more to digest and learn than who makes the decisions but the unequivocal nature of the way Boycott spelled his intentions out let everyone know that he’s now in sole charge at the Football Club.

The circus has a new ringmaster folks and the clowns risk being fed to the lions.

In terms of content, Boycott gave plenty of indications of what is to come. Whether you take the sections around strategy and future plans at face value or wait to see the proof of the pudding is a choice we all have but openly publishing the basis of a vision feels pretty much like a decent step forward for this club. There are things missing that aren’t directly linked to the playing side of the club such as the sharp price increases, site development, commercial strategy and board structure but hopefully some of these will be referenced in part two of Ben’s communication.   

Refreshingly there was also plenty of reflection, honesty, acknowledgment of past failure and ownership of issues. Being fair, Leigh Pomlett was always open and transparent with his summation of events and looked to communicate regularly, but much of what Boycott published was/is new ground. Even as a summary, the statement contained more detail than I can previously recall.   

I also felt that the more opinionated and inherently personal parts of the letter added flavour and a transparency to the information provided. And the opinions included were often really telling.

“It starts with me personally looking in the mirror, asking what has been going on at the club, asking what mistakes I myself have made and what mistakes the club has made, and asking how it is going to be different going forward.” is arguably the most self-critical sentence to come out of the football club in decades.

“Blaming poor luck, however, is cheap and weak. The poor luck turned into a losing habit, which was allowed to snowball into the demise of a once-promising season.” is another brutally straightforward comment that I don’t feel would have seen the light of a club statement pre-Pomlett.

Similarly, “We need to understand why and make strategic changes as we make this critical next decision” is as fundamentally transparent as an acceptance of systemic failure and the need to change gets.

Boycott’s public admission of inner searching, his willingness to be seen being vulnerable and what was essentially a recognition of a season failure is so far removed from the past it’s almost difficult to comprehend. The suggestion that if you don’t like it, then do one to Luton or Bournemouth or Rotherham doesn’t really feel like it’s from a different era, because it feels more like from a different galaxy. If there was any doubt that this is a different time, then the personal aspects and opinions within this letter spell it out as clear as it’s possible to do so. Evidently, Boycott understands that trust and respect is hard earned and easily lost.

What also feels like something entirely fresh is the open publication of a strategy. For too long this football club has given the manager the keys to the first team and hoped they could drive. Dean Smith was the last appointment that could be considered successful and that was more than thirteen years ago. The new appointment will be our eighth attempt at trying to find a manager who can take us forward since Smith failed to finish the job he’d started.

Boycott’s reference to not taking the easy way out by laying the sole blame at the manager’s door is the first of many welcome indicators around this issue. It is abundantly clear from the seven managerial casualties since December 2015 and the continued lack of progress on the pitch that the issues that have stopped the football club achieving the results and league position it is capable of run far deeper than the choice of manager(s). In appointing men that are League 2 course and distance proven, the local lad, the known quantity, the internal promotion or the experienced pro with experience of developing young players it could be argued we’ve tried sailing every type of managerial ship in order to find calmer waters. All have been found with their vessels listing amongst the rocks.

On the day Michael Flynn was appointed I tweeted that should he fail, we could be sure that the issue wasn’t the manager and I stand by that. The fact that Swindon acted so decisively once Flynn became available should also be telling. By their actions, they’ve completely discounted Flynn’s record here, just as Burslem Carol chose to do with Clarke. Both Vale and Swindon appear to have overlooked the lack of progress that their identified men made here, which arguably suggests that they felt it was the club rather than the manager that was the issue. I sense that Boycott has also recognised this. His reference to eight managers in eight years and the need for strategic changes suggest that after 12 months of listening and learning he has identified what he thinks are the issues.  

Albert Einstein famously said that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” This is mirrored in Boycott’s reference to identifying “the singular individual who is the right fit for that moment, and empower them to implement their process, their style of play, their staff, and their playing squad to get the formula just right. When that hasn’t worked in one situation or another, we’ve terminated the manager, hired a new one, and gone again.”

Boycott and his partners are no fools, their investment in a football club with little assets and competing on a different continent suggests plenty of ambition and a strong competitive streak to untap the potential they believes that they have identified. There would have been plenty of softer challenges much closer to home. Some will rightly question why Walsall and what is the pay back, and in truth that hasn’t really been fully answered but the only way Boycott and Trivela get a worthwhile payback on their investment is to improve us and move us forward. That will involve taking a lot of tough decisions and getting most of them right. Evolution or revolution? Both involve risk.

And so to the Trivela vision, the meat and potatoes of this communication.

“We’ll be working with a fresh plan and a fresh vision from here on. I believe in building a structure, a system, and a culture where a manager can come in if (and only if) they fit that strategy, and be a part of our building process.“

There are things in here that Boycott doesn’t say that are probably as important as the things he does. Despite the record of 1 win in 21 and absolute loss of any recognisable playing style the parting of ways with Flynn and Hatswell wasn’t universally expected. Continuity and particularly getting to that 3^rd transfer window felt important and worth the patience to many. It’s worth noting that Flynn’s much heralded and welcomed arrival did come at the cost of a Director of Football. Jamie Fullarton might not have been the right appointment but it that doesn’t mean that the creation of the position was a poor idea, and it seems from Boycott’s letter that this is the intended direction of travel. Whether they gave Flynn the option of working this way or simply decided that he wouldn’t or couldn’t, the structure where the manager is no longer in complete charge of the football club could well have been as much of a breaking point as our desperate run of results since the Leicester cup tie. I really don’t underestimate the power of the (and only if) in the quote above.

Selecting a manager to fit into what the club wants, rather than the club sacrificing parts of itself to fit into what a manager wants to be seems so blatantly obvious to me. As the bookmaker bingo got into full swing and names shortened an anyone who’s used Hilton Park Services in the last few weeks, the club appears to have positively used the time that Mat Sadler has taken the reins, rightly stepping back and reviewing requirements rather than racing towards another poor appointment.

Finally, blessedly, the plan is more significant than the man.

And I really do like the plan. Coincidentally, I asked a couple of friends at the last home game (before this letter) to tell me something positive that the football side of this club currently does well. The silence and subsequent shrugging of shoulders was deafening. Have a think yourselves – in terms of the football side of the club, what do we do well? What do you see that others might want to replicate? The list isn’t all that long.

I’ve also long bemoaned the lack of identity that the football club and in particular the first team have, so the reference to a clear playing identity was great to see. It is really important. As was reference for our core values as a club – Service, Discipline, Excellence and Ambition. These, in reality, should be at the heart of any professional sports organisation but saying and doing are fundamentally different processes. Whilst not directly related to what happens on the pitch, what part of the Poundland Bescot Stadium experience has felt like excellence in the past decade? If you can’t get toilets, catering or stadium access right, what chance of you got of building a solid football infrastructure?

The constant change of manager also increases and empowers the prioritisation of short-term thinking. Of our last five managers, only Darrell Clarke has enjoyed the scope of recruitment across three transfer windows (his fourth window was probably the catalyst for his departure). This has to be part of the root cause of why we have quite so many summer squad overhauls and precisely why the implementation of strategy and recruitment plan driven by a DoF, or the somewhat grandiosely titled Trivela’s VP of Global Football, is key. Someone has to think long term and that is never going be a manager who lives and dies by the final score every Saturday and Tuesday..

The fact that the intention to build our recruitment structure on analytics and data is interesting. I’d have hoped, and expected, that we already did character and culture fit checks as part of the current recruitment process. It’s from where this blog got its name of course, but there have been squads, groups and individuals, past and present, where you wonder what due diligence was actually done. Recruitment via analytics and data seems very much to be in vogue and you only have to look at Brighton, Brentford and Southampton (over a decade) to see how effectively it can work. That said, in a post Brexit environment it is so much more difficult to recruit non-British players into Leagues 1 & 2 due to work permit requirements. Brighton and Brentford can make it work effectively as they’re recruiting current international footballers from clubs in top-flight football and European competition. However the days of raiding Feirense for Jorge Letaio or Logroñés for Zigor Aranalde are long gone and the restrictions will make recruitment from data much harder and potentially more expensive – the pool of players at our level will be significantly smaller and we’ll all see the same data, right?

Intuition is also referenced and still has a significant role to play – I seriously doubt that you’d have taken any of Kyle Lightbourne, Troy Deeney or Tom Bradshaw on pre-Walsall in-play analytics alone and I suspect that seeing what others don’t is where the real value lies.  

There were a couple of items, indirectly associated to recruitment but not mentioned in Boycott’s message that I genuinely hope are areas given more focus.

Scouting being one. On Twitter, I highlighted the 2nd Crewe goal as a goal that should never happen with a strong scouting system. It was basic stuff that we should never have fallen for and made we wonder how thorough our pre-game research had been. It wasn’t the only time I’ve thought this. Similarly, the amount of pre and at half time double substitutions we have made in the past 3 or 4 years is symptomatic of us setting up wrong and being forced to correct in order to stay in the game. It happens too regularly to not be linked. The visit to Barrow in August was probably the most obvious example I’ve seen of a team either not scouting the opposition well or just ignoring the reports. We’d lost that evening before we’d worked out how to set up against them. Maybe the days of sitting in the stands taking notes and compiling dossiers are over, maybe not. But whatever we do in this area appears weak and requires a review to my eyes.

Secondly the January window. I referenced Clarke’s exit earlier and the probable link to the January window. That the last 7 managerial departures have happened after the closure of the January transfer window is, in my opinion, not unconnected. Sure, there have been exceptions – O’Driscoll being an obvious one but even the likes of Brian Dutton, who never got a transfer window, inherited a squad undermined by January departures. I genuinely can’t recall a positive January window, and that includes the infamous 2016 window where we celebrated standing still (shutters rolling down) whilst everyone around us improved their options. The January window hurts us almost every season and until we address this, expect much of the same.

Returning back to what is in the strategy, the paragraph given to player development and academy integration identifies possibly the most critical element that needs to be significantly improved and Boycott was right to identify this. EPPP (the Elite Player Performance Plan) has impacted clubs lower down the pyramid with the system favouring the Cat 1 (usually Premier League) academies and I sense that this has had a chunky impact on us. How we recover and restart the conveyer from a system that is heavily loaded in the favour of those at the top of the pyramid is a task form someone with far greater understanding of the mechanics of youth player development than me. I take heart in the changes and introductions made in recent times and I’m genuinely pleased and relieved that topic was referenced in Boycott’s message. Getting this area right and delivering footballers to the first team is vital to long term growth and stability and I genuinely hope that it’s front and centre on Boycott’s radar.

Similarly the process once our young talent has broken through needs some serious consideration. The falling away of players like Alfie Bates and Sam Perry, the lack of any real opportunity given to Tom Leak and the preference of signing Danny Cashman over providing Ronan Maher with game opportunity are all somewhat disconcerting. Maybe Leak wouldn’t have been good enough but was Joe Low really that much better? The decline in performance of players such as Bates and Perry once they’d got to 20 games really needs to be understood as it happens all too often. The managerial mis-trust of our own young players also needs to be addressed.  Additionally, whoever signed off on Danny Cashman, needs to recognise the impact this had in side-lining Maher’s season. It was such a pointless loan. Again, maybe the manager felt that he wasn’t 100% ready for the handful of minutes that Cashman got but the experience Maher would have gleaned from them would have been really valuable. Its another example of short term thinking overriding long term aims.

In summary, I’d have welcomed any sense of a plan given what we’ve experienced over recent times but I sense a decent amount of logic, thought and determination to get things right within Boycott’s letter.

“And it’s not just about the next manager or the next player or the next match – it’s about us as the club, and putting one brick on another, over time. The next manager that we hire will be one absolutely critical component of this – but as a part of a thoughtful plan, not as the “be all, end all.” They will be coming into an increasingly well-defined Walsall Football Club, rather than coming in and redefining Walsall Football Club for themselves.“

There is obviously much to do and what feels like a real appetite at the top of the football club to address issues that either haven’t been seen or overlooked in the desperate scramble to exit League 2 in an upwards direction. That scattergun approach has failed and failed and failed and failed and finally we seem to be learning from our errors. That has to be positive.

Boycott also references the process taking time but doesn’t mention the need for patience. That omission may be in order to not negatively affect season ticket sales but it is a trait that I suspect that we will all have to demonstrate, again. Having a plan is one thing, and it’s a decent starting point. However, rolling it out will take time, courage, an eye for detail, collective belief and a decent chink of patience. League 2 will be a tough division next season, strengthened by both promoted and relegated clubs. There may be no instant fix to the problem we have failed to solve for too long.

I wish him well. We all win if Trivela get this right and whilst this feels like a fairly complex build, every part of it makes sense. Time, patience and holding our nerve will be the key to successful deployment. Rome wasn’t built on one managerial appointment or a solitary transfer window.

The Consistently Inconsistent.

(A guide on how to not have a successful football season.)

At half time last Saturday I called my wife. “I’ll be outside at twenty to five”
“Why? What’s the matter?” came the response.
“That’s enough for me this season” was about all I could offer. And it was. The sooner this lousy season was over, then so much the better.

And it has been lousy.

We should have known what was coming relatively quickly last autumn, if only because the opening 10 games were a microcosm of the season that followed. We lost late at Tranmere after holding our own but were neither capable of carving out an opportunity to score or fit enough to withstand the home team’s late push. We then somehow conspired to lose at home to Doncaster, again unable to score or win a penalty shoot out that we were 2 goals up in. Forest Green gave us an object lesson in what L2 excellence looked like and an injury time equaliser punished us for being unable to put a dreadfully poor Scunthorpe to the sword. We hammered Mansfield out of nowhere. never turned up in Hartlepool and left Newport emptyhanded after failing to deal with a late set piece. And repeat, and repeat, and repeat.

My good friend and co-NNP writer @hallymk1 challenged me recently on whether this indeed was a missed opportunity of a season? Or could it only be judged as a missed opportunity if we’d had enough about us to challenge in the first place? Which he felt we hadn’t, and it’s a fair point. However, I can’t escape the feeling that the porosity of quality in League 2 this season provided a bona-fide opportunity for anyone capable of mixing a sprinkling of quality with a dose of consistency, organisation and fitness. Traits of which we fell well short of on all counts.

In both those opening ten games and the season that followed the running theme of our woes was a lack of goal threat. In 53 games this season, we failed to score more than once in 42 of them. Oldham & Colchester being the only teams we managed to score 2 or more against both home & away. The loss of Rory Holden understandably impacted upon creativity and goal threat but there were self-inflicted issues as well. Confusion reigned over Conor Wilkinson’s most effective position, Kieran Phillips was relentlessly played out of position, Matt Taylor’s vice like insistence on a lone front man with others behind or out wide, we signed a striker who was injured & never regained match sharpness and deployed a midfield that almost never broke the lines. All of which contributed to our inability to break down opponents.

George Miller did well, looking particularly sharp in front of goal early on. His game matured over the course of the season and whilst he didn’t score as many as those early weeks suggested he might, Miller finished the season as a robust leader of the line. Some will credibly point to missed chances that limited his haul to 12, and it’s difficult to argue too much apart from offering the counter-argument that we remember the misses purely because clear chances for strikers were so few and far between across winter and spring. Wherever he starts next season, and it seems increasing likely it won’t be in Walsall, he’ll be a far more rounded and deployable player than the player who started this one.

Elsewhere, Brendan Kiernan has offered occasional glimpses of threat and I’m sure he’d look far more dangerous in a team with more dimensions than the one from this season. I don’t think that he possesses the moment of magic capacity that Wes McDonald offered but he offers a far more consistent presence than Wes provided. After a change of manager, Conor Wilkinson showed what Jamie Fullarton and Matt Taylor were excited about once played down the middle with a partner. I sense that Keiron Phillips could have contributed much more than he did but his ability was utterly wasted out wide.

Finally, we usurped our traditional and annual dogs-dinner of a January transfer window by paying a fee for an injured Devante Rodney. Time will tell on Rodney’s Saddlers career but let’s not kid ourselves that it’s started well. In fairness, he absolutely deserves the benefit of the doubt given his lack of fitness on arrival, but this was a signing that did nothing for Taylor, Fullarton, Rodney, Pomlett or the team as a whole. Even by Walsall’s January standards, agreeing terms with a player who couldn’t play for weeks and wasn’t fit when he did was poor business.

Defensively, we fluctuated from occasionally promising to uncohesive to bordering on ridiculous with not much in between. Backs to the wall, ugly but deserved, clean sheets at Sutton, Forest Green Rovers and Port Vale were too often undermined by shockers at Hartlepool, Newport and Stevenage. Then there was the horror show at Swindon, an awful defensive giveaway at home to Barrow and the less said about Leyton Orient’s Banks’s visit the better. The only consistent defensive factors were inconsistency and collective frailty. We conceded far too many from set pieces, far too many late goals and far too many of the avoidable variety. Away from home, our inability to pierce the opponent’s resistance was regularly compounded by conceding at the first hint of pressure, al-la Salford. Similarly, our uncanny ability to quickly turn attack into concession was never better highlighted than Rochdale’s help-yourself-to-it winner.

In terms of personnel, Ash Taylor’s on field performance was in direct contrast to the excitement at his capture. Pedestrian and laboured, Taylor carried the can for the Hartlepool horror show and blessedly made for the exit at the first opportunity. This move was a real bonus, as the pain in carrying him for a further 18 months of substitute appearances and reserve football would’ve been significant, particularly with Joss Labadie and Conor Wilkinson now sidelined for an extended period.

Rollin Menayese’s fabulous first few months justified the deal he was offered but that form deserted him literally from the moment the ink had dried. Rollin would have hoped that his evening in Swindon was as bad as it’d get but a 17th minute withdrawal against Orient and the sparsity of opportunity since threatens his Walsall future. Menayese has proved he has the game within him but it’s clear that Flynn has doubts and it’ll be a significant rescue act if he’s to rebuild his career at Walsall.

Pick of the defensive bunch was Manny Monthe. At times he has been a giant amongst men and boy did we miss him in January. If he did what he was accused of then he fully deserved the suspension that he got. However, I’m a touch uncomfortable about the FA punishing a player (and club that wasn’t involved in the incident) with such a significant ban based upon “on the balance of probability”. Out of all of our early summer headline captures, Monthe had the strongest impact over the course of 2021/22, however his zero goal return for his height and physical presence is a real set-piece head scratcher.

The back three system Flynn deploys, incorporating Monthe, Hayden White and Donervon Daniels, looked like they had a plan at times and is probably our best bet for next season. With Flynn having all of pre-season to work on defensive solidity and a settled back line in place I’m expecting us to be much tighter next season. Which, to be fair, shouldn’t be overly difficult.

A couple of new full backs will help that process and they should be easier to source than a new goalkeeper to replace the sublime Carl Rushworth. The Brighton stopper arrived with a highly regarded reputation and 46 games later departed with that reputation bolstered. I’m not a great fan of loan deals but this was a mutually beneficial season that saw Rushworth, his employers and Walsall all benefitting from him joining us. Rushworth looks to have all the tools to go a long way in the game and will take some replacing.

Possibly the only loser in the Rushworth deal was Jack Rose. After shifting Liam Roberts from first choice, the arrival of Rushworth must have been a hammer blow and his lack of opportunity in the final year of his contract probably ensured a parting of the ways. When he did play, he never let us down and I hope he finds a first team chance elsewhere.

And so to midfield, where Jack Earing, Liam Kinsella and Joss Labadie have been selection mainstays all season, despite our midfield never really dominating games or winning us matches. Earing often looks wasted playing so deep, the defensive midfielder who isn’t really a defender makes little sense. The experience gleaned from a full season of league football will be invaluable and I expect Earing to progress strongly again next season. Similarly, I would anticipate Flynn finding ways to increase Earing’s output.

Joss Labadie frequently kicked everything that moved and occasionally things that didn’t. At Vale Park, Labadie delivered a full midfield master class, going through his repertoire of dark arts in an hour and a half of grit, determination, sheer bloody mindedness and point-blank refusal to accept anything but midfield control. He was immense but frustratingly, apart from that one dominating performance, I don’t think we ever saw the player that Taylor and Fullarton thought they’d nicked from Newport. The breaking of dressing room sanctum in Matt Taylor’s “I pleaded with him to not get another yellow” in the aftermath of the Scunthorpe shambles probably best encapsulates the frustration of Labadie’s season.

Liam Kinsella is the enigma for me. Player of the Season twice, deservedly I should add, without ever memorably dominating a game of football. Overflowing in energy, commitment and willing, Kinsella has run, tackled, passed and harried himself into rightly being the first name on the teamsheet and deep into the hearts of the fanbase. He genuinely is one of our own. But his partnerships with Labadie and Earing were no more effective than those formed with Alfie Bates, Danny Guthrie, Stuart Sinclair, Joe Edwards, Isaiah Osbourne and/or George Dobson. For all of the many great attributes Liam contributes, his lack of presence in the final third is an issue.

And then there is the near-criminally underused Sam Perry. His energetic performance in the heart of Neil McDonald’s 4-4-2 against Tranmere was really refreshing and reminded everyone that his first instinct was always forward. Similarly, Perry’s advance in between the strikers for the deadlock breaker against Port Vale highlighted what we’ve been missing all season (and before). That kind of late movement and opportunist run doesn’t happen with any of Earing, Kinsella or Labadie, all of whom prefer to sit in the pocket without ever genuinely dictating our in-possession play. Midfield needs to be a priority for Michael Flynn over this transfer window, not least because until we find a blend that includes creativity and control, any hopes of a top 3 or play off challenge will be slim.

Away from League 2 football we won two cup games – an EFL Trophy win over a U21s and a scratchy 1-0 win at Kings Lynn in the FA Cup – and were out of all competitions when Swindon knocked us out of the FA Cup on December 4th. That Swindon pulled Manchester City out of the hat in Round 3 and collected the financial riches that arrived courtesy of TV broadcasts and a massive home gate was as painful a kick in the teeth as it gets. Personally, I can’t recall being quite so irritated since Hereford pulled out Manchester United after we stole defeat from the jaws of victory at Edgar Street 32 years earlier. For a club on a limited budgets and only spending what we have this was a minimum £1/2m opportunity that would’ve put a completely different perspective on Flynn’s summer ‘22 shopping activities.

And then there was Scunthorpe away.

Scunthorpe have won once in 2022 and twice since Halloween. They lost seven straight games ahead of playing us and have squeezed in a further 12 defeats in 16 winless games since. That they beat us, deservedly, whilst playing for an hour with 10 men was a disgrace. Dress it up how you wish, hide behind injuries, suspensions formations and selections if you like, but there are no excuses that truly stand up. We were a shambles.

At any other club in the country, at any time of the season, that result, on the back of the 6 defeats that proceeded it, was a sacking result. And irrespective of how nice, charming, popular, hard-working, caring or willing Matt Taylor was, there was simply no escaping the inevitable. Looking back, the experiment with Matt Taylor simply didn’t work, despite it feeling like a really good fit at the time. Whilst he and Jamie Fullarton talked a really good game, the sparsity of their team actually delivering the aforementioned good game became an issue that neither could extract themselves from.

Their policy of early (relatively) high-profile recruitment didn’t bring anywhere near the anticipated level of expected success and the multi-week signing void and subsequent late crescendo of loan deals that followed suggested we’d done the bulk of our budget in week 1. For me, that chunky period with no signings unquestionably meant we started the season on the back foot. A starting position, that in truth, that we never fully recovered from. The only consistent theme being inconsistent performance.

In the end, Taylor’s loyalty to a system that plainly wasn’t working unquestionably did for him, but you also need to ask questions of his players who followed that shambolic evening and his departure with six points out of six against 2nd placed Tranmere and runaway leaders Forest Green Rovers. They undoubtedly contributed to Taylor losing his job.

There were positives, albeit fleeting ones. The win at Port Vale, where Taylor looked head and shoulders more of a manager and leader than his opposite number, was an incredible performance. As the Port Vale manager effectively threw his team under the bus with the now iconic “I’m embarrassed” post-game summary Taylor, by contrast, cut a mature, controlled and intelligent presence both on the touchline and in the press commitments that followed. In many ways, he looked an upgrade on Pomlett’s first (and second) manager. That he only lasted 11 weeks and 13 games after Vale Park was as much of a shock as it was unfortunate, but as discussed above, post-Scunthorpe Pomlett had little to no other option

I have a lot of time for Leigh Pomlett and more patience than many. Despite inheriting relative financial stability and control he took on a football club in absolute decline three years ago. Deservedly relegated at the time of purchase, a squad in disarray and wanting out and a fanbase overlooked for the best part of a generation in revolt, this wasn’t ever going to be a five-minute job or one season turnaround. That Covid interfered with his first season and a combination of needing to trade Elijah Adebayo and Burslem Carol’s Clarke chase killed the second shouldn’t be lost, but neither should they be an excuse. After all, Covid affected everyone and Carol really did do us a favour in facilitating a press of the re-set button.

I also fully recognise the fact that this is a big ship to turn around on relatively meagre resources and that he absolutely needs time for the good work he’s already done to take effect. Rome wasn’t built on a couple of transfer windows. He deserves a lot of kudos for the way he has recognised the importance in communicating to supporters and adding a personal feel back into the club. Without Pomlett, surviving Covid might well have been a even greater challenge. That said this season hasn’t reflected all that well on Pomlett. The fact we’re on our fourth manager in 18 months is both damning and damaging, bringing into focus how we identify serious candidates and do our research around them.

Similarly, the strategic implementation of a Director of Football, a correct pathway in my opinion, was abandoned long before any mid or long term benefit could be measured. A position introduced to bring football nous and knowledge into the boardroom of a professional football club (just have a think about that statement for a moment) and long-term stability, unapologetically abandoned inside a year. Pomlett’s comments on this in his recent Walsall Fan TV interview were confusing and had a feeling of contradiction. One moment praising the impact the DoF had “he did some really good stuff” then almost simultaneously thinking we needed a change “it ran out of runway”. His suggestion that we bought in “considerably more experience” than we previously had expects us to overlook Neil McDonald’s quarter of a century of post playing experience, less than a minute after listing Flynn, Wilkinson & Earing as Fullarton contact successes. Pomlett must have known that this question was coming, not least because the club have sidestepped it themselves, but the inconsistency in the response just doesn’t stack up in my head.

It was reassuring however that he will revisit this position at a point in the future.

Irrespective of why Fullarton departed however, the fact he said goodbye so quickly raises questions. If Fullarton quit in search of another opportunity, what does that say about us? If Fullarton was pushed what does that say about our pre-employment diligence – for both the role and person? And if we decided the role wasn’t right or the scope was wrong (“the role definition needs to be thought out”), what does that say about our thinking or role creation? In any instance, we come out of it poorly.

Pomlett is no fool however, his business history, experience and success simply won’t have been built upon 6-month vanity projects and a hire ‘em, fire ‘em mentality, but what we’ve seen at Walsall is inescapable. I have absolute faith that he’ll get this right and lead the club back to League 1, but there need to be glimpses of light soon. There’s only so long the patience will hold when struggling in a league below our natural home.

The protests in February were a clear indication of patience being stretched and evidence that the post-Bonser honeymoon is well and truly over. Pomlett’s rabbit-out-of-the-hat capture of Michael Flynn will buy him and the club time, but he has a lot invested in Flynn just now. We enter season 4 of League 2 football without even mounting the remotest challenge at getting out in a positive direction so far, despite the frequent rhetoric around us expecting more. This needs to change and his eggs are almost exclusively housed in Flynn’s basket. If this manager fails and 2022/23 goes badly, which I genuinely doubt for what it’s worth, we’ll all be in choppy waters.

Inevitably there’s a lot riding on Flynn and a decent summer transfer window is essential. The 16th place finish we’ve just achieved officially ends the half decade long year on year deterioration in finishing position, but only just. There has been progress but it’s not exactly much to write home about and this has to change.

In the end, a season that never really got going, faded out without leaving much in terms of memories. We spent over 250 days of a 274-day season in the bottom half and spent as much time in the L2 relegation zone as we did in the top half. It would be wrong to suggest that it couldn’t have been worse, because Scunthorpe and Oldham will confirm it can. That said, adding in the consideration of retaining our league status when determining how successful a season has been is a major indication of just how far we’ve fallen.

It’s a long way back home from here.

Same old story?

I will be the first to admit, that I’ve been prompted into writing this blog, not by creativity and the determination to make (un)interesting contributions once in a while… but by emotion.

Now, that is probably not the best starting point to write a real critical and insightful piece of prose, but I feel like I needed to. 

This is therapy.

I sit here, at 8.45pm on transfer deadline day, willing, neé, imploring our club to make good on the promises made during pre-season. 

Now, I am trying to remain rational and balanced. Yes, we have had a high turnover of players (again, mind); yes, we have a young manager; yes, we have a new director of football; yes, we have a relatively new chairman…

Yet….Yet, there is something wrong. There is just something that isn’t sitting right with me.

Let’s first take a look at all of this from a pure football (on paper) point of view. We started off the pre-season with a raft of experienced solid pros, signing and saying the right things. I, I think, along with many, were really captured by a wave of optimism cascading over Bescot (I refuse to call it the ‘Banks’s’s’). We have some experience in defence and in midfield (though, that part of team requires another blog). Great. Wonderful. Hurrah. 

It’s now been what? 6 weeks, 6 whole weeks waiting for what has been blindingly obvious  since the start of pre-season. 

We are desperate for experienced centre forwards. Not one… probably 2. We are also missing another wide forward that can play in the 3 behind the 1 in Matt’s 4231. That sounded like a rap. 

Now, the desperation, as I write this blog, is purely for bodies and attacking options on the bench. That should not be how a squad is built. We are 6 games into the season, and our only attacking option on the bench is pretty much, Osadebe. 

Jamie Fullarton, that is simply not good enough. This is not Matt Taylor’s fault, this is the Director of Football, and thus the Chairman’s fault. 

I have waited and waited until this window has shut in order to pass this opinion. I have tried to remain balanced, and waited… and waited… and… waited.

I’ve willed us to break the cycle, and do something positive and ambitious. That’s all we want as supporters. Especially after the last 5 years. We just want to dream, get excited, and be hopeful.

“We can’t do this again, surely?”

“No no no, a trained and well groomed Dachshund could see we need a couple of centre forwards – we will get a couple in, don’t worry” 

I’ve said these things in recent weeks.

I am absolutely flabbergasted, that a chairman (and by design, the DoF) can sit there, and say ‘we will have a real good go’ at getting out of this league (remember the 3-5 year plan to get into the championship) – and league us with that. An imbalanced squad with no firepower.

(I can’t believe I’m about to write this but…)

You will not win promotion from any league, at any level with: a) one centre forward in the entire squad; and b) that one player being a young lad on loan. 

I should say, this isn’t a case of it just being about goals – this is about how the team has been playing. We are crying out for someone to hold the ball up, bring the team up the pitch, and actually look threatening.

It is not fair on Keiran Phillips, and it’s not fair on the supporters.

I feel betrayed, and lied to. I wasn’t going to buy a season ticket this year, given the shambles of the last two years – but a few things really made me feel like things would really be different this summer:

1. The money received from Rico, Eli, Jules. 
2. The chairman repeatedly telling us how well we had managed the pandemic and how we are now in a better position than other clubs
3. The chairman telling us that we will give it a real good go, and the expectation is to challenge this season.
4. Appointing a director of football.

I feel ridiculous that I believed.

What on Earth has happened ? Now, we might sign some random striker at 10.37pm on loan from MK Dons, great, but is this really what we should be expecting? Edit; oh look! George Miller has signed On loan. Yay. That will be good. (I should point out here, that I wish any lad who signs for us all the best – but this isn’t about individuals, this blog is about common sense, reality and ambition)

My real fear is the normalisation of Walsall football club in this league. We are behaving ,more and more, like a League Two club, and dare I say it… a national league club. 

Where has the money gone ? (To coin an old phrase). Where has the ambition gone? I understand we can still sign free transfers, but this is not the way to build a progressive squad right? Waiting for unfit, mercenaries to get us out of a hole?

So, yes, I am calling Pomlett out and taking him and Fullarton to task here. The honeymoon period is well and truly over.

This squad is imbalanced and a shambles. Relying on two kids (on loan), who are not even our players, as the strike force is absolutely pathetic. Yes, Connor Wilkinson can play there, but if he’s a number 9 then I’m a purple frog called Jason. 

Let’s repeat that again, we released two strikers in the summer – to sign two unproven kids on loan – to get promoted. Farcical.

Anyway, looks like there’s no more signings so I bid this blog and therapy session, adieu.

I wonder if Leigh (or Jamie) will give the supporters an update, again? We want answers. 

p.S. I hope this blog doesn’t age well, and we announce someone with experience at 11pm. Go on Walsall, make me eat my words.

Sleepwalking

Harrogate, Cambridge, Newport, Forest Green, Morecambe, Crawley and Cheltenham.

We now find ourselves sleepwalking into a relegation battle in League Two, and find ourselves below sides that have either recently or traditionally been non-league. In this largely reactionary, and frustrated blog – I try to summarise the feelings that some of us must be going through and leading me to ask:

How have we come to accept this? 

I have found it hard to post much at all since the pandemic gripped the lives of so many. I have tried and failed to write a piece about how I don’t feel a connection to what has been, or is going on at our football club in the last 12 months. I feel numb. 

Go back 18 months, and I was enthused as any with the arrival of Leigh Pomlett taking the helm from the previous incumbent. I enjoyed the positive messages, I enjoyed the sense of a new spring for Walsall FC – after the summer of the late nineties and early noughties, to the autumn of Merson, Broadhurst, Hutchings, and Mullen. We enjoyed some late Indian summer weather under Money and the final 18 months of the Smith reign, but since that painful but beautiful battering of Port Vale on the final day of the 15/16 season – we have moved on into a slumbering, declining winter of discontent.

I admit I was as buoyant and naive as a spring lamb with Leigh’s takeover. Though, I have always had a creeping, uneasy feeling that the rent issue was and is still unresolved. 

So where are we now then? I will give Leigh the benefit of the doubt. The communication is better than it ever was under Jeff. But there are only so many soundbites you can make before people lose patience. It’s time for Leigh to walk the walk and lead. Give us something to dream about.

We have been through a global pandemic that has hit lower league football hard.

However, I have recently become uncomfortable with Mr Pomlett referring to the fans as talking “utter rubbish” and “nonsense” with regards suggesting that we are suffering t unduly financially. The alarm bells are ringing. This is not the way to get everyone “on-side”.

I am very uneasy, and find it slightly concerning, that this language has been aimed at the same supporters who were asked not to take their money out of the club. The same supporters who were asked to buy iFollow passes. It does not sit well with me. We sold two of our best players on deadline day and were told by Leigh that is was a necessity and needed to happen to keep the club afloat. Fast forward two weeks and we have lost our manager to Port Vale. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the budget and financial situation at the club is concerning. 

But why? 

I don’t think we can really use the pandemic as an excuse any more. It has hit all clubs equally hard, and we enjoy revenue streams such as the Motorway sign and other facilities that are the envy of most of League Two – and beyond. 

Why have we been hit so disproportionately? 

Why are we scratching about for ‘free’ loan signings? Why is this squad clearly underfunded? Why? How can all the clubs I have named at the start of this blog be so much better off than us? I’m not having it. Sorry. It’s not good enough. 

I don’t buy it. I believe it’s a combination of things. It is poor management on the football side, and poor management in the boardroom. Who else’s fault is it ? It’s certainly not the supporters. 

I tried to believe in the Darrell Clarke Project and enjoyed his first few months. However it seriously went down hill after November/December 2020. The fans weren’t having it. 

We are Walsall FC and we should be acting like a big fish in a small pond down here. I emphasised the ‘should’ because we are acting like a non-league club on and off the pitch. We don’t have any divine right to finish in the top 7, but my god that should be the expectation.

I fear many of our support have been conditioned over the last 20 years or so to think low expectations are acceptable.

“We are a well run club” is the tag line we hear at most fans focus meetings over the years.

No. We are not a well run club. We are 16th in League Two. This is a football club, and it owes its fans some hope – especially now, …..especially now. 

I think Brian Dutton is a good guy, and he speaks well – but this is not the job to give to a rookie manager.

We are moving ever so closely into a relegation battle. We need to act now. Not in 3 weeks. Now. 

I find it incredible that the board and chairman did not appoint an interim manager for a week or two, in order to find a permanent replacement. When Darrell left, we were 7 points off the play offs with a game in hand – with 20 games remaining – nearly half a season! 

Where is the ambition? Where is the hope? Even if we didn’t go up, I think a good manager at this level would have had half a season to take a good look at the players and staff, in order to build for the future and next season. One thing we have always had since my formative days as a Saddler in the early nineties was the dream of something more. That hope has been slowly chipped away at over the years.

I am as disillusioned as I think I have ever been. All we ever want is to dream, to have that hope, but the club is sleepwalking into non league – but we too, are just sleepwalking into apathy.

The honeymoon period is well and truly over now Leigh. Over to you.

Goodbye Jimmy Goodbye

“I’ve been open and honest with Jimmy and I’ve told him I don’t see him playing many minutes for me with the way I want to play this season.”

“A couple of weeks into pre-season, as a coaching staff, we felt we needed more of a physical presence at the back.”

“I’m not closing the door on Jimmy but I don’t see him playing many minutes with the way I want to play.”

“We want Kory to realise his potential and with Matty we are at a stage where we feel we can make him technically better and make him a big player for this club in the future.”

All of the above coming courtesy of Joe Massi’s Express & Star interview with Whitney, published on July 31st this summer.

And whilst I see no benefit in picking through the bones of another awful interview I believe the somewhat defensive tone projected by the interviewee and the general nonsense included – particularly the back end of the final quote – suggest that even in dropping to National League North level James O’Connor will be enjoying his football significantly more than if he’d stuck around here.

However, that we’ve cast aside a player of JOC’s gravitas and standing quite so unceremoniously is pretty disconcerting. I have no doubt that the Football Club concluded matters in the correct manner, did everything by the book and found a fair and mutually agreeable settlement. I also fully accept that it’s the manager (and Club’s) prerogative to choose who they want but in a time where every decent player seems to walk away from us, usually at the very first opportunity, there’s something of an unfortunate aftertaste to how O’Connor has been offloaded.

I also feel that it’s worth noting that I understand the importance of creating room for Kory Roberts to get the game time he needs to develop. That is obvious, although the same kind of thinking doesn’t appear to apply to the equally capable Liam Kinsella. Similarly I get (to a degree) why Jon felt we needed a bit more physicality. Bradford, and other sides with a similar style, have regularly unsettled us in recent times because we don’t deal with physicality well. I also firmly believe that the club should be constantly looking to improve upon what we have and no player is irreplaceable.

But physicality at the expense of quality? No thanks. Abandoning arguably the best defender at the club, because he doesn’t fit into a patently outdated playing style? No thanks. Change for the sake of change? No thanks. Offloading the clubs own talent and replacing them with loaned players? No thanks. Dumping players whose face doesn’t fit? No thanks

And whilst there is zero factual evidence to suggest the ‘face doesn’t fit’ theory is in any way correct, the defensiveness of the manager’s response, the nonsensical logic in dumping our most experienced defender for a borrowed replacement and the short time frame in which the decision appears to have been made do little to conclusively disprove this theory. Similarly, the words Isaiah and Osbourne continuing to echo in the background are unhelpful.

I also can’t help going back to the final day defeat at home to MK and the barely hidden criticism of the player. I noted in this blog’s end of season review “JOC and his agent might be concerned about next season’s employment following Whitney’s thinly veiled criticism/finger pointing in the aftermath of the MK debacle. The end might be nigh”. Singled out, albeit behind a cling film thin layer of collective blame, it was pretty evident that things weren’t right. The writing appeared on the wall long  before a couple of weeks into pre-season and it was about as obvious as it gets.

I’ve never been on the training ground or dressing room so I can’t possibly be certain on how O’Connor behaves but the evidence from the press and colleagues however is significantly stacked in favour of JOC being a pretty good professional. And nothing I’ve ever seen on the pitch from him would change that opinion

Take the JPT final where he was dropped for a barely fit (and probably unfit) James Chambers. His behaviour post Wembley was beyond anything anyone could’ve rightfully have expected. He was harshly treated by Dean Smith that afternoon but, in professional and personal disappointment, he was nothing short of magnificent. He could’ve stormed off or sulked, or he could’ve tweeted negatively and burned his bridges a-la Michael Cain but didn’t. He dealt with crushing disappointment in the right manner, won his place back and came close to winning promotion fifteen months later.

That post Wembley period, where he got his head down and fought to regain his place in the side offers an interesting contrast to the position a former physiotherapist took when seeking to turn temporary promotion into full time opportunity. I know which one of them I’d like in my dressing room. Every day, every match, every time.   

It’s also worth noting at this juncture the somewhat forgotten fact that James O’Connor was one of the very few out of contract players to re-sign during the post play off exodus that was summer 2016. Whilst quite a few of Smith’s final incarnation, who hadn’t contributed anywhere near as much as JOC, cashed in on bumper deals for reserve team football elsewhere O’Connor stayed loyal to this football club, agreed terms and re-signed. We can discuss that there would or wouldn’t be many suitors at League 1 level for a player of JOC’s vintage but the fact that someone was desperate enough to treble Paul Downing’s wages should conclusively end that argument.   

And so to today and Jon’s “strong base” & “physical presence”. Eight penalties, zero clean sheets and a general cluelessness when we concede possession suggest things aren’t going particularly swimmingly when we don’t have the ball. Any kind of stability, confidence and rigidity long lost, Dean Smith’s tightly drilled and well organised defensive soundness a distant memory in a fog of inept tackling & abysmal marking. 

Gone also is the play it out from the back style that has so enchanted Saddlers fans over recent times. I sincerely doubt that JOC will miss thumping the ball through the channel in the hope that Simeon Jackson remains onside and proves able to trap a couple of hoofed clearances each 45 minutes. For once.

I also doubt that many Saddlers fans haven’t wondered at least once of late about how we could do with a bit of JOC’s mammoth experience. Because, ridiculously, right at the point where we could do with three or four James O’Connor’s we’ve unceremoniously jettisoned the one we had. It’s hard to believe that even a regime so one dimensionally focused on sweat, application and desire, and I’m not suggesting that O’Connor didn’t demonstrate these values, couldn’t recognise the calming influence that this highly experienced campaigner bought to the party. Let alone quietly and effectively utilise those skills to help us stop conceding quite so many soft goals or handing out penalties like they were toffees.

But he can’t. Because he’s gone.

His final tally of 108 games and two goals – against Chelsea & Colchester – is interesting. Apart from an incredibly shaky debut at Port Vale and the mauling at Bradford I’m not sure I can recall many stand out moments from JOC’s Walsall career. And this is good, because central defenders aren’t supposed to stand out, they’re there keep opponents quiet and clean up errors. The less you see them the more effective they’ve been and in JOC and James Chambers we’ve seen two pretty good ones in this decade.

So, farewell Jimmy. You weren’t the best player I’ve ever seen in a Walsall shirt, neither were you the quickest, nor the most technically gifted or the best positionally. And I’m sorry but you’ll not feature in my all-time Walsall XI (or sixteen).

You were, however, a very good fit in a pretty good side and one selfish managerial resignation (only just) denied you the chance to etch your name in Saddlers folklore as a core member of a team promoted into the second level of English football. You were also a source of experience we dearly miss, reliable, a constant beacon of professionalism and you leave with the deserved respect & admiration of everyone with WFC persuasions fully intact. And that’s something that the guy who cast you aside probably won’t achieve.  

You will be missed – you are already missed – and I wish you well.

James O’Connor – once a Saddler, always a Saddler.