To be a fan of Walsall Football Club, you learn to not take anything for granted. I, for one, do not sit down to any game anymore and have that feeling we are going to win this match. Not even an FA Cup match at home against Darlington I feel I can sit back, relax and enjoy the game.
I would love to have that feeling of invincibility when I sit down and watch Walsall. A feeling that we go to a match and think we will win this and I will be entertained or know that we can earn a point even if we have an off day.
I became a Walsall fan late in the 1990s, and it is a very very long time since I could watch a match and feel we were comfortable winning with 20 minutes to go. Nowadays, or at least since past Smith era, I sit on the end of my seat deep into stoppage time even if we are leading because you never know where you have a Walsall team now we could go and score one more or let two in and lose the match.
The changes the club made this summer need to progress. The board can’t be satisfied to have a new owner and chairman. The most dangerous for a club is to become satisfied. They need to aim higher and be ambitious without risking the clubs future off course. But at the same point, they can’t panic when things get rough. It will take much hard work, and we will have bumps on the way that slow down our progress. When these bumps come up, we need to analyse and learn from them to get better and better.
The last few weeks or maybe a month and a half I have had a feeling the club has stagnated. The buzz has died a bit, and it feels like we are falling back to the old Walsall again, and everything starts with the results out on the pitch. We need to put defeats into draws and draws to wins to get the buzz back again.
Leigh Pomlett has said he needs at least 5K in the stands to have money to attract the right players. But to get the people to let go of their hard-earned money we need to be entertained and have that feeling we can get something out of the match.
At the moment we are not entertained, even if we lose we want to go from the match feeling we did at least play attractive football that is fun to watch, but the other team was better. Not one single match this season I can say that the other side has been better, but it has been Walsall that has not come up to the standard they should be at this season.
We need to step up a few notches to call us a promotion contender. Promotion from this league has not been a subject this season anyway. However, we still have to play better to give us a solid foundation to grow on till next season when I expect us to push for the league title or at least one of the automatic promotion places.
Consistency is the key. We need to be better. We should be able to win or draw even if we are not up to standard or have an off day. We must be able to control a match and take points when we play bad. Lately, we have gifted away points just like we have done so many seasons before this. I thought the defensive side had been stable, but in the last few matches, we have started to make silly and sloppy defensive mistakes again which have cost us points and see us close to a relegation battle once again.
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