Might Walsall be heading for The Choke of the Season?

Something strange is happening at the top of League Two. What on earth has happened to Walsall? Why are the archetypal third tier club stalling in their attempts to get back there?

They thought it was all over, until it wasn’t. Exactly two months ago yesterday, Walsall beat Milton Keynes 4-2 at the Bescot Stadium. It was their ninth win in a row, and it left them 12 points clear at the top of League Two and 15 from fourth place and the playoffs. If there was to be found a title race in England that was even more decided than the Premier League title race, it was here.

But since then they’ve won just two out of twelve league matches, and they’ve failed to win any of their last five. And accordingly, that once-chasmous gap at the top of League Two has also shrunk. They’re now just three points clear of Bradford City at the top of the table, and only six points separate them from Wimbledon and Doncaster Rovers, in third and fourth place respectively. And the injury list has grown too, with five players currently out injured.

There’s an argument to be made that promotion at the end of this season would see the club returning to their ‘natural’ level. This is Walsall’s sixth consecutive season in the fourth tier, their longest since four tiers of League football have existed. It is reasonable to say that they are not really a ‘League Two club’. They are, it might be argued, the typical Third Division club. There could, perhaps, be none more Third Division.

Walsall joined the Third Division North in 1921 and stayed at that level—being a Midlands club, they played in both the North & South Divisions while those divisions existed—before being placed into the Fourth Division when regionalisation of the bottom two divisions ended in 1958. They shot to two successive promotions from 1960 on but only lasted two seasons in the Second Division before, as if by gravitational pull, descending back to the Third Division in 1963.

And there they stayed. Boy, have they stayed. In an entire League history stretching back 104 years, Walsall have only spent 22 seasons outside the third tier and of those, only seven came in the entire first seven decades. But then again, more than a quarter of them have been consecutive over the last six seasons. And it’s hardly those these have been particularly happy seasons, either. Since their last relegation from League One in 2019 they haven’t finished higher than 11th, going as low as 19th in 2021.

All of this raises questions over the way that the club is being run. American sports investment firm Trivela Group LLC purchased a majority shareholding in the club in 2022, and the way in which the club has been run has certainly changed since then. Long-time owner Jeff Bonser left the club in 2019, with his 76% shareholding in the club being purchased by another board member, Leigh Pomlett.

But in 2022 Pomlett sold a 51% of the shareholding in the club to Trivela Group LLC, a sports investment firm based in Birmingham, Alabama, USA. Pomlett is still at the club as co-chairman, though he was joined as co-chairman Benjamin Boycott, with Ben Sadler joining as CEO in May 2024. Sadler had previously been at Morecambe, where he had been highly regarded by supporters.

But since then, the club’s finances have taken a turn for the worse. In February 2023 the club reported a loss of £742,000 to the year ending May 2022. This was explained at the time as being the result of increased costs as a result of the pandemic and the following year the club managed to balance their books, reporting a profit of £11,000. But the accounts for the 2023/24 season, released at the start of this year, showed a loss of £1.783m. This has been explained as capital investment into the club, but the accounts do also show an increase in costs and a reduction in revenue, which is… suboptimal.

Attendances have been a bit of a mixed bag. Like many other clubs lower down the EFL, attendances have spiked upwards since the pandemic. The average for the last full season before the pandemic (when they were relegated from League One) was 4,927. This had grown to 5,618 by the end of last season, a pretty decent number considering that the club finished that season 11th in League Two.

But this season hasn’t seen a huge increase, even though form until the last couple of months had been excellent. This season’s average currently sits at 5,927, a 20% increase on six years ago but only a modest increase of just over 300 on last season. They’re the sort of numbers that make you start to wonder whether Walsall might be hitting a glass ceiling in terms of attendances.

It is certainly fair to say that the EFL’s streaming deal could be having an impact here. Two Tuesday night matches in October saw crowds of under 5,000, and even though they’ve been above the season average since the new year it is notable that another Tuesday night match against Gillingham in February attracted a crowd 10% lower than their next two Saturday home matches.

The recent decline of the football club has in some respect mirrored the decline of the area in which it is situated. The issues that the borough has had have been long-reported on. Confirmation of a regeneration project for the town centre may improve the fortunes of the town somewhat through bringing in new jobs, but will it be enough to lift the whole area? This borough is, after all, a big one, rubbing up against Wolverhampton in one direction and spreading out into the countryside in the other in Aldridge.

But Walsall still have an opportunity to set things right again, though they’ll need to regain their nerve to do so. They travel to Gillingham for their next match despite having had six players called up for international duty, but it’s the week after that which may prove to be the pivotal one in their season. A week on Saturday they’re at home to third-placed Wimbledon. The following Tuesday they travel to fourth-placed Doncaster, and the Saturday after that they’re at home to Port Vale, who are in sixth place but themselves are only two points off an automatic promotion place.

Come out of those three fixtures with three wins and they could find their position at the top of the table to have been strengthened again. But lose them and they could be out of the automatic promotion places for the first time since September. But it’s not all bad news, because end of season nerves aren’t only getting to them.

Bradford City, who are second, had built up a head of steam over the last couple of months, but the yips are even getting to them. They’d had a run of six wins and a draw from their previous seven matches, but have lost their last two successive matches, 1-0 defeats to Gillingham and Tranmere Rovers, who are 19th and 22nd in the table. And this applies to almost everybody at the top of League Two. Wimbledon have lost three of their last five. Doncaster have failed to win their last three. Notts County and Port Vale have both only won one of their last five.

So if Walsall are choking this season, they’re not the only ones to be doing so. Nerves and injuries seem to be getting to everybody at the top of League Two, to some extent or another. But the ultimate fact remains the same. If Walsall are to regain their place as the most Third Division club of all they need to get that composure back and start building a head of steam as the season comes into its final straits, picking up the wins required to get them over the line.

The good news for them is that everyone else is showing signs of losing their heads a little too. They’re not alone in this, and no-one will care about any dips in form if they can rediscover some form. And it’s certainly true to say that the archetypal Third Division club have been looking more like one this season than they have at any point since their relegation to a division below their station six years ago. All they need to do is get over that line. If only life were always that simple, eh?