Matt Maher: Mat Sadler's Walsall journey a cruel reminder of football's fine margins

Last May, he was moments away from doing just that before an Antoni Sarcevic goal for Bradford in the final seconds of the race for automatic promotion put the seal on one of the most remarkable collapses in football history.

Just to add further pain, Sadler successfully rallied his team for the play-offs, only to suffer the heartbreak of a Wembley defeat in the final.

Two golden chances to etch his name into club folklore, both missed. This season, which saw the Saddlers once again at the top of League Two until Christmas, may count as a third.

Sadler’s sacking this week, with his team having fallen off the pace, is one with which he can have few real complaints. 

There are always mitigating circumstances and the Saddlers’ January transfer dealings are worthy of scrutiny, for the second year running. 

But a return of just 10 points from the last 14 league matches is the type to leave any head coach vulnerable. Just as last year, Sadler has proven incapable of halting a slide. In truth, the decision to part ways felt one which should have been made weeks ago.

At the same time, it is hard not to feel a huge amount of sympathy for a man who came so very, very close to promotion and who got so much right during his near three years at the helm.

Sadler’s ability to build a squad which contained both talent and the right attitude was impressive. 

That is even more so the case this season, considering the hefty emotional blows experienced last spring. Had Sadler led Walsall to promotion this season, it would have been a story equally as remarkable as the collapse which preceded it. What he went through last season would have put many other young managers off the profession for good.   

In the long-term, too, there has been progress, even though right now it might not feel like it. When Sadler initially succeeded Michael Flynn on an interim basis, the main concern was avoiding relegation non-league. Now, frustration centres solely around fading hopes of promotion. Sadler’s trouble was his inability to get over the line.

If nothing else, his Walsall tenure is a reminder of the wafer thin margins which often exist between success and failure and just how cruel professional sport can be.

No matter how good a manager you are, or how much work you do, at some point you will still need the bounce of a ball to go your way. On such random moments do the course of a club’s history frequently rest.

Where, for instance, might Villa be now had referee Anthony Taylor or his assistants spotted Ryan Fredericks’ stamp on Jack Grealish in the first half of the 2018 Championship final?

Playing most of the match against 10-men, you would have fancied Villa to win and claim a promotion which would have avoided the near financial collapse triggered by defeat.

In reality, it would probably only have delayed the nightmare. But by then, there may not have been any Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens to swoop in and save the day and place the club on a course which, just six years later, would see them qualify for the Champions League.

Villa’s route to promotion the following season included a play-off semi-final penalty shoot-out win at Albion, when Tammy Abraham’s winning spot-kick went in off the legs of Baggies goalkeeper Sam Johnstone. An inch or two in the other direction and perhaps Jimmy Shan would now be remembered as the caretaker boss who led Albion to a glorious promotion.

Going back further, one of the greatest days at The Hawthorns this century, that of the 2005 Great Escape, would be remembered very differently had the wonderfully named Charlton defender, Jonathan Fortune, not decided to score one of his 11 career goals at the Valley to send Crystal Palace down instead of Albion.

We’ll never know what would have happened had Igor Balis missed that penalty at Bradford.

Across a season, of course, there are dozens upon dozens of these moments, each no more important than the other. 

It is why the league system remains one of sport’s greatest inventions. Where you end up at the finish is pretty much where you deserve.

Yet in those biggest matches, the ones which generally take place around this time of year, every twist of fate is amplified that much more. 

Ultimately, it comes down to seizing the moment. The winners, generally, are those able to grasp it.

Eddie Howe made the point earlier this week, when talking ahead of Newcastle’s Champions League tie with Barcelona.

“You never know when you are going to be here again,” he said.

Howe talks from experience. When the Magpies lost the Carabao Cup final in 2023, he must have wondered whether that was the closest he would get to ending the club’s long trophy drought.

Two years later, he and the team were back and made no mistake, beating Liverpool to win the club’s first major silverware since the 1950s.

Howe got his second chance and took it. Sadler, like many others, could not.