Colchester are this week’s league guests at the Banks’s and Hutch and the lads are hoping that they won’t find the going as easy as Chesterfield appeared to on Tuesday. Still, this is the league, not a cup knockout, so there’s everything to play for points-wise.

Colchester are only one league place above us, on goal difference, but unbeaten so far, with three draws and a win (Rochdale) under their belts. A quick trawl of the internet reveals precious little about John Ward’s boys, as their official site is slower and worse than ours, with it’s full quota of betting adverts and a promo for a Bee Gees Tribute Night (snigger).

Hutch will probably send out the side that started on Tuesday, although there may be some temptation to tinker with our two-goals-a-game defence a little.

So, with Colcehseter scoring against everyone they’ve played except Sunderland, and us finding the net against everyone except Trampmere, there should be plenty of action this weekend.

It’s at the usual time, in the usual place, and the lads could do with some good support and noise, so get yourselves down there. Don’t forget Midland Bus will be running the usual Saturday Special if you fancy a pint before the game, and they’ll pick up (and drop off!) at the Town Centre, making it easy for you.

I’m picking a 3-2 win, one substition (80 minutes) and no red cards.

Stefan Gamble, previously financial director, has ben named as Roy Whalley’s replacement as Walsall’s Chief Executive going forward. Roy himself will take a backseat role and concentrate on his duties as commercial director, generating off-field income. As Roy’s angling for a quiet departure, this little reshuffle should come as no surprise to Saddlers regulars. Stefan’s a beanie by trade and his financial acumen will hopefully suit the club in maximising it’s position based on income available from all sources.

One welcome surprise (to most) was the appointment of life-long Saddler Leigh Pomlett to the board. Leigh’s been a fan for 40 years, and his work experience in transport, freight and logistics should have given him a few well-connected contacts throughout Europe. UTS understands he’s been a F2G-based supporter so he’s familiar with some of the more (ahem) rough and tumble fans and their views on the running of the club.

These appointments mark a sea change in Walsall’s management. Last time a director was appointed the announcement was kept under wraps but this time the club’s been upfront, and even better, the director is a Walsall fan with no ties to Leeds-based development consortiums.

One thing that the three have in common is an appreciation of how important fans are to a football club:

Roy Whalley on attendance:
“How far this club goes depends on how many supporters come,”

Stefan Gamble on attendance:
“It’s top of the list. We have to engage our supporter base and that is one of the things we will address from the outset. If we can get them back it doesn’t guarantee us a better season, but it certainly helps.

Leigh Pomlett:
“I’ve been a Walsall supporter for over 40 years.”

Perhaps one of the first things these three could agree on in the brave new world of Walsall FC would be that silencing fans who are critical of some aspects of the club might not be in everyone’s best interests. While one has had his ban rescinded, it would be nice of others were to be treated the same way, having been summarily excluded for the same “crime”. Neil can attend matches next season, now it would be nice if it were confirmed that Darren and Wayne were accorded the same treatment. Fresh season, fresh start, please, Walsall. Let’s have some perspective.

Ex Man City youngster Paul Marshall is Walsall’s first new signing of the Summer, having put his pawprint on a contract for 12 months today.

20 year-old Paul came through the City youth set-up since joining at age 11, and has played for Man City Reserves, with loan spells at Blackpool, Port Vale and Aberdeen. He’s also been to a World Cup, with the England U20 squad in Cairo last year.

Marshall is a 6’1″ left-footed midfielder, and has been played in the middle and on the wing. 20 senior appearances have seen him score one goal – a free kick. He’s confident he can do the business, and apparently is pretty comfortable on the ball. Let’s hope so!

Welcome to Walsall, Paul!

Sorry for the delay – been doing some business and out of town, but finally got some time to fire up the laptop.

Why go to the Banks’s this weekend? Now it’s the chance to show your support for the Supporters Trust and the Club – our team!

This weekend the Trust are asking Walsall fans to turn up and show off by wearing retro Walsall tops for the game, the older the better. Of course, MK Dons fans can only muster a few different patterns since being founded in 2004, whereas our history unfolds over more than 120 years.

So, if you love Walsall, turn up wearing your favourite old top and make some noise this weekend. Support the club and the Trust by showing you’ve been a fan for years, decades even, and that you believe Walsall FC has a future as well as a history.

It’s our season closer, with nothing else now before preseason. If you can, get to the stadium and get behind the lads.

Victory today at Bescot and full credit to the manager and the lads as the three points look to have secured another season in League One.

Events off the pitch though have dominated this week as the club have sought to clamp down on any sort of protest or expressions of views that are odds with the owners of Walsall FC.

For those unaware, long-standing UpTheSaddlers contributor Neil Ravenscroft has been banned from the Bescot and today Bangor Cymru Saddler’s reward for a 4-hour train journey to see the Saddlers was to be informed he wasn’t permitted to walk through the turnstiles.

Such actions, sanctioned and commissioned by Jeff Bonser, and carried out on the orders of minion Roy Whalley, shame football, and are another fruitless attempt by people totally at odds with 21st century communications who seek to silence any legitimate voice of protest.

Give your view on the game via the message board – but be warned – Roy Whalley chief executive of Walsall FC will be reading your comments – and if they are at odds with his paymaster Jeff Bonser – you may well find yourself the recipient of a letter banning you from Bescot for simply daring to express your own opinion. Because in 2010 Roy Whalley believes – even if 10,000 wear green and gold at Old Trafford, he has the power to silence any critics of the Bescot regime via CCTV and a stiffly worded letter typed on his word processor.

POSTSCRIPT: If you haven’t read it, Mark Jones over at the Express and Star has answered Whalley in the most comprehensive way you could imagine. Read it here

The title of this piece is a rehash of an old maxim. I’ve always thought it wrong – Successful businesses know that the customer is NOT always right, contrary to popular belief.

Take Walsall FC for example. With over 3000 regular, repeat customers, just over half whom have already signed up to be repeat customers for another 12 months, there’ll be 3,000 opinions. The customer can’t always be right. Bonser in or out? Bonser saved the club or killed the club? Each fan has a different take on this, so they’re not right.

So, if you know your customer is not always right, what’s to be done?

You don’t alienate your most passionate, loyal and long-suffering regulars by suddenly announcing in the local press that if they complain they’ll be ejected from the premises. It’s a natural reaction to try to marginalise any dissenting opinion but crushing protest with threats of banning is not a way forward if you want to succeed.

A business should be asking itself how this protest came about, why it evolved into what it did, what might be done to make it go away and whether it might be constructively good for business if harnessed effectively. Yes, many of the customers might not be protesting vocally, but there’s many whose silent protest bears witness every match in the form of empty seats.

Customers that speak up and show discontent, while still turning up to consume the product, thereby providing revenue, are surely more valuable than those who have already walked away? Silencing them is forcing them down the same path. Result: Less customers. Less revenue.

The customer is not always right, but the customer should always, ALWAYS, be listened to.

Another season is fast disappearing up it’s own backside and we’re well placed for midtable mediocrity, based on average performances. On the face of that’s much better than a relegation challenge, but after a couple of years of standard preseason sound bites from Roy Whalley about promotion, that’s cold comfort indeed.

The problem with the first paragraph is ‘average performances’. On results so far we’re on 47 points, 10 off relegation and cruising into the home stretch. Trouble is, if we look at how that season has progressed we see two very distinct halves.

In the first 19 games we gained 30 points, helped along by the November purple patch that gave us some hope for the rest of the season. We defeated Yeovil away to round off that half season on the 1st of December.

Since then we’ve played 18 games, won only 4, been dumped 9 times and gained only 17 points, including an 8 game streak without a win. Luckily we made those points in the first half of the season, as that’s relegation form whatever way you look at it. On this basis we’ll be lucky to see 55 points by the end of the season, and we’re doubly lucky that there’s some runaway good teams in the top 6 and plenty of dross surrounding us.

Chris Hutchings was appointed in January 2009 and has now had 15 months in the role as manager, after serving as Paul Jewell’s understudy (and sweeping up after him) for much of his previous career. Never stellar in previous caretaker roles, his record at Walsall has now been so patchy it can best be desribed as flattering to deceive. We’re so inconsistent there’s no tipping point, no crisis, no defining moment that shouts out loud “You don’t know what you’re doing”, but an accumulation of deflating performances, non-existent or ineffectual tactics, inexplicable substitutions, team sheets with good names missing or players out of position, and a succession of lacklustre games that leave every fan flat can say the same thing much more quietly.

Perhaps there’s problems further up the chain? We are all well aware of Mr. Bonser’s desire to leave contract negotiations to the last possible moment, the club’s financial shortcomings and the fact that other potential managerial candidates (and previous managers) have decided that Walsall was not for them based on personal financials and lack of future commitments. There’s a smell of short-termism surrounding Walsall FC, and that’s not good for a sports club that’s survived 123 years.

We need some progress. We need some leadership. Heck – we need some consistent football! Where’s that going to come from? Your guess is as good as mine. Consistently finishing in League One midtable is not my definition of a club going anywhere, but where is there to go when we can’t pay for a better squad and refuse to pay for a better manager?

Sorry there’s no answers in this monologue.

A performance barely worthy of the name ‘football’ saw Walsall slump to a dismal 0-1 defeat at home to previously lowly Yeovil. The game never got going for the Saddlers, or the pitiful 2,929 hardy souls who turned out tonight.

The club official website’s headline “Snow joke as Saddlers slip” was an amusing diversion for a moment, until one realises the importance of this atrocious result. While the season was never going anywhere even before the match, it appears that the players and management have no concept of playing for pride, no concept of entertainment, no concept of tactics and no concept of winning a game at home.

This clueless approach leads one to wonder at the victories we have achieved in this campaign – have we actually put any tactical plan into action, or are these just the result of blind chance in the league of averageness?

One certain fact: Crowds of under 3,000 will become the norm down Bescot Crescent if things do not change. That prospect should fill the fans, the club and the owner with dread.

wednesburysaddler summed up the game with this masterful post on the match thread:

gutless spineless rubbish crud waste of time bunch of puddings with the worst tactician of a manager ive ever seen

My “Proud To Be A Saddler” coffee mug will remain at the back of the cupboard until such time as I feel I agree with the sentiment it expresses. I’m ashamed.

It seems many of us supporters have done Uncle Jeff some great disservice over the years, and now stand corrected on the strength of the great man’s interview with journalist Brian Halford in the outstanding local newspaper, the Birmingham Mail.

Apparently Jeff’s pension fund doesn’t own the freehold to the land our club stadium sits on, as it’s owned by Suffolk Life. Our humblest apologies to Mr. Bonser.

How could we have known that when the annual accounts state that rent is paid to the Trustees of the JW Bonser (Walsall) Limited Self-Adminstered Pension Scheme what was meant is that rent is paid to Suffolk Life? Sorry.

What were we to think when those same accounts tell us that one of the trustees of this Scheme is a JW Bonser but obviously meant to state that Suffolk Life owned the land? Sorry.

How could we possibly have known that, when JW Bonser bought the land but used a SIPP as a tax shelter for it, he didn’t in fact buy the land because Suffolk Life had bought it? Sorry.

When Roy Whalley recently made public overtures about Walsall Council buying the land we couldn’t possibly have thought that he was trying to sell something in which his Chairman had no financial interest as it was owned by Suffolk Life, could we? Sorry.

Our sincerest apologies for any inconvenience caused to Jeff. We must now acknowledge that we were wrong, and accept that all along, the land wasn’t owned by his pension fund, but, as he says, Suffolk Life.

Tonight’s league match against Oldham saw a crowd of just 2,960 Saddlers fans watch our 3-0 demolition job. Take away the usual excuses such as midweek, weather, cup on Saturday (although that’s an unusual excuse given our performances in recent years!) and dress it up however you want, that’s a terrible number for a team sat on the cusps of the League One playoffs.

It’s too late now to do anything substantial about ticketing, seating and pricing differentials for this year, so one thing, and only one thing, could make a difference to the rest of the campaign. It’s time for the club owner to front up and state his ambitions for this season.

Is our debt sustainable enough to stand a season with a squad and manager that are growing together, seemingly stronger and more comfortable with each passing game, or will we have to sell up one or more of our promising youngsters in the January sales? If it’s the latter, I think the fans deserve to know sooner rather than later, and be given the reasons why.

Undoubtedly we’ll have to pay this debt off, but using such a short-term solution as selling a player when we’re in the position we are now would be a folly up there with the worst of them, guaranteed to see a further decline in numbers as the remaining fans realise what they’ve been willing to ignore thus far – under the current owner, Walsall’s mantra is “no ambition, no commitment, no future”.

Please, Jeff, do one thing this January, stand firm behind the club and you’ll see more fans stand behind you instead of against you.