Floods of urine and years in third tier, are Walsall one of Britiain’s most boring clubs?

ARE Walsall one of Britain’s most boring clubs?

The Saddlers have spent a staggering SEVENTY-FIVE of their 99 EFL seasons in the third tier.

They rarely go up or down.

No other League One team has amassed more points or played more games at that level than the West Midlanders.

And fans have grown restless due to a lack of excitement and are even questioning the leadership of their most successful chairman, Jeff Bonser.

He took over in 1992 and guided them to four seasons in the second tier.

But, for the last 11 years, Walsall have been stuck on the third rung and there are questions that supporters want answered.

The main bone of contention is how Bonser owns the club and Banks’s Stadium as two separate entities.

He owns the club himself but the freehold on the stadium is held by Suffolk Life, a pension firm of which he, his wife, brother and sister-in-law are beneficiaries.

And fans do not understand why the Saddlers pay rent of £440,000 a year  to the pension firm.

Bonser has not conducted media interviews or attended fans’ forums for years.

He “politely declined” to sit down with me — his stock answer to all media and supporter requests — to discuss the issues.

However, chief executive Stefan Gamble did, and he said: “The chairman feels he has done enough talking over the past 27 years. He ends up going over the same ground.

“When the lease was drawn up in 1995, the rent was around £90,000 a season.

“But that rose due to RPI increases and taking into account the landlord investing £2.5million.

“That went towards the building of conferencing suites and a stadium suite.

“The crucial point of this investment — and the rent — is the club gets 100 per cent of the commercial revenue from use of those facilities. Coventry doesn’t get that at the Ricoh. I’ll give an example of how advantageous this is. The owner bought and put up a huge digital signboard — the largest in Europe — outside the stadium, overlooking the M6, so we could make additional advertising revenue.

“Our rent went up £20,000 a year for that but we turn over £500,000 from that sign.

“We generate and keep all the profits from everything we do — whether it be from hiring out our facilities, advertising revenue from the digital sign or holding the weekly Sunday market. We turn over £1.5m from conferences and events.”

Chairman Bonser has not added any RPI increases to the rent since 2010.

Gamble points to the  Saddlers being the only League One club to have recorded a profit for the last 13 seasons — as well as for 25 out of the past 28.