This with bells on^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Or ill advised.... There seems to be one or two at the club who... like things staged managed.. is it their job or a self appointed job.?
As I said yesterday, if Marc wanted to stay, he tells Birmingham City that, and he stays. Nevertheless, realism does extend to a logical conclusion. The Championship is full of clubs who can easily outspend us. They are intent on getting promotion by outspending every other club in the division. How can we possibly compete on that basis? We have to have a plan that allows us to compete on a different basis. That plan is to find players before those clubs become interested in them. That is still possible because those clubs are interested only in the finished product. Their fans are not interested in patience, they are not interested in investing in potential and nurturing it. They are interested in NOW. If we allow ourselves to be tempted into the same strategy, we will see that we can afford only the odd individual who becomes frustrated because the rest are not at his standard. The game is about the team and not individuals. An odd one out fails to blend in with the team, his team-mates resent him because he is being paid more. The team suffers. Our strategy has worked because of a siege mentality, an us against the odds mentality, a desire to prove the world wrong. Our coaching staff work on that, they use it to motivate the players to be better than they actually are. We get results that we ought not to be getting because of that, and when our players leave, many of them fail to live up to the standards that they achieved at Barnsley because of it. I do not say that is always going to work. It isn't. But what alternative do we have. Throw away the policy that has brought us success in favour of a policy that is unlikely to, and spend the surpluses generated by that successful policy on pay increases for the few. I do not think so. There is no point in doing things in the same way as others do it. We do have the resources or the security of future income. We simply have to do things in a different way, and you are right that it means we have to cash in on our players when the time is right. Personally, I do not mind that. I am much more emotionally attached to my club than I am to any individual employed by the club. If we are careful, the club will be here for a lifetime, but no individual will be. To my mind, being careful means that we have a policy and framework that allow that to happen, and allow us to compete at a level that is not justified by our financial resources or our base level of support.
It doesn't matter if you find the best young players if you sell them again to your rivals. All you have done is scouted for them and charged them a large fee for doing so. It hasn't improved your team one bit, it has just improved your bank balance and improved the teams of your rivals making your job harder and harder each time you do it. Instead of playing with Sam winnall, mark Roberts and Conor hourihane we are now playing against them. I fail to see how in anyone's mind that can be improving our chances of championship survival or even championship success. I'll tell you what I think the plan is. I think it is to bank bank bank and sell off all the assets until we we inevitably get relegated back to where our leadership feel we currently should be but now with a large sum of money capable of underwriting the inevitable losses for several years. That is what I think the true plan is. Build up a big enough pile of cash to prop us up in league one where we can be mid table
But what if the club approaches the successful player's agent and says we would like to start contract negotiations, and the successful player's agent says that his client would prefer to let his contract run down and see what is available later. I do not wish to be in any way offensive, but I think that it is naïve if you do not understand that a player's agent will have a good idea of the value of his client in the wider market place. He will know what the Barnsley FC wages structure is, and he will know that Barnsley are limited in the offers they can make by that wages structure. Going beyond that wages structure puts an individual player at odds with his team mates and destroys the team ethic, so the club would not want to do that even if they thought that it could be done within their current finances. Frankly, the only way out of the conundrum is to sell. The player get what he wants (a very large increase in wages) and the club gets what they want (compensation for their time and effort developing the player). Everyone goes away happy unless someone start chattering on a public forum.
If they offer a player the best terms they can and the player turns it down how does that put us in a worse position than if we didn't bother to offer one? The result is the same
I do not disagree that we need to find a way of financing the losses that we will surely make on trading. Perhaps you do not understand, but trading at a loss equates indirectly spending more cash than you have coming in and eventually to needing a source for obtaining more cash. You simply cannot go on for ever making losses without having to find more money. All the plans that those against the current policy put forward involve spending more money and not identifying a source for the financing of the subsequent losses. It is just not good enough to say that we currently have substantial financial resources. That money will quickly disappear and you have to be able to say how you will continue financing the trading losses when it does, or your plan is without foundations in fact.
Roberts and Hourihane have both publicly said they would have welcomed an offer. Sent from my iPad using Barnsley FC BBS Fan Forum mobile app
I imagine 2 conversations. Like you, neither based on fact, but on the assumption he was on a couple of k a week BFC board member 1: We should be talking to Robbo, what do we reckon? #2: We've turned him into a Prem defender, he'll probs be after Hourihane and Winnall wages #1: Aye, probably right. Next item on the agenda ........ Robbo mam: Have they offered you a new contract? Robbo: Not yet Mum, it was up for discussion at the board meeting. Mam: Do you want to stay? Robbo: Course I do, but I need a bit of a bump. Meanwhile along comes an offer from Brum. Robbo gets an attractive contract, and one that the club fully expected him to get. But which they couldn't offer. Could they have offered him some middle ground? Aye. Would we have been guarantee a play off push? No. Would he have any resale value after? Debateable. Neither party was wrong or right. It could have been handled better. And it shouldn't have been played out in public. Sent from my SM-T800 using Tapatalk
For years 'fans' used to say barnsley would never get in the top league because we couldnt afford to go up. Then we went up and rendered that saying useless. Now your saying barnsley doesn't want to be in the championship and would rather be relegated back to league 1 ? As the kids would say LOL. ROFL,PMSL etc etc
The player is your employee. Of course you can offer a new contract. He may and probably will choose to reject it but what on earth makes you think that there is something stopping you from OFFERING a contract to an employee?
No I'm not saying that at all. I am sure that Patrick cryne would rather us be in the champions league. What I am saying is that I believe we are planning for being in league one because the owner and board believe it is where we should be financially and they feel there is an inevitability about it. Does planning for life after an expected relegation mean that you are hoping to be relegated? I don't think it does
Does the fact that they have said something make any difference? When they leave, they have no reason to sour a previous relationship with the fans. We could all see how Winnall was treated on his last visit to Oakwell. Is there any point in risking a similar treatment. Look, do not like to be debating on the basis of what I think another person's motive is for doing something, or what they might really think. I am much happier on logic and reality, and logically Marc Roberts and Conor Hourihane could have turned down any move that they did not want. That is the bottom line.
This might not be the most popular of opinions but here goes. I believe that the club do not want to sign players on extended deals, the plan is to sell for maximum profit at a given time. Had they not sold Roberts and offered him a deal, the next recruit would not be here. As a fan I would have loved Roberts to have signed an extension but his stock was high so he was moved on. The club messed up with scowen, Marley Conor and James but they seem to be trying to rectify that with the three year deals they are giving the new recruits, they have no intention of having these players here for three years in my opinion, it just gives us more of a premium when they are sold next year or the year after. The only reason Davies signed an extension was because the club feels he has not reached his full potential yet in terms of how much we can get for him. Maybe at the end of this coming season, if he performs, he will be sold. Expect a goalkeeper to sign in January if we are looking safe, because Davies will be gone in the summer. Its just the way it goes with the plan.
Players have agents to advise them. Any player would expect the club to negotiate with his agent and not with him.