History could have repeated itself

Walsall blogger Mark Jones thought the bad old days of the late 1980s had reared their ugly head again until the Saddlers' losing run was halted at Leyton Orient.

We actually started with a seven game unbeaten run - people often forget that.

By mid-October we'd amassed 14 points, although we'd only won two games. We came back from a midweek game at Brighton's old Goldstone Ground with a 2-2 draw. Then it started.

We lost 1-0 at home to Watford, with a late goal from Dave Bamber - a useless, lumbering and expensive waste of space in his time at Fellows Park – just to rub it in.

I actually missed the game through chicken pox, I wouldn't mind but I was in my early 20s at the time.

Then it was up to Oldham and a 3-0 trouncing on their artificial pitch - if my memory serves me correctly we never ever scored a goal anywhere on plastic.

We were beaten 3-1 at Ipswich, home defeats to Leicester and Blackburn followed, then defeats at Swindon and Palace in our sole appearance in the Zenith Data Systems Cup.

It was up to seven and we kept on losing - at home to Leeds, at Barnsley and 2-1 at Bournemouth to make it 10 in a row.

A spirited but ultimately futile fightback at Dean Court was the reason given for under-fire manager Tommy Coakley keeping his job.

At half-time in the next game, a Boxing Day home match with Oxford, we led by a goal and the perceived wisdom was that they were even worse than us and, with a bit of luck in the second-half, we could finally get the result to potentially turn the corner. We lost 5-1.

Coakley was sacked, not before time, as he was way out of his depth. Tactically inept, he was hampered by the loss of a talismanic striker and some uninspiring signings.

Clearly unable to motivate his players on the training ground and having to rely on too many young players who were not yet ready, he had to go.

Assistant and former midfielder Ray Train took over as caretaker boss and we carried on losing, to Bradford, then 4-0 to the lethal Ian Wright and Mark Bright combo at Crystal Palace - a hat-trick for Mark, pity his broadcasting skills are nowhere near as sharp – when it could have been 14, before a 4-2 home defeat to Ipswich.

Train also brought in someone to help out – the man Gillingham, from the league below, had just sacked as their boss after ten straight defeats. His name – Paul Taylor.

There was respite in the third round of the FA Cup, we actually drew at home to Brentford, also out of the division below. Naturally, we lost the replay.

So now, the run was just confined to league games. The unwanted league record - which was 17, set by Rochdale in the 1930s, if you were wondering - began to loom ominously.

Then John Barnwell was appointed manager, after Ray Graydon had been interviewed, and the game was pretty much up.

We lost at Plymouth and notoriously 7-0 at home to Chelsea. Luckily for us, the prolific 1980s goalscoring England international Kerry Dixon was missing, or who knows how many they would have got?

Then, just when we had all given up hope, new signing Stuart Rimmer notched a superb hat-trick up at Sunderland, who we actually did the double over, and that was that.

Well all over apart from only getting two more wins all season and the inevitable relegation in bottom place, then getting relegated again the following season.

And being abjectly awful for the two seasons after that, taking five long years to get out of the basement division.

But the damage had really been done in those four long months of defeat after continual depressing defeat.

Just about the only mitigating factor for the Class of 1988-89 was that they were the first Walsall team to find themselves playing in the old Second Division for more than a quarter of a century.

Interestingly this period also coincided with uncertainty over the ownership of the ground and a suspicion that the fans' views were being ignored.

Not being one for all this 1980s revival nonsense, I always thought I would never have to go through it all again.

Thankfully, the one whole English point ground out down in East London has prevented a repeat of that woeful run - for now.

Since 1989, eight Walsall managers have been sacked and none of them have had as bad a losing run as the one we're on right now, in what many would describe as our natural home in the third tier of English football.

A losing habit becomes something that is increasingly difficult to shake off unless something changes drastically. I'm dubious as to whether one goalless draw at Orient counts as the required corner turner.

You can probably draw your own conclusions from that.