Saddlers blog: All change

Another bad week then. Yet again Jeff has allowed managerial gold to slip through his fingers, writes guest blogger Darren Fellows.

And my only hope now is that he doesn’t repeat the same mistake he made in 2001 and appoint someone who’ll end up dismantling the excellent work and progress made under Richard Money.

Quite why Money decided to cut and run this side of the end of the season is anyone’s guess. My hunch like many fans is budget and transfer related.

Money’s weekend comments about “us all moving in the same direction” simply cannot be overlooked in the wave of denial that has swept the Banks’s since is departure, nor can be the nonsensical way that we sold Dan & Dann and allowed Ricketts to slip away yet failed to even remotely look like replacing them.

The Club’s claim that in delaying replacement loan signings until at least mid-February so that they would be eligible for any possible play off final now looks as daft as the decision to trade a 20 year old with 2 ½ years left on his contract on the basis that there were “rumblings” that he wanted to leave.

This is a club remember that simultaneously managed Paul Merson, Vinny Samways, and Paul Ritchie. Do me a favour! A 20 year old having a teenage tantrum should have been small fry compared to your star players requiring rehab, an air miles extension and an ITV digital based contract renewal to deal with. We even had a capable manager to deal with it this time.

This week has also seen Jeff Bonser hit back at the critics who questioned the ambition of the Football Club. “How on earth are you supposed to re-invest and sign players in two hours?” he asks. Well, erm, how do I put it? You don’t sell him in the first place.

Apparently we also heard the old chestnut about being “desperate to get back into the Championship”. Sorry Jeff, but to coin your own phrase “I don’t think anybody who knows anything about football or business would argue” that you aren’t going get back there by continually selling your best young players.

In Richard Money, Bonser clearly set about trying to re-create the blueprint set down during the Ray Graydon era. Money, like Graydon before him, simply embarrassed the regime that employed him with his ability to turn pig’s ears into silk purses. We’ve all heard and are all used to the same tired old rhetoric that Bonser tends to come out with at times of crisis.

In Money, Graydon & Nicholl he found managerial gold, In Sorenson, Merson & Broadhurst he found the complete contrast. Make no mistake, he cannot afford to get it wrong this time.

Thanks Richard, you gave us hope, you gave us belief, you turned around a runaway train and delivered our only piece of silverware in 47 years. You deserved better, you’ll probably get it now.