Matt Maher: Michael Flynn determined to leave a lasting legacy at Walsall
In almost every sense, Michael Flynn has been here before.
The Walsall head coach knows all about preparing for a big FA Cup tie against Premier League opposition. He knows all about playing Leicester and all about beating them, too.
And he is also acutely aware how such occasions can accelerate the rebirth of a club.
“At Newport, we got a generation of fans back,” he explains, when referencing the famous third-round win over the Foxes in his previous job, four years ago this month.
“When the club went bust in 1989, those fans were lost. There wasn’t an appetite for it. Kids wanted Manchester United, Chelsea or Arsenal shirts. They weren’t interested in Newport County.
“Now you go around Newport, around the schools, you see a lot more County shirts. Everywhere I go I want to leave a legacy. The legacy there was getting a generation of fans back.”
Flynn hopes tomorrow’s fourth-round tie with Leicester, which will be played in front of the largest crowd at the Poundland Bescot Stadium for at least seven years, can have a similar impact for Walsall.
In truth, the Saddlers’ rebuild is already progressing nicely.
Sat down with a group of journalists in the stadium’s 1888 Lounge, Flynn notes early how he is little more than a fortnight from celebrating his first anniversary at the helm.
“I was joking with the chairman (Leigh Pomlett) about it the other day,” he says. “He said to me: ‘What a year is has been!’”
That is no understatement. From looking like League Two relegation fodder when Flynn arrived, the Saddlers are now contending for the play-off places. In between, the club was bought by American investment firm Trivela and last month acquired the freehold for the stadium from former owner Jeff Bonser.
“That is the biggest thing which has happened to this club over I don’t know how many years. It is massive,” said Flynn.
The clear message after years of decline is the Saddlers are a club on the rise again. Their first run to the fourth round of the Cup since 2016 is, first and foremost, simply evidence of that.
Convincing Flynn, who engineered a remarkable escape from relegation at Newport and twice took his hometown club to the play-offs, to replace Matt Taylor last February was the first step and regarded as a considerable coup for the club at the time.
Yet speaking to the 42-year-old now nearly 12 months on, there is a definite sense he believes he got just as good a part of the bargain.
“This is a club going in the right direction,” he remarks at one point. “It is a really great place to be.”
Flynn speaks passionately about the club and his work.
Those FA Cup exploits with Newport, which included a win over Middlesbrough the round after beating Leicester, resulted in a lasting friendship with Pep Guardiola after Manchester City eventually ended the fairytale run.
“I don’t pester him, or do his head in,” he says. “But I know if I message him, he will get back to me and vice versa.
“He is just an unbelievable human being and manager, one of my older life heroes.”
Such experiences breed confidence but while there is always an assuredness about Flynn’s manner, there’s never a sense he risks crossing over into cockiness.
A former midfielder with nearly 500 appearances in a career which included three stints at Newport, his hometown club, Flynn was first-team coach of the Exiles before stepping up to become caretaker boss in 2017.
Accepting the job at Walsall, three months after leaving Rodney Parade in November 2021, was in part driven by a desire to prove he could succeed away from familiar surroundings.
“You can say I knew Newport and they knew me but there is never a guarantee it is going to work,” he says. “I back myself, I back my assistant Wayne Hatswell, I back how we approach and try to win matches. I back how we coach.
“We try and do things the best we can with the facilities and equipment we have got. We plan intensely.
“Part of me wanted to go elsewhere, to show I can do it elsewhere.
“If we get to the play-offs with Walsall this season or next season, that is some turnaround. It goes to show it is not luck. We might actually be good managers!”
Nobody was thinking of play-offs when Flynn took charge, with the Saddlers perched just six points above the relegation zone ahead of matches against Forest Green and Swindon, the division’s top two, first up.
Flynn jokes now he considered asking to take charge after those two fixtures but the subsequent 1-0 win in Gloucestershire and 5-0 ‘tonking’ at Swindon provided valuable lessons.
“It allowed me to see how the players reacted to a good win and how they reacted to a big defeat,” he explains. “Those next two weeks I learned a lot about the players. I spoke to them more, saw how they handed a high and a low.
“It was the best thing about taking the job then and stood us in good stead.
“I said from the outset I want to change the mentality of the club, not just the players but the supporters, the board, everything, the staff.
“Everything had to change because they were used to losing, used to moaning, used to feeling sorry for themselves.
“Only the supporters had a right to do that because they had been suffering for a long time.”
Flynn is open with his players, supportive when required but also firm in what he expects. He has no time for pessimism or negativity.
“There is one thing I can’t stand as a manager, or as a person, and that is sulkers,” he says. “It gets you nowhere. It brings a bad vibe, around the training ground, around the club.
“A little bit is fine but not around a professional environment. Players don’t last long if they carry it on. I tend to ship them out and bring someone else in.”
An unbeaten six-match run which followed the defeat at Swindon provided the platform that saw survival secured by Easter and in the summer Flynn set about overhauling his squad, a process aided by Trivela’s takeover in June.
Flynn held a Zoom meeting with incoming co-chairman Ben Boycott and Matt Jordan, the group’s head of football operations, shortly before the deal was announced.
“I like the way they work,” he says. “They are winners, they are hungry. They are not just here to make a quick buck, if you excuse the phrase. They want that longevity.”
Trivela’s arrival sparked the largest sale of season tickets for nearly two decades and allowed Flynn to be that little bit bolder and more ambitious than predecessors – though still far from reckless – in the transfer market.
The acquisition of the freehold, meanwhile, truly was a landmark moment.
“Leigh deserves huge credit for delivering on that promise,” says Flynn. “I guarantee there will have been people saying it would never happen in a million years. Well, it happened.”
Plans to redevelop the club’s training ground are also in the mix and while tomorrow promises to be a special occasion, of the kind all-too-rare for the Saddlers in recent years, the intention is it will be the first of many under the new ownership.
Flynn, affable and ambitious, is happy to be in the middle of it all, playing his part.
“You can feel something happening. It feels like the club has life,” he says. “The supporters can sense it and the challenge for us is to keep it going.
“At the minute there is a clear pathway, or vision, of where we want to be and how we want to get there.”
He adds with a smile: “It is always best to be on at the beginning of the ride than joining right at the end.
“You get all the best bits when you are on for the full ticket.”
