I am generally a happy clapper in terms of how my club has been and is being run but unfortunately my views are changing quite quickly. The policy/plan/system or whatever it is called is causing a lot of ill feeling it seems amongst some die hard supporters and the stubborn/blinkered way in which it is being used is probably causing the most angst. Since first following the club back in 1979 the club squad has always had a mixture of youth and experience and journeymen from the likes of Glavin and Aylott and Barrowclough to Hendrie and Redfearn and Wilkinson. The older players help the younger lads and if the older players have been top quality then the younger lads have players to look up to. Who do our young lads look to in times of need? I feel if things continue the same by the current owners then there will be not much heart and soul remaining at the club..We have been here before you and will be here long after you have gone to play your rich mans game some place else. Things do need to change. But until January we have to make do with what we have however by then i fear we will.be too far adrift for the men in suits to even consider making much needed changes to how the transfer policy is implimented. Rant over.
i am happy with the plan identifying talent and potentially great young players we can improve but these have to be brought into the team with a spine of experienced pros. Without that we are on a hiding to nothing. Add an experienced CH, MF and striker down our spine with young-uns to provide the flare and running and we are a different side. Thing is Stendel highlighted that but either the board didn't listen or they failed in their attempts to sign those experienced heads. However, they can;t have called it the most successful transfer window ever if they had failed to make those 3 signings we desperately needed after allowing the experienced heads walk out of the door with no Plan B.
Butterfield wanted to come back here. The board said he was too old. We were offered Bree on loan. The club said we won't entertain loan signings.
I also think the fans should cut the board some slack - they are trying to do their best I'm sure. Yes they have dropped the ball with the experienced players but I'm sure they too realise that now and will look to address it. Whether they can do anything before January or not though is another matter. If we go down we go down - we'll just go again the season after and fans can go support the team and I'm sure it will be another promotion challenging season. Least we are not going out of the football league like bury have done.
I agree on the loans - why build up other team's players' value. The board are a group of investors - they can see the value in buying stock (young players) to improve and sell on at a profit using the club as a vehicle. Maybe they just need to calibrate their compasses a little more to understand that cant do that without a solid fan base and for that they need a decent winning side - it has to form part of their equations along with fan experience they bang on about. It takes more than a lick of paint and a pop up bar - fans need to have a decent team to come and watch which is the whole point of being a Barnsley FC supporter innit.
Loans are ok to bring our youngsters on . I get that we don’t want to play other teams youngsters to improve them and their value to send them back but these are not the type of loans we want anyway. We need experienced loans , players on the fringe of their clubs first team eg a Matt Mills etc . Players that will add value in knowledge, experience ,nous etc etc to our young squad . To Loan young players is counter productive to what we are doing fair enough but to Loan experience etc adds value to us imo.
That is a BS way the board look at loans. If you bring in the right loan you end up increasing the value of your own players by them looking better, by having a few loans around them that we otherwise wouldn't have due to the transfer fees they would command.
Must confess I hate having loan players. If they work out you are left with the job of replacing them. On the other hand plenty of them I've seen have been a waste of time. The key issue at least for me was the decision to dismantle the defence with barely a whimper. Utterly foolhardy. Running down a contract should have been seen as a necessary evil to help preserve league status.
I dropped on an interview on the radio the other day but because it had already started, I didn't catch the name of the player, but he was clearly an ex footballer. He said he learned almost nothing from coaches over the his years in the game and almost everything from the experienced pros around him. If that's even slightly true, the lack of experience in our side is even more worrying than I thought!
