Walsall Column - Roy's Response

Walsall Sporting Star columnist Darren Fellows has a response from the fans for chief executive Roy Whalley as the 'stay-away' from the Banks's continues.

Oops, Roy's gone and done it again with last Friday's latest ill-judged snipe aimed squarely at the hands that feed or, put another way, the latest master class in commercial suicide. Still, I guess that this outburst just about confirms my long held suspicions that Roy will never actually get it.

Judging by the comment inches that this story generated, the somewhat unfortunate level of blind arrogance and condescending tone of last week's 'where are you' rant twanged more than the odd nerve amongst the faithful that Roy and his cronies have continually and contemptibly ignored and isolated over the past couple of decades.

Delia Smith at Norwich at least had the sense to have a wine or two before she humiliated herself with a similar rant.

But more to the point this is yet another seriously mis-judged gaffe from a hierarchy so unbelievably out of touch with the roots of the organisation they represent, that you wonder quite how disenfranchised supporter opinion has to be before they actually realise the mess they really are in.

Indeed 16 years after someone else at the club questioned if 'the people of the Town actually want a football Club in Walsall' - after less than 2,000 fans turned up for that particular summer's high profile pre-season friendly against Oldham - we're still being exposed to the same pointless, pathetic rhetoric.

Rather than question why 20 years into their project crowds are still as hopeless as they were on the day this regime began working together, it is obviously much easier to scan the rather sparse landscape on spray bullets of blame in any and every direction bar the one that matters.

What of the club's apparent transformation? If Roy's self congratulatory comments are correct, with 'the bits and pieces' finally in place, then why does is feel like our natural position within the football league family is continually slipping lower and lower?

Why - after constructing a new stadium, new conference and entertainment facilities and more advertising hoardings than Piccadilly Circus - do we still have a playing budget that leaves our managers the annual task of making silk purses from sow's ears?

Why is the club now so dependent on producing its own talent which as an aspiration alone is no bad thing? Why have the paying public so clearly given up on the club? And when this story was posted on this site, why did quite so many fans feel moved to comment so vociferously?

Why don't they buy into your transformed ideals Roy?

In those early Jeff Bonser years I think that most of us accepted the fact that one-year contracts offered to players no-one else wanted were necessary in order to provide the board with the time to turn around the mess of the late 1980's.

But people are fatigued now of the same rubbish being recycled year after year. We understand today's financial realities, like we understood that there was never such a thing as a free transfer.

Clearly there are a lot of people in this town who want and need a football club within it. But, as numbers show, quite how many want a football club transformed into the Bonser and Whalley model is substantially fewer. Pat yourselves on the back if you wish, indeed make the most of it because there aren't all that many out there who are also thanking you for it.

No wonder our home record is so bad, when we can't help but score own goal after own goal after own goal. As for downscaling ambitions? Don't make me laugh.