A New Dawn Or A Proper Charlie?  

Over the weekend, rumours – don’t you just love ‘em – emerged that my club, Walsall, had seen a bid for a much-needed striker accepted by another club. By Monday, us expectant fans were at fever pitch. Would it be a marquee signing? Someone experienced, maybe? Or would it be a rising star fresh from a Premier League academy conveyor belt? A non-league goal machine, possibly?

The news that emerged was beyond the wildest dreams of even the most optimistic and world-weary Saddler. The club had been sold.

Only Walsall could deflect the lack of a striker by doing something like this instead. But forget about the need to score goals in League Two for a minute. There’s more than a week before the transfer window closes for all that. This news was a biggie. Perhaps the biggest.

For the first time since Christmas 1988, Jeff Bonser will no longer be connected to the club. For the first time since 1991, he won’t be our chairman and owner. In previous articles I’ve touched upon the previous owner; flamboyant and ultimately reckless businessman, Terry Ramsden, whose helicopter entrance and, of course, money, had ushered in a promotion to the second tier in May 1988.

The following season, despite a decent start, things went downhill rapidly. A long run of successive defeats made the 4-0 win in the play-off final’s third and deciding game (I was sixteen at the time) and David Kelly’s hat-trick already feel like a long time ago. Relegation was assured well before the end of the campaign and during it, the collapse of Ramsden’s empire alongside the Tokyo stock market saw the club come perilously close to being folded by Japanese administrators.

A group of local businessmen, including one Jeff Bonser, came along, lifting the club off its knees and overseeing the move from our then-home to a newly-built Bescot Stadium in 1991. By then, the club had slipped to the fourth tier.

Although there are many fans who could tell this better than me, as I understand it, a deal by Bonser, and his brother, to buy the lease to the then recently-opened new stadium, and then the freehold four years later, meant that the club has effectively paid rent to use ‘their’ ground ever since and this has been a – if not the – source of discontent amongst fans; one that has grown season on season.

D3D4 Football Podcast Ep91 – League Two 2019-20 Preview

Quick disclosure; I’ve never been a hater although I won’t pretend either that the news this week wasn’t welcome or needed.

Working in football, I know that ownership is very often not a bed of roses. The joke goes that if you want to be a millionaire, the easiest way is to be a billionaire and then purchase a football club. And while I don’t think the rent arrangement will ever see Walsall’s ex-owner in any dire financial straits, but there is also a strong argument that the club has been ‘well run’ in the last thirty-one years and avoided the mismanagement that others have suffered from.

Of course, ‘well run’ has become a cliché in itself. What is a well-run club after all?

Does it make a big profit? Does it win plenty of silverware? Is it active in the local community? Does it reflect the values and ambitions of its supporters? Maybe a well-run club has to do a little of all of those things over time, but the term had, after so long, become a stick to beat the club and owner with.

Well-run can also be deemed unambitious, see budget constraints put ahead of success, be another name for a dreaded selling club – but how many weren’t before the latest broadcasting deal? – or simply be happy to languish in the familiar surroundings of League One. The rent issue aside, fans also felt that the club or at least the owner didn’t want to be any higher up the EFL ladder.

We’d tasted success but only sporadically; the League Two title in 2007, two promotions in 1999 and 2001 plus a first ever trip to Wembley in 2015 the clear highlights, while a [very] few cup runs had also raised the supporters’ heartbeats on occasion. But there was plenty of mediocrity too and several battles against relegation; some unsuccessful (including last season’s disastrous slump after a great start).

The most ‘third tier’ of League One clubs in the EFL (with the overall points tally to prove it) had spent the vast majority of its lifetime, including under Bonser’s tenure, in that division and while some fans believed we should be aiming higher, others saw us as punching above our weight compared with the budgets/attendances of clubs around us.

The truth, as it often does, probably sat somewhere in the middle. At times, I too pulled my hair out with everyone else in the stands as the perceived lack of ambition bit us on the bum. Failure (or refusal) to invest in the squad at key moments cost us players and even possible promotions. But we were ‘well run’ and kept our heads above water, while other clubs who’d chased the Championship dream with us (Tranmere, Chesterfield, Notts County, Yeovil, Bristol Rovers and Leyton Orient, to name just some) had slipped out of the EFL altogether – although a few have rebuilt admirably since.

The fear was that we would forever be facing Groundhog Day – like an Everlasting Gobstopper but with a sourer taste. A familiar pre-season pattern of lower-end budgets, free transfer arrivals, our better players leaving for pastures new and growing apathy amongst supporters who had literally seen it all before.

Some disgruntled fans had stopped coming to games altogether – blaming the owner – and refusing to return until there was a change; but one that no-one thought would actually happen. The club – and rent agreement – were a cash cow that few would give up voluntarily even though the official line was always that the club was for sale if the right buyer came along.

Fans of a certain vintage didn’t believe this. Younger ones – anyone under the age of thirty-five for a start – had never known anything else. But the discontent united them all and was one of the few things they could mostly agree on. So, the out-of-the-blue news that the majority share had been purchased by local businessman and lifelong fan, Leigh Pomlett, came as a major surprise, even though he was already connected to the club.

What happens next? Who can tell? As we know, football club ownership brings few guarantees (outside of the Premier League) and the EFL and National League are strewn with clubs that have had new owners who’ve turned out to be no better or maybe even worse than the one before.

We, as fans, always make a leap of faith. I’m of that rather old-fashioned view that any owner is a custodian of the club – looking after it for a period before passing it on – on behalf of the fans; the constant and most permanent part of the entity, and the town/city.

Football is too much of a business these days for that to be anything but an honourable notion. The flood of riches to the top league has made every football club outside of the Premier League a potential golden ticket into Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Look at, to pick one, Bournemouth, as an example of a club that was once up Shit Creek but have gone from strength to strength since. Ironically, they were one of the clubs mentioned by Bonser as an alternative team that Walsall fans could ‘go and support instead’ when we complained in the past. Last summer, they signed Columbian international fresh-from-the-World Cup, Jefferson Lerma, for £25m.

But for every goose that lays golden eggs is another club that will leave you looking like an Oompa Loompa. Just this week, Bolton (already with a twelve-point deficit) came close to having their opening fixture cancelled by the EFL after failing to play players and staff.

Nearby Bury, also starting on -12 in League One, did have their first match postponed after failing to demonstrate how they would get out of their financial problems. The long term fate of both clubs is undetermined.

We’ve also seen protests at other League One clubs in the last few seasons as Charlton, Coventry and Blackpool have rounded on their owners. I lived by the adage that ‘there is always someone worse off than yourself’ and this was the proof. All three have not only lived to fight another day but in some cases, even prospered on and off the field. Their loyal fans – who have refused to give up – are the constant there too but they’ve endured much worse than I’ve seen at Walsall.

Even being in the top league doesn’t protect you from protests over perceived bad management. Walsall-born Mike Ashley is being vilified for his record with Newcastle United and supporters are already showing their frustration with the appointment of Steve Bruce (unfairly IMO) before a ball has been kicked. West Ham fans had taken to running into the pitch to show their feelings, although that has quietened down since their owners have begun to spend money. Newcastle – breaking their club record to sign Joelinton for £40m – will soon find out if that demonstration of ambition will be enough to quell the fans’ unrest.

Like most things in life these days, not just football, we live by extremes. It’s boom or bust, feast or famine and the owners and managers of our beloved clubs can move between hero and zero pretty quickly.

In a ‘sliding doors’ moment, a few miles down the M6, the two Birmingham clubs had very similar stories when it came to ownership. At Villa, a Chinese businessman purchased the club in 2016 ,while their neighbours also moved under Chinese ownership at roughly the same time. Both changed managers and spent money heavily, some would say too much, in the hope of finding a way back to the promised land, but while the Villains ended up with Dean Smith – like me, born in West Brom; made in Walsall – and getting their wish via the play offs, the Blues got a nine-point deduction for posting losses that were too high and have sacked yet another manager this summer. Small margins indeed.

Back at the Banks’s Stadium, we await the start of the new season with a feeling that most of us haven’t had in a long time; a sense of much more than just kicking a ball competitively for the first time in a while, but rather of a new way forward for the club.

A new dawn, even? It’s too early to tell but the signs are good. The new owner was part of the recruitment process for the appointment of Darrell Clarke and has already made plans to meet and address the fans, as well as talking them up as the key ingredient of the club.

That’s what matter most; that recognition and acknowledgment.  We don’t – we have learned not to – get overly-excited by talk of promotions and the like. We know the club is unlikely to break the glass ceiling – even in a glass elevator – and get into the Premier League, but what about just giving us a club to believe in, that communicates with us and cares about us (the ones who pay twenty-odd quid per match) as much as we care about it?

If we do well on the pitch, obviously all the better, but feeling connected and engaged with the club again will be a great start for me and many other fans I’m sure. We know managers will come and go, fortunes will soar and plummet and in ten years’ time, we’ll be mid-table in League One – some things don’t change that much. The fans’ love for the club won’t change at all, and this change of ownership will help.

Be it coincidence or foresight, I’d like to think that Jeff Bonser had seen that the club’s long-term future needed that change. Like an uncle – he was called Uncle Jeff by some – who visits but stays that bit too long, the need for a new voice was obvious but at the risk of pelters coming my way, I’d like to place on record my appreciation too, because there were good times and sometimes being well-run was just what was needed too. In the fullness of time, I think time will be kinder than the names that some fans have been using.

And of course, good luck to the new guy. The managerial appointment, early talk of a strong relationship with supporters and a bright future for the club are all cause for massive optimism.

And you know what happened to the new owner who was a life-long fan and took over the club he always wanted?

He got us that striker.

Up the Saddlers.

words Darren Young, D3D4 columnist