Will Bonser ever sell the Saddlers?

Chief Sports Writer Martin Swain looks at the key questions confronting our clubs and now asks - Will Walsall owner Jeff Bonser ever be able to sell the club?

If the M6 corridor of clubs were a street in suburbia, then Walsall would be the little terrace at the end of the road that has been up for sale for as long as anyone remembers but with still no sign of a buyer.

The big, detached five-bedroomed claret and blue-painted property which dominates the road was bought by some Americans a while back. We don't see much of them but they seem nice enough and are happy to let their appointed Irish landlord get on with keeping the place spick and span.

That old, gold-and black four-bedroomed home a couple of doors down also got snapped up at about the same time and, now rid of some of the extravagant touches of its previous owners, looks the very picture of a smart, well-run household – in keeping with the folk in the blue-and-white striped home right next door. Mind you, it still won't stop them rowing over the garden fence.

Now, wouldn't you know it, some more foreign owners have just moved in to that strange, half-developed, half-ramshackle all-blue place next to the big house. Whispers on the street suggest he paid far too much for it but he's got serious plans to do it up big time. We'll see.

Despite all this new investment, no-one seems to want to take on the street's smallest property. It's smart, well-maintained and in the last 10 years has staged some memorable parties and even arranged a fantastic day out in Cardiff which many of their neighbours went along to share.

But now it looks a little unloved and lonely at the bottom of the road. Its owner, a Mr J Bonser, is constantly at odds with his tenants and rarely sticks his head above the parapet - he says he can do without the 'aggro'.

His tenants, a devoted if curmudgeonly bunch who have ignored the temptations of moving into those better-appointed rooms further up, want rid of him but no-one - it seems - fancies buying the place.

Result? Deadlock. A deadlock which is breeding apathy. Some 10 years after Ray Graydon so memorably led Walsall to their first campaign in the re-constructed division of English football we now know as the Championship, it's looking like it will be at least another 10 years before they might get there again.

This week's financial report painted the picture of a club locked in a worrying decline. Income down by nearly £800,000, with trading profit reduced from £408,000 to a token £25,000. With gate receipts tumbling by more than £300,000, operating costs got slashed to, by £411,000. Walsall is keeping its head above water but swimming in ever decreasing circles.

Similarly, Bonser and his critics are left in a cycle of accusation and counter-accusation. They point darkly at the annual rent he charges the club, openly question his motivations and cry fury at the wearying sales of players regardless of a team's promise.

They say Dann, Fox and Gerrard departures were both symptoms and effects of the same disease – Bonser's lack of ambition for the club.

The man himself hits back vigorously, pointing to an inarguable record that must acknowledge Walsall's most successful days have come under his stewardship, that without greater support from both the townsfolk and the town's council, he has been hamstrung.

Bonser also vehemently declares that he will never abandon Walsall to the perils of administration - no matter how painful the medicine and the flak that comes with it. But he wants to sell and live out a retirement racing boats in the sunshine. The big unknown is for how much?

Those accounts show that he is still owed a seven-figure chunk of the club's £2.66million debt. But that's money he knows he isn't going to see again – what owner would fork out that sort of money for Walsall when the club has such a restricted field of profit-making opportunity?

But the land on which the Banks's resides, prime real-estate next to the motorway, is his golden handshake. No future owner is going to buy the club cheaply but then pay the previous landlord more than £300,000 a year to be there. He, she or they will want the land and how much Bonser would sell it for is the key to this question.

And it is THE question for Walsall in these early years of a new century.

The club desperately needs fresh direction and it desperately needs the re-energising, electric charge new owners have bought to those bigger houses up the street.

Without it, they remain hostage to the next decent offer for the next generation of prospects. Without a fresh start, Richard Taundry, Darryl Westlake and Troy Deeney look like the next cabs off the rank and not the future of a developing team.

The Saddlers have no Mick Halsall, whose contacts were the guiding hand behind the recruitment of Dann, Fox and Gerrard.

Dean Smith, his replacement, has been trusted with an onerous task and needs time to build up the kind of network which could see the Saddlers get first pick of youthful players discarded by bigger clubs while also replenishing the stock locally.

It is a tough, unremitting challenge for every one at the Banks's led, of course, by the Hutchings and O'Connor partnership charged with ensuring the Saddlers fall from Graydonian eminence goes no further. But there is only so much they can do.

Is there someone out there who can change the outlook? Without it, that little house at the end of the road may end up abandoned and unoccupied.