In the first of his soon-to-be regular blog's, Darren Young takes an in-depth look at Walsall Football Club's prospects for the 2015/16 Sky Bet League 1 campaign, and considers what can be done to achieve that much sought after promotion.
Walsall are 33/1 to win League 1 next season.
Only four teams have longer odds and one of them is Blackpool who are being tipped to continue their freefall but could go either way.
In other words, the bookies feel that we will be on the very fringe of the relegation places although not one of the teams to eventually go down.
To be fair, they think the same every year, yet we have finished 9th, 13th and 14th in the last three seasons so recent history, at least, suggests that we will exceed the bookie’s expectations.
But will we exceed our own?
Do we even know what they are? Our attendances and overall budget are amongst the lowest in the third tier so the odds seem about right. But as we showed just three years ago, a genuine attempt at the play offs is not that far out of reach.
But is it still a bridge too far?
Can a team like Walsall make it into the Championship, and would we even want to? It’s not as redundant a question as it might seem. After all, the last time we reached those heights, the fall was long and hard and it took a season on the bottom rung and a whole new ethos to turn things around.
More pertinent is the question of whether it’s realistic. Blackpool might be a laughing stock at the moment but they still have money – somewhere. Likewise, Wigan will still have parachute cash and in this division, those that have usually finish higher than those that have not.
The teams that have gone up in the last three years are:
Doncaster
Bournemouth
Yeovil
Wolves
Brentford
Rotherham
Bristol City
MK Dons
Preston or Swindon
Of that list, only Yeovil can be deemed a ‘smaller’ or similar club when compared to Walsall. Smaller in that their ground capacity is a bit lower and they have spent the majority of their history in non-league.
The rest on the list are bigger, albeit in different ways. Some have reached the Premier League and then, like Blackpool and Wigan, have felt the impact of relegation harder than they perhaps should. Remember that previously to the seasons in question, Sheffield Wednesday, Leeds, Charlton, Nottingham Forest, Norwich, Southampton and Leicester have found themselves this far down and gone back up either immediately or eventually. Not many go the way of Portsmouth.
Others have the financial backing of relatively wealthy owners with ambition (not something that Walsall’s owner tends to be accused of) to move up the pyramid. Coupled with gates of over 10,000 the likes of Preston and MK can attract higher calibre players. Bournemouth and Brentford have found those attendances are possible but needed owners to spend big to get them there first.
Of the rest, Doncaster have spent a reasonable period of this century in the second tier and paid over £1m for a player only four years ago. Swindon and Rotherham have average crowds that are double that of Walsall and have both spent more time looking down the league than up despite both, like us, having to go all the way to the bottom along the way.
Walsall had an average 45 more people per match at their home games than Yeovil so the comparison is fairer and the Somerset team remain the only club in recent years to achieve what Walsall and a dozen or more like them hope to do.
But, as Yeovil found out, the realistic outlook for a club of that size, in a cash-orientated game where the money from the Premier League literally trickles down when it reaches Leagues 1 and 2, is not a good one. Yeovil were not only relegated as the bottom side, but have tumbled down again this time around. Were those eight wins and 37 points worth that? For a crack at the big time, I guess most, including me, would say ‘yes’, but the price can be extremely high.
So where do Walsall go from here? Up? Down? Or about the same.
If we take the examples above, then promotion to land of local derbies and honey can only be achieved in one of these five ways:
Rich Benefactor
If there is a super-rich Walsall fan who wants to invest, you would imagine they might have done it by now. The club wouldn’t cost a fortune in super-rich terms but still no one has come forward because any sensible person (billionaire or not) knows football clubs don’t make money (unless you have the balls of Bournemouth’s owner) in general. It’s even more unlikely that a cash-laden Russian, Qatari or Arab will fancy putting their dosh in Walsall when there are some many better options.
Chances of happening: 100,000-1
Speculate to Accumulate
FFP makes it hard to overspend big these days, but all the clubs that have gone up will have made a conscious decision to maintain a higher wage bill in the hope of it paying off. If you have gates of 10,000+ it’s easier to do but for anyone else, it’s a hell of a gamble. For every Brentford there is a Leyton Orient, so close to achieving the dream a year ago, who spent big (if reports are to be believed one player was on £20,000 per week) and failed spectacularly. Now a season in League 2 with a wage bill that can’t be sustained awaits them. The rewards, especially if you lose in the play-off final, just don’t justify the risks. And anyway, we just reached a Wembley final of our own and before that, sold players for decent money and we never invested any of that so it’s hard to believe we are going to start now.
Chances of happening: 1,000-1
Invest in Youth and Hope
To a certain degree, Walsall do this anyway and with a degree of success. But it’s all relative because none of the clubs that have gained promotion this decade have done it this way. Sure, we have players coming through and there is an argument to say that a team of young twenty-somethings with a point to prove might make a decent fist of next season BUT they will also be found out through lack of experience too many times and have dips in form when we don’t want them to.
Chances of happening: 100-1
Get a new manager
An old chestnut and one that has a success/failure rate that is impossible to predict. Leyton Orient swapped managers twice and we know how that turned out. Nearly all the clubs in the bottom half made changes and most didn’t see much of a change in fortune. The Championship was the same with some brilliant results (Watford) and nightmares (Wigan) and plenty of indifference in between. Dean Smith hasn’t pulled up trees, but three mid-table finishes and a first trip to Wembley aren’t to be sniffed at. Some fans will hate me for saying this, but you really do have to be careful what you wish for and stability and steady progress aren’t as boring as they sound. Just ask Leeds. Or Blackpool.
Chances of happening: 10-1
Get Lucky
Yeovil fans will probably agree that sometimes you just land on a magic formula of the right group of players and a heavy slice of good fortune. When Sir Ray Graydon got us up in 1999, his team were also one of the pre-season favourites for relegation but he found a way of playing and the right characters to upset the odds. Who for instance would have bet on Andy Rammell after he scored 13 goals in the two seasons of Southend’s consecutive relegations before he joined us? It can happen, just not that not often.
Chances of happening to Walsall: Fingers crossed. As always!
For me, if it’s going to happen, then to get lucky is the only way it will for little ole’ Walsall. Out there, amongst all the released players there are three or four that, if blended with what we have already, just might take us into the play offs.
In a division lacking any true ex-Premier League giants, and with lots of Walsall sized clubs all in a similar place financially, there might not be a better chance for a while.
Or maybe the bookies might be right this time after all.
By: Darren Young.