By Alan Stokes
September 29 2002

Is it actually possible for the Saddlers to reach the promised land of the Premier League or is it just pie in the sky? Is it a dream that can never be achieved ? Let us assume that the season has just finished with Pompey and Leicester promoted to the premiership and Rotherham in the Play-Offs. I am certain that the majority of Saddlers, Mariners and Gills fans would be rooting for the Millers and I am sure that the Millers fans would be supporting the Saddlers if the boot was on the other foot as we are all members of the “Not as big as Wolves” gang.

Now, if we let our imagination run riot and Rotherham (or indeed ourselves) win the play off final and reach the promised land of the Premiership. Then What? What would we do other than panic?

Who would we sign? How much money could we spend and indeed who would want to sign for a club in the “not as big as Wolves” gang? In all honesty I find it hard to imagine that we would be able to find players of premiership quality who would want to come and play for us bearing in mind that the pay would no doubt be peanuts in comparison with other clubs.

Then there is the question of the stadium. If we were to be promoted we would not immediately transform Bescot into a state of the art 25000 all seater stadium as the Chairman would obviously think we would be straight down again the following year and thus it would not be a commercially sensible thing to do.

Even if we did increase the capacity to say 25000 then I still doubt that we would fill it given the competition of Villa, Blues, Albion and Wolves all within a 15 minute driving range.

Would we survive or indeed win a match? The list is endless and to be perfectly honest very frightening.

Theoretically it is possible for any club in the first division to reach the Premiership but is it really a possibility or is it just nonsense to even think about it.

In order to achieve anything there must be a vision and plan of action. Does our club have a long term plan to achieve promotion to the premiership or is our long term vision to remain in the first division? Are we the fans happy that we aim to remain as a first division club?

If you sit back and think about it the questions are endless.

I am currently breaking into a cold sweat at the thought of Aranalde marking Beckham out of a game.

Is it really a possibility for a club of our resource to not only reach the Premiership but also survive or are we simply one of those clubs who have gone as far as they can?

Any thoughts or reaction?