By Neil Ravenscroft
October 17 2002

I was reading through my post match reaction this week (It’s a Long Way from Oldham), and that got the old grey cells working again. Just how different is Walsall Football Club from the institution I grew up with? My time following the Saddlers started around our first venture into the 1st Division (second, then, of course) and took in the great adventure of the promotion under Coakley. The second of these, I thought, was always one of the great opportunities that got away. We acquired some good players (Alex Taylor, Forbes) and had found a “sugar daddy” in Terry Ramsden, only for everything to go wrong on “Black Wednesday”, when Ramsden got blown away on the stock market, leaving us with debts and player’s contracts we couldn’t afford. (Mind you, that might have been a lucky escape, as we weren’t associated with his later escapades through the Courts).

In stepped Jeff Bonser. He’s never been a popular figure with the fans, mainly because of his unwillingness to gamble when an impetus of cash might have made a major difference to the club on the field. However, he got us into a new stadium and into profit. Bescot, however, was still a lower Division Ground, a child of it’s times, like Scunthorpe United’s ground.

We wandered on, in much the same way as we had for the previous twenty odd years of my watching the lads, not noticing that Jeff was willing to take a gamble at times, it’s just than he was never willing to gamble with what really matters, money. After treading water under Kenny Hibbett (but achieving stability in the process), he appointed Chris Nichol as Manager, who, on his previous record, couldn’t have been cheap, to be followed by our first foreign manager, Jan Sorensen, presumably on the basis he might bring something different. When Sorensen left, with the bookies making us relegation favourites, he brought in a well respected coach in Ray Graydon, for his first managerial job.

We all know what happened next, as Sir Ray performed the miracle of promotion, got us relegated, then, against the odds, got us up again on that wonderful day at Cardiff. One thing that wasn’t commented upon much at the time, though, was that this was achieved with some players who had been brought in the previous season, presumably on First Division wages, showing the faith the Board had in the Manager’s ability to do it again.

The club got a lot of criticism at the time of the play off win for not paying out more on the playing side, in an attempt to establish ourselves in this Division. As I argued at the time, however, the problem was not that money hadn’t been spent, it was how it had been spent, as the nine “free” transfers brought in before and during last season must have cost at least a million in signing on fees, as witnessed by the increase in playing costs shown in the accounts this week. This was the proof that the team of Graydon and Taylor had probably taken us as far as they could, which brought about the arrival of Colin Lee.

Lee’s achievement in keeping us up last season cannot be underestimated, as everyone had us dead and buried when he arrived, although, strangely enough, no one seemed to notice that he had performed a similar miracle the previous season with Torquay.

The collapse of ITV Digital and the ensuing financial crisis in football puts a new light on the club’s insistence on sound financial policies, but Colin Lee’s influence goes deeper than his achievements last season. He has convinced the Board to improve the facilities at the club, and, more than anything else, has acquired players in Bazeley, Hay, Corica, O’Connor, Sonner and Zdrilic who look comfortable at this level. The Board and, presumably the much maligned owner, Jeff Bonser, have shown ambition in the rebuilding of the Gilbert Alsop (sorry, I can't call it the Purple) Stand and Bescot is beginning to look like a First Division Ground. They have managed all of this while maintaining the sound financial basis of the club that has always been the hallmark of the Bonser era, leading to the current situation of having made a profit for 11 years on the trot.

I am not an apologist for some of the things the club does badly as far as the fans are concerned, especially in terms of keeping us informed, the PR side of things and the marketing side of the club could do with improvement, but we have to be grateful we are not one of the many teams threatened with going to the wall this season.

This is no longer the club I grew up knowing and loving, but it is all the better for that. We look like weathering the financial crisis (seemingly becoming something of an icon for clubs in the lower Divisions at the same time) and the situation can only improve when we show ambition like the new hotel on site and the rumoured improvement of the Sharp Stand. As I said last weekend, we have the prospect ahead of us of establishing ourselves as a First Division club at last. It’s about time that all fans started to bask in the reflected glory and realised that we should be asking Jeff Bonser to reconsider his position in putting the club up for sale (something it still officially is), especially when it was the actions of a few of those fans that encouraged him to take that action in the first place.

One word of warning, though. I said that with the full squad and players on form, we could hold our own against almost anyone this season. Our only worry will be keeping players fit and free from suspension, as the quality in the squad doesn’t go as deep as I would like, especially considering Martin O’Connor’s knees!