It's 2020 vision for the Saddlers

Walsall blogger Mark Jones has a vision of what his football club could be like in 2020 - and believes the first seeds have been sewn this week.

By the year 2020, Walsall Football Club will be a club capable of sustaining Championship-level football on a regular basis, have average home gates of over 6,000, be debt free, be in a position to purchase the freehold of the ground, have a democratically-elected supporter representative on the board and continue to be a community club serving the Borough of Walsall.

These are SMART - specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timetabled - targets, providing a focus and a direction for the club.

Obviously these are broad aims, some of which could be achieved earlier and some of which can be revised in time.

They also need as many people as possible - from individuals, from supporters' groups, from the club itself - to buy into the ideas and work together in co-operation to make them happen.

And they are only my own personal views, just my vision, nothing more. Some of them are obvious and relatively easy - supporters on the board, community involvement - while some of them are hugely ambitious - no debt, owning the ground - and some of them are only what we have done before a decade or so ago.

The reason I'm sharing this now is simply that it isn't that difficult to sit down and think about where you want your club to be heading. It hardly took any time at all. More importantly, a club's board of directors could easily do the same.

Following Monday night's fans focus meeting, I'm becoming increasingly confident that we actually have directors capable of having a vision for the football club for the first time in - well, ever really.

Around 50 fans were there and there were focus meeting debuts for chief executive Stefan Gamble, new director Leigh Pomlett and long-standing director Richard Tisdale, alongside club secretary Dan Mole.

They were open, honest and prepared to listen, so much so that there was actually a round of applause at the end. That would never have happened in the old days.

There was productive dialogue about missing fans, getting more kids into the ground, singing sections and unreserved seating, prices for next season, offers for season ticket holders and improving facilities generally.

There was also a discussion about the criteria for choosing a new manager, the quality of the 90 applicants and the life, times and bizarre decision making of previous boss Chris Hutchings.

There was a good debate about chairman Jeff Bonser, the ownership of the club and the current debts.

Obviously this was the most heated part of the three hours ,but it was managed in a way that allowed people to air their views without anyone on the panel getting stroppy or threatening to spit their dummy out. It was such a big improvement on what we have endured before.

There is still a fair way to go to repair years of damage in the relationship between club and fans, but I can sense more than a few bridges being constructed.

The club still faces some huge problems on and off the pitch and I'm certainly not professing that I have all the answers, but this might just be the beginning of the great leap forward.