Stefan Gamble sees Walsall's bigger picture

And that's just as well, otherwise who knows what course Walsall's season might have taken.

With all the buzz around the Banks's ahead of the club's first ever trip to Wembley, it is easy to forget it is less than five months since manager Dean Smith was coming under perhaps the greatest scrutiny of his managerial reign.

A poor start to the season saw the Saddlers fall joint bottom of League One in late October, when they suffered a 1-0 defeat at Crawley.

That, coupled with a run of just four wins in 32 league games stretching back to January, had a section of supporters openly questioning whether Smith's time was up.

But any loss of faith on the terraces was never matched in the boardroom, where belief in the manager has always been unwavering.

"It's being able to see behind the scenes which helps," says Gamble, who will mark five years as the club's chief executive this summer.

"Everything is moving on, you can see the progress the club is making, you can see the structure getting stronger and stronger.

"That is from the academy, right up into the first team.

"On occasions when it does not go right on the pitch, you only need to glance behind the scenes and see there is nothing wrong, nothing is broken and nothing needs fixing.

"Earlier in the season, I was never worried, because the performances were there.

"There was concern we were not converting them to points but always a sense it would come right eventually."

Still, Gamble knows other clubs would not have shown such patience.

"You can make a knee-jerk reaction sometimes and October is very early in the season," he adds. "There was always a sense things would go in the right direction.

"That said, if you had asked me back then where we would be now, I'm pleasantly surprised we are in a Wembley final."

Gamble is not the type of chief executive to constantly make headlines but in his own quiet and confident way has done much.

It came since the dark days of January 2011, when Smith took charge with the club cut adrift at the foot of the division.

The manager has rightly taken much of the credit for restoring pride and giving the club an identity on the pitch.

Yet he could not have done it without the support of Gamble and chairman Jeff Bonser, who both bought fully into his vision.

They based it around implementing an attractive style of play while focusing on development of youth players.

"We were bottom of the league and looked nailed on to go out of the division when Dean took over," says Gamble.

"Now we are in a position where we maybe do not get a win every single week but certainly behind the scenes the foundations are there and getting stronger.

"It is nice people recognise that because that was always the aim, the hope, giving the club a way to play.

"For many, many years we had been guilty like everyone else of making knee-jerk, short-term decisions in getting rid of managers and so on.

"How are you supposed to build when you do that, season on season?

"We had players come and go on one year contracts, there is no continuity in that.

"If you look at the clubs who have been successful over a long period of time it is those who have kept with the manager, kept with the backroom staff, with players on longer term deals.

"We felt if we were going to have any success or make progress in this division it was a route we had to go down.

"We will never be in a position to buy ourselves out of this division."

That is the realism Gamble and the club have to operate under yet it does not lessen their ambition.

Smith always speaks warmly of the support he receives from the board and Gamble insists it is a two-way street.

"We are there if Dean needs a sounding board and vice versa," he says. "Dean will sit there and talk about how he feels things are going, where he thinks we can improve.

"We will sit there and look at what we can achieve in the financial constraints we have - we look for a solution from everybody.

"It is two ways. Dean comes and presents regularly at board meetings. It is an interactive relationship."

The challenge facing Gamble and his fellow board members now is how to harness the Wembley energy and ensure the club feels a long-term benefit.

Promotion now looks unlikely this season but remains the club's main goal in the coming years.

Increasing attendances at the Banks's Stadium is another aim and yet asking how this is done seems almost unfair on Gamble.

The Saddlers have been among the more proactive clubs in the country in trying to entice people through the turnstiles.

A deal where under-18s can watch football for free has been in place for several years.

Club officials also hold regular forums and meetings with supporters, helping to close the chasm which once existed between the board and the fan-base.

Yet in football, as Gamble acknowledges, off-field initiatives can only go so far.

"The only sure-fire way to get people through the turnstiles is by winning matches and at boardroom level, you do not have that much control," he says.

"Once the players cross the white line, we are egging them on like anyone else.

"In terms of selling these tickets we have a lot of contact details, from casual supporters and people who have never been to see us before.

"We will certainly have follow up campaigns to try and entice people in. It can be frustrating (the attendances).

"I think year on year we have shown a small increase - not huge numbers but it is never going to be, when you start from a small base.

"By the same token, there are probably a few clubs in the region who have lost supporters over that period of time.

"We are not doing too badly, though obviously we would like to do better.

"Something like this, getting to Wembley, won't do any harm but it is about how we harness it.

"We have things like the school partners game, with 1,200 youngsters in the Community Stand. "We try the initiatives, the early bird ticket sales where it is free football for under-18s, for the fourth or five years in a row.

"From our side of things I feel we are fairly reasonably priced. The football is decent.

"If we could put a good, solid promotion charge together that would help. But we are chipping away."