Dean Holden

Walsall have got their nutter back as they chase promotion to the Championship.

A month ago I was wondering if I had a future in football. I’d been out of work since the Oldham job and enjoyed the first two weeks, taking the kids to school and seeing more of my wife. Then I set about getting back into football. I spoke to people I knew and cold called others, asking if I could pop in for a day. I was heartened by the response and spent days with the first teams at Fleetwood, Wigan, Hibs, Barnsley, Blackpool and Port Vale. Managers like Stephen Pressley, Alan Stubbs, Lee Johnson, Neil McDonald, Gary Caldwell and Robert Page were great to me. They let me watch trainings, sit in on team meetings, talk about leadership and strategy.

I also hit the road and watched loads of games. I’d planned to watch Valencia train too – I’m learning Spanish and the pro-licence pushes coaches to learn a language - but I was still unemployed from the one industry I’d ever known. I really did think that I’d be stacking shelves in a supermarket before long, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do.

Then the phone started to ring with offers. Decent ones too. One, from my former club Walsall, to work as a coach until the end of the season appealed.

Good old Walsall, the club that gave me a chance after the death of my daughter. http://www.thenational.ae/sport/football/harsh-realities-for-footballer-dean-holden

The club I’d been part of as a player and which gave me my first job as a coach, where the fans sing about me being a nutter!

I’d watched the lads at Chesterfield a few weeks previous. I probably have a better affinity with fans of Walsall and Chesterfield than any of my previous clubs. After the game, I bumped into Walsall’s coach driver and the goalkeeping coach. They explained that they had a problem. The coach wouldn’t start and they wondered if I could use my mini to jump start it. I called my brother who works with cars and he told me what to so. I wired my car up to the coach and it started. Fans were filming it and it went viral, with people saying ‘Holden helps jump start Walsall’s season’ and stuff like that – it’s not true, the team have been doing really well for most of the season before I arrived.

Now I’m back there, driving down the M6 (when it’s not flooded like this week) and part of a brilliant club where everyone pulls in the same direction. They have a ‘no knobhead’ policy at Walsall and it works. You have to buy into what they, the players and the staff all do. How else can you explain why the club with one of the smallest budgets in League 1 are third from top with two games in hand? The team with the 14^th highest average home crowds of 5,300?

Exactly what is this policy? It means no ego and no excuses, it means hard work and respect. We’re all for one and one for all. Really.

We recently loaned a defender, Matthew Pennington, from Everton, until the end of the season. We’d watched him play for Coventry in 2014-15 and knew what he was like, but we needed more information about him. We called 12 different people, from Sam Allardyce to Joe Royle, to build up a picture of Matthew. Their reports were glowing about him as a person as much as a player. We signed him and he’s exactly what we need.

So now I’m part of a management team with the head coach Jon Whitney, a former player, Walsall physio and assistant. He’s infectious, driven and gets what the club is about because he’s been there so long as he was part of the long term manager Dean Smith’s staff. He only took over this month after Sean O’Driscoll, who’d replaced Smith, lost his job after a couple of months.

I’ll give you an example. We held an open day this week for fans to come and watch us train. It started snowing so we couldn’t train. Other clubs would have called it off, but Jon got all the players in a gym under the stand – and invited the fans in too. It was packed, it was superb. Fans were taking photos and mixing with the players. The chairman, Jeff Bonser, encourages all that and I’m glad to be part of it again, glad to be back in football. I’m about to drive five hours from Salford to Southend to watch them play Sheffield United, our next opponents. The game is on television and I could stay at home with family but it’s far better to scout in person. The television cameras follow the ball, while I’m looking to identify strengths and weaknesses in opponents all over the field.

Jon is coming and Neil Cutler, the best goalkeeping coach I’ve seen. We’re part of the coaching team along with the former Wolves manager John Ward – he’s wise and experienced.

We’ll need all that passion and experience because we’ve got a huge month ahead as we chase promotion, with two games each week. We’ve got matches against Wigan and Fleetwood, clubs who helped me when I was out of the game. Their managers are texting and telling me – in jest - not to use my inside information. And we play against my former club Oldham, too. There’s never a dull moment in this football world, a world I’m delighted to be back in.

-ends-