Chairman Leigh Pomlett meeting Walsall challenge head on

But the 63-year-old has reason to be cheerful with the club seemingly in a good position, both financially and in a football sense, for the 2020/21 season.

Although the Saddlers suffered setbacks in the last campaign, following relegation from League One, Darrell Clarke’s team were beginning to turn the tide, going five unbeaten before the coronavirus suspended all games.

Now the 2019/20 season is officially over for League Two clubs, the chairman is approaching 12 months at the helm at the end of July and for him it’s been a season of promise.

“The coronavirus has curtailed the last quarter of the season and I obviously didn’t plan for that,” he told the Express & Star.

“It’s been a major feature of the season which was unexpected. Until that point, we were building quite well.

“We’ve rebuilt the team and brought in Darrell and his team and I was pretty happy with the rebuilding process.

“I brought Miguel (Llera) in to run the academy and he was making really good progress with some players.

“I was happy with the direction of travel, but I wish we had moved a bit faster and not had that horrible month of October. Without that we’d have been in a better position and if you look at the last 10 games we were doing very well. Overall I’m pleased. Extremely pleased with the management team and what they were getting out of the squad and pretty pleased generally with the squad he brought in.”

Despite the tragedy that coronavirus has caused in this country and abroad, football in the lower leagues could emerge in a healthier state in the long-term.

Caps are expected to be introduced to limit spending and ensure the future for historic clubs.

For Walsall, that transition will be easier than most as they are, at times, frugal with their funds – a model that Pomlett intends to continue.

“We’re not a club, for absolutely the right reasons, that will throw money at problems,” he added.

“We manage problems and we deal with issues, but throwing money at it rarely ever succeeds and if you do you’re taking a hell of a risk with the football club.

“If it goes wrong it really goes wrong.

“With the world as it will be, there isn’t the money to throw at problems, it just isn’t there.

“The world will be different, there’s no question about that. There will be squad caps and salary caps in my view.

“That will change the whole landscape of League One and League Two football.

“The other clubs in some respects will behave more rationally, sensibly and be less blindly ambitious than before.

“I’m looking for a football world where the clubs in League One and Two compete on a reasonably even basis and the best team and management team wins it, not the ones that are willing to throw ridiculous amounts of money at it.

“Money has almost become a curse of the game. It’s very difficult to buy success, you have to manage the football club properly.

“If the club got into financial trouble, would I help it out? Yes of course I would, that’s what a chairman does, but my job is to prevent it getting into trouble in the first place. That’s why you’ll never find us paying a League Two footballer a huge amount of money because it’s a crassly stupid thing to do.”

On the field Pomlett has already made his intentions clear for next season, he wants promotion.

After a large turnover of players last summer, when 16 joined and 23 left the club, Walsall have kept the majority of their squad for the next campaign, releasing only five.

Compared to their League Two rivals, the Saddlers are certainly at an advantage at this early stage and that ‘stability’ has been a key component.

“We have 18 players already for next season and that sets us apart from other clubs, many don’t have anything like that,” Pomlett said.

“The players that we have are ones we really want, so the core of the team that ended the season well will be the ones that start next season. We have not released many players and that was deliberate.

“I said when I came in that we would have stability, successful clubs are invariably stable. I wanted to create stability which is why I brought in Darrell and his team and we had a squad that was rebuilt from virtually nothing.

“That has stood us in good stead for the new season.

“I’m pleased with the players we have and we’ll bring in some more.”

A major change under Pomlett’s tenure as chairman has been the feel-good factor at the club.

The disastrous form in October aside, fans have grown closer to the hierarchy at Walsall throughout the last 12 months.

Not only is the relationship between the fans and players seemingly improving, but the connection between the supporters and the board is better than it has ever been.

“I’m very pleased with the relationship we’ve developed between the club and the fans,” Pomlett said. “It comes out in the numbers, look at the season tickets or the number of people that have requested refunds.

“I receive letters from fans and speak to them and the vast majority are extremely supportive and often kind. It’s been lovely to see. The club has probably never been as united as it is now, not in my experience. This is a pretty united club in terms of its fans and the other stakeholders too.

“People have stepped up to help, suppliers, sponsors, board members. Everyone that I have asked to play a part has done so. The group that has helped the most is the fans, not only in season tickets but from the supporters groups.

“Their contribution has been extremely valuable and I’m really pleased with the feeling in the club, it’s positive.

“The crisis in some ways has brought the club together and galvanised us all.”

The key factor in that improved relationship, Pomlett insists, is communication.

It’s a mantra that he has reiterated time and again, but this interview – as well as his countless radio and TV appearances – are living proof that Pomlett wants to keep the fans up to speed.

“I made it my business, with Stef (Gamble) and Dan (Mole), to make sure that we put communication at the top of our agenda,” he added.

“I felt that was an area where I could make a difference, it’s an area where the club had historically not been as strong as it should have been and was almost reluctant to communicate.

“When we did it was always too tentative and I found that frustrating, so when I took over I decided that needed to improve.

“That is my particular style, whoever replaces me in years to come might have a different view and my predecessor ran the business differently.

“I think when running a football club communication is particularly important so I put that towards the head of the agenda, which is why I’ve done TV, radio and press interviews over the last 12 months.”

Meanwhile, Pomlett has revealed the club are making preparations for the players and more staff to return to work.

The majority of the club’s staff are on furlough, while some have taken temporary pay cuts as the Saddlers come through the crisis.

The players are also on furlough and they will not return to pre-season training until a date has been given for the start of the 2020/21 season, but Pomlett insists the club have the finances under control to accommodate their return.

“Most of our staff are furloughed and we will bring the players back driven by the date of when we’re starting football,” he said.

“We’ll probably bring them back for pre-season training a bit earlier than normal, because they are not match fit. At that point we’d have to un-furlough the players and we’ve budgeted to do that.

“We’ll be bringing staff back in starting July 6, but it will be a skeleton staff that we’ll build up as and when football starts to return.

“It’s an economically driven model, we can’t have footballers coming back in and paying them without football.

“When we bring players back in we also have to test them, so it’s not just the cost to un-furlough them, it’s the cost of coronavirus tests and you’re talking of tens of thousands of pounds a week.

“We have to be really careful about our timing bringing staff and players back, because every week we bring them in earlier than we need to it will cost tens of thousands of pounds.

“It’s a foolish thing to do and we’d jeopardise the economic model that we’ve built.

“But we will bring them back and un-furlough them as and when we need to.”

Work is already underway to make the club’s facilities Covid-19 secure as they target their ‘working assumption’ that football will return by mid-September.

“In the absence of anyone giving a date we have to make a working assumption and if you’re wrong you work as you go along,” Pomlett added.

“On Friday we did a Covid-19 security check to make sure that it’s safe for training to return.

“The players are not back yet but we’re ready for whenever they do come.

“I said let’s make a sensible assumption around September 15 and we’re working towards that date.

“When the government or EFL say we can play, then we’ll adjust the plans accordingly but by then we’ll be Covid secure at the stadium, training ground and offices and be in a pretty good position.”

Pomlett has previously spoken about his five-year plan to rise Walsall through the leagues, but the coronavirus has likely stalled that by a year as they get back on their feet.

“The coronavirus will have certainly delayed it by a year, you cannot ignore what has happened and what is going to happen,” he said.

“In terms of my personal plan for the club, I think it’s realistically delayed by a year and it depends how we come out the other side of it.

“It’s foolish to say that the five year plan is still as it was, we’ll have to evaluate it, but you cannot ignore the impact of not playing football for six months.

“We have to recover from it and it will cause us to re-evaluate plans but I still describe myself as an ambitious pragmatist.

“I am very ambitious about the club and optimistic about next season because we are financially stable with a stable squad with a talented management team.”

The next step for Pomlett and Walsall is to get ready for the 2020/21 season and everything that comes with it. It’s still not known when it will return and whether fans will be able to attend.

For Walsall, Pomlett believes the club could play games without a crowd and make it financially viable, but that not every club could afford it.

“It’s possible, but it depends on putting games on iFollow and TV and having people that are not season ticket holders paying for it,” he said.

“If it’s done well it can generate an income stream. At Walsall, we don’t rely solely on football income, we hold events, we have advertising signs, so our income stream is varied.

“Other clubs don’t have that, so it makes it more viable to open if fans are temporarily excluded.

“We could launch without fans, but I wouldn’t want to. However I would prefer that than no football at all.

“Other chairman might disagree with football returning without fans, their economic model may be different if they don’t have other revenue streams.

“Our stadium capacity is 11,300, so we could make a case of socially distancing with 4,000 fans.

“It’s complicated logistically and people would have to behave but we could do it and other chairman are thinking along the same lines.”