1 - that’s the absolute last resort
2 - you’d never see a Walsall FC again
Back what you’ve got: use it or lose it.
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Didn’t Hartlepool do that? And Glasgow rangers and many other clubs? Granted rangers much bigger and didn’t need a new stadium but the same club kept all its history and name and started again debt free. I ain’t saying we should do that but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
All clubs in trouble doing something to try to get out of trouble, what do we do? Sit on our hands with a rookie manager unable to get a win out of a squad of rubbish players, all of whom know they are off in the summer anyway.
I fear for our future, I really do. Where/when will we get another goal, yet alone a win! Will a couple of draws and 5 defeats really save us, when all around us are really fighting to extricate themselves from this mess?
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Came across this in a Birmingham Weekly Post that we had from March 5th 1954.
Sadly we still finished bottom.
Looking through the UTS Archive, there was much doom and gloom in the posts from that period especially from @YoungMoaner on the annual ‘Re-election Thread’ (1952 - 55). Fortunately, our status was never seriously threatened, even in 1955 when we were bottom of the 4 league clubs applying, and saw off Peterborough by 33 votes to 16. It was before the days of swear filters and there were lots of rude comments on here about the Posh and how the idea of us playing in the same league as them was quite unimaginable. Yes, the idea of us being in the same league as Peterborough does seem unimaginable!
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People talking about success would help but unfortunately due to having a board without the know how or funds, success to them was surviving in League One. Now that we’re stuck in League Two and probably need a cash injection to give us that little bit of quality and winning mentality to get us back to where we were we’ll moan for a bit and then be told that success is surviving in League Two, all while we keep falling nearer and nearer to the bottom two.
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Some attendances in 15/16:
Walsall 1-1 Crewe- 4.2k
Walsall 1-2 Chesterfield- 4.7k
Walsall 2-1 Bradford (Smith’s last game)- 4.7k
Walsall 1-1 Blackpool- 5, 022k
Walsall 0-3 Millwall- 4.8k
All Saturday 3pm games at various points throughout the season where team were 1st-6th and having best season in a decade so less than majority of games in 06/07.
Think I agree with W1 here. Whatever club does the only chance of 6-7k crowds in distant future is having a season or two in championship and that’s like going to the moon currently in terms of how realistic it is.
January 2008 did all the damage as we know in losing loads of match going fans overnight. Brife period in August-September 2019 when attendances were o.k with the new era but the bad start to the season squandered things and quickly back down to around 4k.
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Lovely post. Even I was a young lad then but remember my dad coming home from matches during those seasons. I would ask" how do we do dad ?" His reply was usually along he lines of “we lost 0-1 ,1-3 ,2-4 etc but we should have won” At that time I genuinely thought our nickname “The Saddlers” was because we were always sad because we lost!! Its a feeling I have had a few times this year!!!
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Just for context…06/07.
Walsall 2-0 Hartlepool- 5.7k
Walsall 4-0 Mansfield- 5.4k
Walsall 2-0 Wycombe- 6.7k!
Walsall 0-0 Franchsie- 6.2k
Walsall 1-0 Torquay- 5.8k
Walsall 0-2 Swindon- 6.8k.
Walsall Grimsby which was played on Monday 15th Jan 2007 was very close to 5, came in at 4.8k.
Walsall Accy, 6.1k.
Now unless league 2 back then had thousands of away fans turning up it really does show how much home levels of support dropped off within the decade when you look back at 15/16.
Can only be the championship being a recent memory then so some floating fans who came to watch in those years stuck around and there was faith despite club making a mess of decisions in those years they’d get it right again and they did…until the night of Dann and Fox being sold.
No such luck now so club now has to work really hard to get lapsed fans back and don’t really see any will to do that in all aspects of how it’s run.
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I think the Championship factor is bigger than the Fox and Dann one myself.
Hear, hear. Of all the many bad things done by the Toxic Leech, this was possibly the worst, and the final straw for several of our fans who had hitherto been diehards for years.
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What do you mean by that W1?
I only mention Dann and Fox as the home attendances pretty much dropped off from that moment. Start of 2008/09 had some very poor home turnouts despite it being a decent start to the season, likes of Stephen Hughes, Ricketts and Marco Reich signed so “big names” coming in but guess Mullen being appointed manager turned off loads of fans to compound things.
Walsall 5-2 Southend which was second home game when Ishy scored a hat trick only had 3.8k turn up for example.
In an ideal world a new stadium right by town centre would be what I want to try to re-grow fan base again but I accept that has its own pros and cons giving the current transport links.
I mean there was still some residual support left after our sojourn in the Championship which was tempted back by our exceptional season under Richard Money.
Agree, but had we been in the stadium this season the vast majority of our attendances would have started with a 3.
That’s possible 1k paying fans, a huge amount of revenue lost.
The 2015 season was strange one for attendances, but as I pointed out previously we always seem to be coming off poor seasons.
Previous league season was mediocre but it did have Wembley so some fans coming back for that might’ve seen beyond the poor performance on the day and seen there were some really good players in most positions like Rico, Sawyers, Bradshaw etc but it really wasn’t reflected in attendnaces at all until final 6 weeks when 6k were turning up for likes of Southend and Fleetwood.
6-7k is just a pipe dream, better to think of new ways to attract fans and keep things around 4-5k and build from there.
I wonder if it’s a coincidence Bonser cleared off when it looked like we were going to get the lowest number of season ticket sales ever - or at least for many years. I hate to think how low the attendances would have been had LP not come in - Bonser exited out of nowhere - the timing and the nature of the exit was very odd - we were all too happy to care, but he probably could see the fans had finally had enough. It does make you think, it really does. Those that say that not attending doesn’t have an impact when you are not happy…
The club has continued to fail, and badly, at its core objective. LP, Mole had Gamble failed to harness the goodwill during last season and make any positive changes. I genuinely worry about our future because other than being taken over by someone that knows what they are doing or has money to pump in, we are only heading one way. You don’t turn around years and years of asset stripping and bad decisions very easily, but they showed no sign of even making any kind of start really in the time they had. A full season is plenty of time to enact change, some should have been in place for the very first home game. That is not even taking into consideration the ludicrous situation of our present manager and set up - which would be unconceivable at most National Premier clubs.
I maintain there is a good market for this club (well, there was prior to covid) but we have never had professionals with the necessary experience, success or nouse to push this club forward. Its always been about tired 80s suits, Sportsmans dinners and dated 80s comedy shows - literally the football club equivalent of Pheonix Nights. You live in the past, you end up in the past - that’s what is happening, we belong back in the 90s along with the decor in the Bonser Suite - and as far as I can see, its irreversible barring a miracle.
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Oldham beating Colchester and Newport beating Mansfield
Colchester 2 down
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3 down now
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Mansfield drew 1-1 with Newport. If we manage a win tomorrow more than 1 goal we go above them. I know its a big ask but we can live in hope.
Colchester still losing 3-1 to Oldham
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If Colchester lose tomorrow should be classed as a free hit given that we have 2 games in hand.
Take the game to them and actually try to win a game.
Can’t see that being our plan though.
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