I am aware our dream is to be top of the Premiership, dream over. Now, the feelings I have are confusing, do I want the fantastic Saturday/Tuesday winning 'buzz' that I am enjoying now watching the entertaining and successful football of this season so far, or do I want a return to those dreary painful journeys home of our last Championship season. I know it has to be the Championship but boy have I enjoyed this season. Well done Barnsley FC.
My sincere hope was that under the new ownership we'd be competitive in the Championship. Whether that will actually happen definitely remains to be seen.
The higher up the food chain we are the better but I get no pleasure watching us get beaten regularly by the likes of Norwich, QPR, Ipswich et al. Maybe next season will be different. We will have imported a couple of top ranking players (probably French or German) and we will be competitive again. Like BREXIT, it's all an unknown.
The thing is last year when we came down, we were a club in turmoil. New Owners, passing of previous owner, Manager pushed out and selected Leeds, New Manager who pretended to be a dog in front of the players, with zero tactical nous. We started the season with an entirely new squad with no Championship experience. I think if we went up this year, we'd do reasonably well in the Championship with a little bit of squad improvement. The Championship gets lots a lots of attention about the quality teams, but the vast majority of games I watch I think a lot of the teams are ****. Sheffield United are a decent team, but they haven't splashed the cash around or signed loads of players from their days in this league. We are a young squad, getting better and more experienced. I'd fancy us to cause some problems for most of the teams in the division. We play fast attacking football, with pace and hard work all over the field. We are a club going places, but its important we get promoted this year, otherwise another fire sale ensues.
There's no profit to be made for the owners by being a low end Champ team. We either have to go for it BIG TIME or accept being a yoyo team that's only there to make money by bringing in young players, developing them, then selling on for a profit. As I've said before, lord knows where the fans fit in to any of this.
You've got to look at some of the championship clubs that get similar or smaller gates than us, ie Brentford and Preston and wonder what they do that we don't. I'm pretty sure Brentford had a debt of around 35 million a few years back, so wouldn't want to go down that route. Preston have a wealthy owner but don't chuck money about, having said that, they were able to buy Potts and pay him more money, so maybe that's where we need to be. As Terry Nutkins says, it's quite possible that the bar will be raised should we get back up. Hopefully this will be the springboard to better things.
I would imagine the owners aren't expecting huge profits from owning Barsnley Football Club. They will be happy taking a small profit every year, if all the company's they own do they seem the they make good money. Plus if the club makes a profit they may in the future be able to sell it for a lot more than they got it for. Of course they would like to go straight through to the prem (wouldn't we all) but I sense they will have a much more patient approach than we as fans will.
Well, as I'm now 40 years old I don't get quite as uppity about football as I did when I was a kid. However, if we stay down this season I fully expect that we'll lose 5-6 first teamers in the summer. This is no slight on the owners, I just feel that quite a few players will get offers from the Championship, which we won't be able to turn down, as doing so would get in the way of their careers.
I don’t think mass investment is needed to compete in championship. Last time we played in champ, many times we were the worst of two very bad teams. I really wasn’t impressed with champ last time and can’t believe we didn’t stay up
I'm nervous about not being promoted too. Our squad would be decimated and another rebuild needed. The new team would have to gel quickly as promotion will be expected by the board and fans. I hope if we can call a game off for international call ups we do so instead of playing a weakened team just to get the Sky TV money.
I think this side would comfortably stay up in the championship Could do with a bit more quality in depth adding
I think if we went up, we'd be in a better position than 2016. Back then we had a number of loans as well as 6 or 7 first teamers with only one year left on their contracts. As far as I can tell, we have Moore, Woodrow, Brown, Mowatt signed up to 2021 and an option to extend Dougall to 2021. The worry is that we'd have to start lining up replacements for Pinnock, Lindsay and Thiam given their contracts are up at the end of next season. But the fact we have started to deal in more 3+ year deals and less loans should see us more stable than we were 3 years ago. I think the summer will see one player sold regardless of what division we're in, which will be a fact of life now. If we go down, we'll probably lose 2 or 3, but I'd still expect us to be competing at the top of the league next season. In order for 'the plan' to work, I think the club need to identify a spine of a team to keep long term, and not worry about sell on unless a silly offer (or a good offer from a Premier League club) comes in, and build the team around that. Ideally getting Pinnock, Mowatt and Woodrow on extended deals.
For me it’s team building that is more important , When we went up last time we had players playing for each other , hugging each other when they did something good encouraging each other on a mistake . You could see the camaraderie on the pitch after nearly every game and imo that’s what made them tick . I don’t think any of them have lived up to the billing of their transfer fees or in the case of Watkins etc haven’t lived up to their BFC hype . I know it’s my opinion only but that’s what I think.
