P.T maybe the club needs To go all the way to Wall so to speak. In the scheme of English football we are a “big club” the likes of Stockport, Torquay etc have fallen off hard times but bounce back
Aldershot, Stanley, Maidstone, Wimbledon even Hereford now they float back to a good level and have some real good times on the way.
Hartlepool are in a bad way at the moment but I guarentee in ten years time they will be back amongst it.
I do wish people would stop telling others what they should or shouldn’t spend their own money on.
If you want to go go, if you don’t don’t. Buying a ticket to watch the football doesn’t mean you are endorsing everything the club does. It means you want to go to the match with your mates FFS.
I’ve renewed my season ticket but wouldn’t consider that an act of martyrdom, rather an act of continuing to support the team I’ve supported for as long as I can remember.
If a boycott was part of a clearly structured campaign that had some proof points around its aims and outcomes then I would honestly consider it. Just not going anymore in and of itself doesn’t achieve anything other than strangling the budget of the poor unfortunate person who happens to be team manager.
If those who have stopped going genuinely genuinely were doing it to improve the club then I would expect to see them using their new found time to organise some coherent aims and ambitions as well as being at the Bescot site on matchdays to make the case, get the publicity and demonstrate that they would be inside paying money to do so if the regime changed. In other words you can’t say “Look at what the Blackpool fans achieved” without recognising that what Blackpool fans did was so much more than not turning up.
So I’m not a martyr, just a supporter. If there is a way of being a better supporter, let me know. But not spending any money or time on Walsall FC other than slagging them off on social media doesn’t feel like It.
I agree with your second post.
We’re not in it for the pots and pans and whatever other silverware the diminished game has to offer. It is something more than that. We’ve lost it. And I’d be prepared to go wherever to find it agin.
Yeah I raised this with Rob when he was going for his last meeting with them. Fair enough if he didn’t ask as he had lots to go through but I do think it would be good if the other 3 members of the Bonser pension fund would come out with some sort of statement (would need to be approached) outlining their plans.
We don’t know whether they even like Football (although think Robert turns up for a few home games) and I’d imagine they haven’t taken kindly to all the abuse down the years.
Worst thing is if this is all just put off until Jeff is no longer around and then Walsall is seen by the family as like that old record you find buried in the loft that you thought you got rid of 10 years ago.
For all the frustrations with Bonser at least he’s a face to direct things at and he still makes the decisions for better or worse.
Other 3 in charge and it becomes another faceless SISU style operation.
I would still like to know where the money from Fellows Park went if not to purchase Bescot.As I understand it Bonser put in £250K which was the shortfall and yet he now owns the lot.I haven’t lived in Walsall for some 40 years so I can’t keep up with all the ins and outs.
I would appreciate someone giving me an answer to this.
crap manager, crap stadium, crap players, crap owner and crap match day experience.
We even have crap crap
Well if you find the club in the loft then take it along to the Antiques Roadshow and we can all finally discover what it’s actually worth!
Think a car boot sale is more appropriate 
It’s a long long story and nobody really knows every nook and cranny of it. Or maybe some do and they have never let on.
From the numbers available, the move to
Bescot resulted in a net loss of around £1.6m. So whilst we got £5.7m for Fellows Park and spent around £4.5m on Building Bescot (despite the identikit Glanford Park being built two years earlier for just £2.5m) lots of other costs incurred (clean up costs, Saddlers Club, Ransom strip of land, houses on new Morrisons site etc etc) meant that in a complete going against the trend of what happens when clubs move, we managed to virtually bankrupt ourselves. We went into administration and needed a saviour.
Fortunately, there was a chap who was relatively new to the board who grabbed hold of the club, the ground and ultimately the freehold for a relatively small sum and remains there to this day. What a guy.
Probably the only club in football history to sell out (development land) and lose money - made so evidently ‘dodgy’ by the fact that an almost identical stadium was built (as you say within 2 years) at significantly cheaper cost…
Construction in Walsall is certainly no more expensive that in Scunthorpe that’s a fact…
But we shouldn’t be paying that £400k rent to our beloved chairman in the first place! Whatever budget we have would be permanently £400k better off if #bonserout had not put the freehold into his pension fund and created the need for us to pay rent in the first place!!
Where do you think the club would be had he not?
The fact is, Bonser has put in place a means to negate his rent payment and put us on the even playing field we have sorely desired and still found ourselves with the lowest budget in the league.
You’ll need to explain that to me mate?
The hypothetical scenarios of whether we would be better or worse off are only part of the story.
The legend, truth, myth of Bonser’s hold on the place is now imbedded in most fans and potential fans mind-set. The truth and financial reality are nearly secondary to the damage that that mind-set does.
Whilst clubs of similar history and size have added from 50% to hundreds of per cent to their fanbases, we have stalled and are now going back towards our early 80’s and early 90’s trough. There will be games next season in the fourth division where less than 3,000 people will be there. Most of them over 30 with youngsters not even tempted by the freebie.
Too many people believe that the club exists merely to feather the nest of one family for it to survive competitively in the lower reaches of professional football for much longer.
Rent (R ) = £400K
Advertising income (AI) = > £400K
AI - R = £0
Back to a situation similar to other clubs in the division where we technically don’t owe anything to our chairman.
Yes we pay rent and most other clubs don’t but we have a advertising sign bringing in non football related income and no other club does.
We’m considerably richer than yow think…
One of the Walsall FC tycoons is property developer Peter Gilman, ranked 86th with a fortune of £25 million. He is joined by Black Country publishers the Graham family who are worth £70 million, placing them at 57th.
How about Rent (R ) = £0k which should be our starting point.
Also, “we technically don’t owe anything to our chairman” - except him engineering the removal of £400k a year from the club into his own pension fund that is desperately needed for the playing budget.
Also “The fact is, Bonser has put us on the even playing field we have sorely desired” - that has to be the most bewildering, head-scratching statement I’ve ever read.
You don’t agree that the advertising money covering the rent payment means that 100% of our football generated income can be put back into the footballing side of the budget just like any other club in this division?