If you want sustained success off the back of unearned largesse, Man City is not far to travel. For us, things will come together every few seasons and then we'll break the team up because 1) we need the money, 2) we can't offer new contracts to the level desired by the player or 3) both. It's rubbish, but them's the facts. All our glory will be fleeting. I renewed my season ticket knowing this. Would I like to see us in the Premier League? Yes. Winning a cup? Yes. Will those things happen? Nope. Yet here we all still are.
Youre absolutely correct...astute handling of our finances is the way to go. However no business on the face of the planet can be sold to its buying public on a bank balance, especially in the entertainment business. I believe you said yourself the most enjoyable thing is when it comes together....i presume you meant promotion and the football we served up rather than perusing the company returns at companies house. I appreciate thats a bit tongue in cheek...but people show up to see winning teams, i dont think our plan short or medium term is not effective in this division....so yes we need to sell more players. I just hope the paying public dont just grow tired of this and stop paying their hard earned because sponsorship monies (despite their promises) have not materialised.
I think where i (and some others on here) differ is in how they spend available money. Money was wasted for eg. in appointing a new manager and coaching staff, failing to get full whack for Pinnock, loss of income/season ticket sales/fans if we go down, money spent on having too large a squad etc etc. Now no organisation is run without error, and there are a lot of good things about BFC (staff willing to go above and beyond are a major asset for eg.) but just breaking even no matter how it's done isn't enough on its own imo. I do agree though that you appreciate the highs so much more as a fan of a club like ours I bet we enjoyed our time in the Prem just as much, if not more than any other club who got promoted.
Agreed. We can stick to the rules/balance sheet in what we do but we need to be prepared to realise that you aren't going to make a profit on all players as a football club. We paid fees for Thiam, Pinillos and Dougall and lost them on a free, so why can't we, instead of paying out fees for young gambles for every player we sign, instead bring in one or two experienced players on short term contracts on Bosmans or loans? Doing this would more likely bring on the less experienced lads to grow in ability and confidence and have us compete at a Championship level more than we currently are in my opinion. We need to bend more sway towards our fortunes on the pitch.
If their model is purely based on buying young and selling for maximum profit then serious money needs to be invested into the scouting/recruitment system. Iv no idea of the current set up and where it stands in relation to other clubs but it's pretty obvious that it's nowhere near the standard required at the moment. As mentioned above we probably spent a fair amount last summer, long contracts etc but the recruitment was very poor.
Part of the reason why our plan is not effective in the Championship is that many owners are willing to put their clubs at risk in order to chase the rewards available in the Premier League, and nowhere else. In fact, many owners are willing to cheat on the already generous allowances available under FFP in order to try to gain an added advantage. Those owners and their clubs should be punished and I will be very disappointed if the three clubs most guilty are not punished this season. I know that we we were Premier League club once, but it would be a miracle if it happened again under current conditions. Back then, many clubs were still rebuilding their grounds after the Hillsborough disaster, and there was a short window of opportunity that coincided with us assembling our best team ever. Covid does offer a new possibilities for us because of our past financial prudence, depending upon how many owners have to pull the plug on their football spending because their other businesses are in trouble, but it is too early to see what all the consequences might be.
Conversely this might be our best opportunity to have a stab at getting back to the Premiership. I think it's dangerous a club not aspiring to get anywhere. I would never support anyone else but I would jack it all in if I thought the club was destined to yoyo between the Championship and League 1. That to me is stagnation and a sure fire way of losing fans to rival clubs.
What many fans do is just look at the reported transfer fees and ignore the effect of wages. Let me illustrate. For young players or players with little experience in our country, I tend to assume that up to 30% of the player's transfer fee is what we will have to find for his annual wage. That wage is within our pay structures and is broadly affordable within the club's pay budgets, although sometimes players have to be loaned out to lessen the burden upon the pay budget. Young and inexperience players will accept lower salaries as an investment towards a future payback in higher wages when they get noticed, and move up the ladder. It is all part of the subtle offer that Barnsley are making to talented youngsters. Come and join us and you will be put in the shop window of first team action. When an offer comes in for you that will increase your earnings significantly, we will not stand in your way if we get a reasonable return on our investment. The discussion with older or experienced players is very much different. They are at the stage of their careers where they need to maximise their earnings. They are not interested in the same sort of offer as might appeal to a young player. They are interested only in what the club is offering to pay them. Immediately, the above annual pay figure increases to 50% or 60% of transfer fee, and it is pointless offering them a long deal because their value is only going to go down. They might make the difference in a generally young team, but it might also be that they damage team spirit, because every player knows just how much more they are being paid, and if they are not performing, that difference will be important. Management in a small football club is not easy or straight forward, and it is important that we do not assume that it is, just because it fits with our ambition to win more games or play at a higher level. When you think that you have a solution, try to imagine why that might not in fact be the case, because if it is obvious, it would have been considered.
In our 130 odd year history, we have spent a grand total of 1 year in the top league. There is undoubtedly a good reason why that is the case.
I see what you're saying, but the fact is, we're reported to be spending fees of around £900k on players who don't look good enough. Say that's on a 4 year contract at £3k per week and you get an expenditure of £1.5m. Instead of just one of those signings, that same money would pay more experienced players on contracts of £7.5k a week on yearly deals. If they're rubbish, we get rid after a year. It's lower risk than the rookie on a long contract. Fair enough, we may not recoup transfer fees for those 4, but having a better chance of staying up and the younger players improving would in the long run outweigh that financially. Not having loan players is another case in point. Look at McBurnie and Barnes now. But for an administrative error, we'd have stayed up with both of them in the team from August. How else would we get players of that quality in without being prepared to invest in loan deals which we won't profit from? I don't agree with your point about unrest re. salaries. A 20-year old on £2k per week would not begrudge an experienced pro earning more than him if he had achieved in the game and was able to guide the younger player and pass on his knowledge. When you're a rookie in a job, you look up to those who have been around the block and don't expect to earn as much as them until you have the same level of establishment in your profession.
You are judging our young players far too early. In my view, and I accept that this is all about opinion, some of the youngsters that we brought in last summer are going to earn us a healthy profit when they have matured and improved, and there is the problem in a nut shell. Some people are judging young players far too early, far too soon in their development plan. In two or three years, those same people will castigate the board for selling too early/too cheap. Your figures are not complete though, are they. You have not included a transfer fee for the experienced player, and on the basis of your other numbers, that is £750k. Furthermore, because you have not include a transfer fee before his contract period terminates, you have not used the net cost for the young players. So, the net cost for each young player over 4 years, assuming an average selling transfer fee of £1.5m, is zero. The net cost for the experienced player is just over £1m per year or a total of £4m. I would have classed both the players mentioned as young players at the time, and I was making a point about loaning experienced players. McBurnie would indeed have been a good permanent acquisition, but that acquisition is no different to the type that we make all the time. The permanent acquisition of Barnes was never an option. He was at Oakwell to pick up experience, and having done that, he returned to Leicester.
The problem surely is that we're signing too many young players at once and expecting them to compete isn't it? We all know they aren't going to bear fruit immediately, but we're effectively a youth team at the moment asking a lot of them and destroying their confidence in the process. I was talking about signing the experienced players on free transfers, hence no transfer fee. My point was, saving money on transfer fees and long contracts gives us more leeway to take short term, low risk moves to bring in more established players. There are plenty of free agents these days. I'm not suggesting we could've signed McBurnie or Barnes permanently. But the point is, refusing to sign ANY loan players or older players on free transfers is a head in the sand policy which seems far too rigid and seems to needlessly value simple cost/profit equations on all of our players rather than looking at the bigger picture and the many factors involved in running a football club.
Spot on. I think the club underestimate the floating supporter. They won't keep selling 11,000 season tickets in League 1. A lot of Barnsley fans are waiting for another dawn to join in on and can quite happily not part with their hard earned if the product on offer is sub standard.
I think even hardy supporters are struggling when it feels like we're a development academy who exist to sell any decent products rather than a football club as you think of it. I certainly struggle to find the same level of enjoyment in watching a team of youths making the same mistakes again and again. One or two players of course, fair enough but when it's a whole team it's excruciating at times.
Then this is where the Better Fan comes in imo. People on here quick to round on people sometimes saying no one is a better fan etc but on these occasions I beg to differ . Fans that SUPPORT through thick and thin . Yes it’s true fans flock to see a successful team etc and won’t watch dross but in times of low downturns etc it’s the fans that keep the club going who attend and buy season tickets to hopefully progress to better times and bigger crowds . These fans get drowned out and sarcastically accused of being better fans when in fact that’s not what’s being implied but they should be recognised imo .
The problem with your assumptions is that you assume a different outcome. Yes, we could have done as you suggest. We could have picked up a more experienced player or two from the free transfer market. However, these players are ones that are considered no longer up to it at that level by their previous clubs. I'm sorry, but it is a big stretch to suggest that such a player could have made a difference had he signed for us. Whether, experienced player A or experience player B would have made a difference is a moot point when no names are being suggested, but to extend that to the anonymous players would have made such a big difference that we would have stayed up is extending the list of co-incidences just too far. As others have pointed out, Stuber has a far better record than Stendel, and a full season of Struber would have seen us safe. Now even that example fails to allow for the period when players were settling in and getting used to their team-mates, but I do think Stendel's systems were too open during his period in charge, and I do think that we would have picked up more points in that first 3 months of the season if we had played a more conservative system, a system that acknowledged the youth and inexperience of the team.
There has hardly been a season when revenue from player transfers has not exceeded revenue from the sale of tickets to supporters. Now I am not making any point here other than to say that fans are not as important to the financial management of the club as are transfer sales.
