Chris Marsh: Time has come to make changes at Walsall
For a lot of Walsall fans, the time has come for wholesale changes at their football club.
Not only can I see where they are coming from, I agree with them.
From top to bottom, things need to be done differently, because at the moment I don’t see any progress being made.
Watching Walsall now is liking watching Eastenders and Coronation Street at the same time – there is too much going wrong.
And now it’s going to come to a head with fans planning a protest when the Saddlers return to action against Oxford on January 13.
Everyone reading this will know the situation with Jon Whitney. You are either ‘Whitney in’ or ‘Whitney out’.
But the problems go higher than that, which is why I believe fans are planning their protest next week.
What Walsall are truly guilty of at the minute is failing to communicate with supporters.
We never hear from the owner or the chief executive, instead the club pumps out positive news when it can but then goes quiet when things aren’t going so well.
In all my time associated with Walsall, the club has prided itself on being a community club. But you can’t be a community club if you don’t communicate.
And I think we are now in a position where those on the board are hanging Whitney out to dry.
It’s clear a lot of supporters want him to be moved on and results over the festive period have been poor.
But if the board believe Whitney is the right man to take the club forward – that is their right.
The very least they can do though is tell us that, tell us why they want to stick with him and maybe promote the good things he is doing.
At least then we wouldn’t all be in limbo not knowing what to expect.
The one thing you cannot knock Jon for is his passion. There is no doubt he wants the job and he believes he is the right man to turn things around. If there is one thing Walsall fans love, it’s a trier and supporters know Whitney isn’t a fly-by-night manager.
He has not taken the job just so he can get sacked 18 months later and get a pay-off – believe me, there are plenty of managers like that.
Jon is in this to do the best for Walsall Football Club.
I believe if the board came out and backed him, fans would respond to that and some of the anger towards him would calm down.
It would help in the short term. But of course fans are still going to protest when they have an owner who is still using the club for self-gain.
It’s well documented Jeff Bonser owns both Walsall FC and the Banks’s Stadium as separate entities.
And he charges the club hundreds of thousands of pounds in rent each year to play at the Banks’s Stadium.
Jeff has done a lot of good for the club. But if you are going to use it to make that much money for your own personal gain – criticism is going to come your way.
We all know Walsall operate on one of the lowest budgets in League One. Why can’t that rent be lowered and more money put into the team?
That’s what everyone wants to see. Let’s give Jon – or whoever the manager is – more of a fighting chance.
Next Saturday, fans will protest by standing outside the Banks’s during the Oxford game.
I can remember a protest taking place in my playing days with fans gathering outside after a match.
The players would often go for a beer after the game. But Rod McDonald, who was a cracking player, didn’t drink and would go straight home.
I can remember the stewards asking us to all wait until the crowd had died down before we left.
But Rod the God, as we called him, went straight out, right into the thick of it all.
The next day there was a big picture in the paper of the protest and there was Rod, smack bang in the middle, and virtually holding a sign that said ‘Jeff Bonser out’. It was hilarious.
Now, it seems, the protests are starting again. And the one thing Walsall should not do is underestimate the fans.
If they do that, they are in a very dangerous position because despite what anyone may think, the club belongs to those fans, they are its lifeblood and they are the ones that keep it going.
Walsall are now just three points above the relegation zone in League One. I said before in this column, where you are on New Year’s Day is roughly where you will finish at the end of the season.
That means Walsall are in a relegation scrap – there is no hiding from that now.
And it’s up to the board and those in power to do the right things to get them out of it.
If they don’t, I’ll be doing a Rod the God and joining the protest.
