Walsall Column - A Good Week

Walsall Sporting Star columnist Darren Fellows reacts to a surprisingly good week to be a Saddlers fan ahead of Saturday's home game against Swindon.

What a difference a win makes. The team that had forgotten how to shoot, let alone score, managed to chalk three notches in the goals for column in little more than a half of football and the end of weekend league table had a much more palatable look about it.

Indeed with all three goals scored from open play, our two strikers opening their season's account and our early impressive away point haul for 2009/10 almost doubled, there would have been some pretty wide smiles boarding the coach for the short trip home from the Wirral.

To be fair the final result was hardly typically Walsall. With Tranmere enduring a dreadful start to the season and given our past history of assisting our opponents to kick-start a misfiring season, the feared – if not anticipated - non performance and regulation defeat was for once delightfully absent.

Yes, we provided John Barnes's team with a soft opening effort, but the reaction to going behind and counter reaction to Alan Mahon's drilled second half equaliser would surely have pleased manager Chris Hutchings and his staff.

Not that the Tranmere fans would have gone home quite as pleased with the performance of their team under their current gaffer.

Indeed, you would have thought that Barnes's previous managerial record in British football would have been enough to put off all but the most desperate chairmen from offering the former England wide man another crack in club management.

But, then again, as we all are too aware, the business of running a football club provides plenty of potential for club chairmen to make decisions that both defy logic and appear mind numbingly bonkers.

Hindsight is obviously a wonderful thing but, to be honest, Mystic Meg's crystal ball wasn't really required to guess that appointing a guy whose record makes Paul Merson's short career resemble that of Bill Shankly, sits somewhat comfortably between logic defying and bonkers.

One thing that I suspect that Barnes won't be signing this week is a contract extension, similar to the one offered to and accepted by Hutchings and his assistant Martin O'Connor.

Personally I was delighted to read about the agreement of these one-year rolling deals and, so long as our chairman Jeff Bonser ensures that these contracts survive somewhat longer than the similar one that ensured Colin Lee a tasty pay out, then hopefully the club can begin to re-lay some managerial foundations.

The all too frequent chopping and changing of managers since the dismissal of Ray Graydon has done little to allow any of the club's subsequent managers to either build foundations or harvest the crops that their work could have produced.

Hopefully these rolling deals should provide some of the long-term stability that will be required for us to again begin moving onwards and upwards.

Clearly, for these current deals to extend into such harvest reaping territory our managerial duo will need future results to match their, our and the owner's hopes and expectations.

But despite this season's current goal shyness, our truly abject cup record and genuine concerns about our continued lack of anything that resembles home form, I believe that these guys fully deserve a decent run in their current jobs.

Continual chopping and changing of manager has been proven time and again to be counter productive and, at worst, the last thing that any future managerial incumbent needs is to have his already miniscule budget eroded further, as we pay off the remaining months of his predecessors contract.

Unlike the big chief at Prenton Park, I suspect that Jeff has got this decision, and the timing of it, absolutely spot on. A good week indeed.