By Edward Reader
May 4 2005

Guess which England International and former Walsall striker is being linked with a move back to the Bescot Stadium.

Yes, you’ve guessed it – Michael Ricketts.

The decision to announce that he was quitting the club in the midst of a relegation battled didn’t win him to many fans at Walsall.

As a player you either loved him or hated him. Some admired his pace and power, while others disliked what they saw as laziness.

Either way, Michael Ricketts has made Walsall FC a fair amount of cash. We got £400,000 from Bolton, then a reasonable percentage of the 3.5m fee that took him from Bolton to Middlebro.

Club	League		FA Cup		League cup		Other
Stoke	1 (9)	0	0 (0)	0	0 (0)	0	0 (0)	0
Leeds	9 (12)	0	0 (0)	0	2 (1)	1	0 (0)	0
Middlesbro	12 (20)	3	2 (0)	0	3 (1)	1	0 (0)	0
Bolton	63 (35)	37	4 (3)	4	0 (4)	3	1 (2)	2
Walsall	31 (45)	14	2 (2)	0	2 (4)	0	3 (1)	1
Totals	116 (121)	54	8 (5)	4	7 (10)	5	4 (3)	3

www.soccerbase.com

This could just be pure speculation, but there is no doubting that Ricketts has been on a return trip to back where he came from since making his one and only England appearance against the Dutch in the 99/00 season.

Ricketts could only manage 1 goal in the 34 games he played for Leeds and Stoke last season. These stats make it easy to see why he is being move with a link back to League One.

Just how popular a return would be with Walsall fans is interesting

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