NO DOSH SO DICKIE QUITS SADDLERS

23-04-2008

The departure of Walsall’s Richard Money is a sad day for the club – but it became inevitable when owner Jeff Bonser flogged two of the Saddlers’ prize assets during the January transfer window.

Selling young defenders Scott Dann and Daniel Fox was the football equivalent of running up the white flag in the club’s play-off hopes - at a stroke it killed any realistic chance they had of returning to the Championship.

It wasn’t the loss of two talented youngsters in itself that punctured their balloon – although that didn’t help. Even more important was the signal it sent to their remaining players and staff.

Nothing could have said more eloquently that Walsall are a selling club, with no ambition beyond mere survival.

Star striker Tommy Mooney said as much when he announced his decision to quit the Banks’s Stadium in the summer and head abroad.

There’s nothing wrong with running a tight ship, of course, and those of us who remember Walsall’s brush with extinction in the 1980s know that the club’s continued existence can never be taken for granted.

Bonser and his hard-working commercial director Roy Whalley deserve credit for ensuring that there is a club there to support.

But fans want more than grim stability – we look to the game to give us hope, colour, and excitement. It’s a touch of fantasy at the end of a hard working week.

The lack of optimism around the Banks’s explains why Walsall’s gates remained resolutely low even on the back of last season’s promotion, and with the Championship in sight.