Time For Walsall United FC?

Anyone who has read more than one of these columns in the last two years  – and I’ll totally understand if you haven’t – will know that I try to avoid any more than a passing reference to my own team, Walsall, in them.

For good reasons. There are already people far better placed to talk about the weekly performances as my work conflicts with match days so I don’t get to see them enough but it’s also because I like to look outside of that world; at what’s happening beyond it and I’ve always been a fan who can take a step back and remove some, if not all, of the emotion when required.

I only break this unwritten rule if there is really good reason such as nostalgia  – the 35th anniversary of our draw at Liverpool in the League Cup Semi-Final, for instance – or if we’re involved in a dramatic life-changing incident. Chance would be a fine thing.

Of course, this website is called D3D4 and dedicated to all things League 1 and League 2, and you don’t get much more D3/League 1 than Walsall. Well, actually now you do because next season we’ll be adjusting to life in D4/League 2 after more than a decade, so either way it’s probably high time I did talk about the club and Saturday’s relegation feels more than a significant enough reason.

The statistics show that no club has spent more time or accumulated more points in the third tier than we have (the now well-worn gag being that Bournemouth are something like twenty points behind but with about a hundred and eighty games in hand).

We’ve given a few other clubs (not Bournemouth, obviously) a chance to catch up. How long they’ll have is anyone’s guess.

I wouldn’t have expected to be writing this at all if you’d asked me in mid-September. Then, after ten games in all competitions, we’d yet to taste defeat in ninety minutes; a penalty shoot-out defeat in the League Cup the only blemish in the loss column and won six of them. Things were looking good – or at least better – with attacking zest, flying wingers and goal scoring contributions from our new former-National League strikers. Dean Keates – hero as a player – was threatening to become the same as a manager. Talk strayed occasionally onto the subject of our promotion, or more accurately, play-off, aspirations. In his two spells as a player, the then-boss had been part of teams that went up on three separate occasions, the first couple of them with a threadbare budget and against all the odds into the giddy heights of the Championship.

The other was the last time we fell to the lowest rung of the EFL. Then, Keates added goals to his midfield grit as we won promotion – and the title – in style with a club-record consecutive clean sheet record and a last-minute screamer of a goal to clinch top spot. Scored by? You guessed it.

Things had looked bleak going into that season. A dismal campaign had seen us relegated with a lot to spare and little in the way of encouraging prospects, but Richard Money arrived early, got the squad fit and introduced some astute signings, galvanising the club just when it needed it most.

We’re going to need something similar this time. It’s hard to pinpoint where it went so wrong since that first defeat at the mid-point of September. The league was, of course, incredibly competitive. With just a few games to go, anyone in the bottom half could have been relegated, so there is a part of me that wants to say it could have happened to anyone; and it did. Neither Bradford, Plymouth nor especially Scunthorpe, would have thought it would happen to them either.

I also don’t want to try to apportion blame to any individuals. When recent-Scottish international Russell Martin signed in October it felt a major coup, but his arrival coincided with a defence that had been conceding few goals suddenly becoming quite leaky. Instead of his expected calming influence on a young back-four, they seemed to want to defend differently – deeper and without as much confidence – but that can’t have been simply down to one player and not one who went on to win promotion to League 1 with the MK Dons after leaving us.

It would be too easy to pin it on things like that. Fragility at the back was a constant thorn from October onwards whoever played there. The early form didn’t look sustainable. When we visited Luton on the twentieth of that month, we were above them in the table, but looked literally out of their league on the field itself (that’s one of the games I can comment on from personal experience) and it was no great surprise that the fortunes of the two clubs went in the directions they did.

Late goals were also a problem, as was an inability to see games out. Sunderland and Luton both recovered from two-goal deficits to escape with a point after injury time equalisers. Barnsley (another of the top teams we played well against) survived our attacks and won with the last kick.

Early goals (especially penalties) didn’t help either. Accrington and Charlton profited with the minutes still in single figures.  Bristol Rovers, Charlton and Doncaster both raced to two goal leads in under ten minutes (the latter in less than five).

Lots of players came in. Many – signed in a desperate January window – failed to add much. There was a little too much needle on show as well; be it between players and fans or players and players. As supporters, we are pretty much used to being at each other’s throats all the time, but the rest of it left a sour taste and hinted at a lack of togetherness that teams that survive always seem to have.

The manager can’t escape unscathed either. Many point to a lack of passion (motionless and hands in pockets tends to go down badly when things on the pitch aren’t good) and reluctance to use substitutions effectively. There was a rabbit-in the-headlights feel to it as things began to unravel quickly after the promising start and I suspect that Keates wasn’t sure how he’d gone from hero to zero quite so rapidly either; fans certainly turned on him more quickly than I thought they would.

But apart from the manager, poor signings, infighting, disaffected fans, a porous defence and regular concession of early and late goals, it wasn’t all that bad.

I’ve not even touched on the off-field stuff. Many fans will do, and the on-going grumbles and protests against the club’s owner, board and the running of the club won’t have been the ideal backdrop against which to mount a fight against the ‘dreaded drop’. From what I’ve seen, I know there are some hard-working, genuine people trying to make things better but fighting a difficult battle against a narrative that begins and ends with the man at the top.

But he was the man at the top in those previously mentioned successful seasons, so to almost concede that nothing good can come of the club under his ownership is again, too simplistic. And it is also hard to accept, if the ownership stays the same, that the club can’t and won’t move forward again until that changes. Walsall FC needs to start getting it right, right now.

The long-term pattern means this relegation shouldn’t come as a major shock either. Recent history is littered with similar examples; warning signs, if you like, of what can await. In 2015/16, we came as close as we have for a long time to making that step up to the West-Midland filled land called the Championship. A point (or a Sean O’Driscoll home record that was half as good as his away one) separated us from Burton and another shot of life in the rarefied atmosphere of the second tier.

Others had come close. Or closer. Tranmere had led the league for weeks only to dramatically fall way in the final weeks a few seasons before. Leyton Orient had been two goals to the good in the Play-Off Final and let it slip. Both, like Luton, would be in the National League before too long although all have also seen their luck change since. Chesterfield are another example of a team who went from League 1 top six to non-league in a very short timeframe. Notts County were, not long ago, a team that Walsall looked up at in League 1.

Before any of them, Yeovil actually made it all the way to the Championship, and they too have just exited the EFL altogether. But these falls don’t have to be the beginning of the end; they can also represent the beginning of something new.

Infamously, Walsall’s owner once told unhappy fans that they should go support Bournemouth, Rotherham or Luton; an unfortunate choice of clubs given what happened to them subsequently, but the improving fortunes of all three should be seen more for inspiration than as a stick to further beat the club with. They used adversity as a catalyst for change; for bringing people together and deciding as a group – as one unified body – that enough was enough. That’s the link that runs through all this, in my opinion. A club is, by very definition, the sum of those who are part of it.

This club – as some of these others I’ve mentioned are or were – is currently disconnected. Fans, players, owners, directors and so on are at odds with each other and nothing good can ever come from that. I’ve been fortunate enough in my line of work to talk to and even help some clubs whose stock has fallen and the common thread is that it actually united people inside and outside the clubs; connected different supporter groups, for example, and got people talking in a new way so that they identified common ground and ways to bring about improvements – on and off the field.

Caretaker manager Martin O’Connor talked of a ‘reset’ being required after relegation was confirmed on Saturday. The local Express and Star newspaper has talked about a disconnect that needs urgent attention. The fans themselves don’t need to be told that things are broken right now.

But it’s so easy to point to all the apparent problems as a case for inertia. Easier still to suggest that the club cannot turn this around in its current guise. What’s harder, but not impossible, is for people to become more active. Not necessarily with protests – although they have a place at times, I’m not sure they achieve enough on their own or tell anyone things they don’t already know – and not by staying away either. Yes, can we vote with our feet, but we can show we care by what we do and inactivity won’t repair or change anything anywhere near as much as we hope it will.

It’s time, I think, for Walsall fans to shed the blame game – if it’s 1% accurate or a 100%, what does it matter? – and start to unite behind what we do have. The club is our club, regardless of whose name is on the accounts, and we can still achieve positive things but only if we really want to. The same applies to the club itself.

We cannot assume that, like last time, it’ll all be alright on the night. Too many teams like ours have found out the hard way that the National League has no barriers to entry other than enough points.

But a drop down to the bottom league doesn’t have to be a disaster either. It might just be the best thing that ever happened to the club. If you don’t agree, why not ask Bournemouth, Rotherham and Luton how much it hurt them?

words Darren Young, D3D4 columnist