Interesting article in Sunday’s times about our club

Sorry about it being small

 

could you try and zoom in a bit mate? maybe put it on 2 pics instead of one, thanks

 

Easy enough to read on a phone by just magnifying it. Good read that apart from the author didn't know the owners had sold their share in Nice.

 

I think we should all switch to digital.

 

Yes easy enough to zoom in on the phone. Sunday Times football writers are always good to read even if the odd error creeps in. A good piece though with no patronising tone like some journalists adopt

 

Good read, thanks. I stopped subscribing a couple of years ago. As a counter before stendels automatic promotion season rod little in the Sunday times tipped us for promotion because we had players who could do a well aimed kick at our opponents to kick our way out of the division. I emailed him pointing out the error of this and never got a reply.

 

Hope you're switching to digital fella. Think of the environment unlike the company who send out our matchday programmes in single use plastic instead of a paper envelope.

 

Ironic that the letter behind is about switching to digital.

 

Don’t have a digital phone hardly ever use the one I’ve got.£4 a month contract with Virgin and I still have plenty left at the end of month to roll over.

 

Hospital appointment for flu jab.

 

Where is it mate? I bought a copy yesterday and can’t see it in the sports section.

 

Sorry mate just asked the wife it’s her paper it’s in today’s times my fault.

 

Copied and pasted from the digital site - link

Barnsley’s late win against Nottingham Forest on Saturday made it four wins and four clean sheets from his first five games for Valérien Ismaël, the club’s new head coach, who is already causing a ripple of excitement around Oakwell. Yet pan out for a moment, and the ease with which the Frenchman has settled in south Yorkshire contains a familiar thread of logic.

Regular readers of this column may remember a past visit to Oakwell, in August 2018, when the club’s new owners, Chien Lee and Paul Conway, had committed to a style of play — counter-pressing — that would filter throughout every level of the club. Daniel Stendel, who led Barnsley to automatic promotion from League One ten months later, became the first appointment influenced by that central tenet and I will admit to there being a whiff of scepticism in that report.

Then, last November, Gerhard Struber replaced Stendel in no small part for his shared commitment to gegenpressing — and the Austrian oversaw the greatest of great escapes, in the final throes of the season.

Stendel and Struber had experience developing young players and fewer than 50 games as a first-team head coach under their belts: Struber with Leifering and Wolfsberger in Austria; Stendel with Hanover in Germany.

When Struber was headhunted by New York Red Bulls last month, Ismaël became Barnsley’s third coach with German or Austrian pedigree in 2½ years. As with his predecessors, Ismaël cut his teeth coaching German second teams, in his case Hanover and Wolfsburg. He, too, had limited experience as a head coach, including turbulent spells with Nürnburg, Wolfsburg and the Greek club Appollon Smyrnis.

A successful season with the Austrian club LASK, whom he led to the last 16 of the Europa League last season, ended with his surprise sacking but Barnsley once again saw value where others may not. When Ismaël arrived he said: “Barnsley want to play my way of football, I believe in this way – high-pressing, intensity, a vertical game,” and found a squad of players already familiar with many of his principles.

In a division afflicted by panicked thinking and short-termism, that Barnsley have a well-defined blueprint is surely admirable. They, of course, are a club among whose investors is Billy Beane, the former baseball player behind the “Moneyball” concept of recruitment based on statistical data.

The near three-year tenure of Lee and Conway, who also co-own the Ligue 1 club Nice, has not been without its errors of judgment but one thing they cannot be accused of is a lack of forward-thinking.

Ismaël, 45, will be familiar to supporters of Crystal Palace, for whom he became the club’s £2.75 million record signing from Strasbourg in 1998. A tumultuous ten months at Selhurst Park — during which he played for five managers: Steve Coppell, Attilio Lombardo, Ron Noades, Ray Lewington and Terry Venables — is not one he reflects upon fondly.

His fearsome reputation as a player, though, appears not to have left him as a coach. Last week Alex Mowatt, the Yorkshire-born Barnsley captain, described Ismaël as a “big scary lad”.

“I was a centre back,” Ismaël said. “When I played against Wimbledon, against Vinnie Jones, you need to be scary! I’m a kind guy, though.”

His impact is undeniable. Last season it was not until that thrilling denouement at Brentford on the final day that Barnsley averted a third Championship relegation in seven seasons.

The addition to the youngest squad in the division of the 30-year-old defender Michael Sollbauer proved pivotal in January, while the loan signing of Matty James, the 29-year-old Leicester City midfielder, points to a new streak of pragmatism in the club’s recruitment model.

An entertaining encounter on Saturday was settled in the final five minutes thanks to a thumping shot from Callum Styles, a richly promising 20-year-old left wing back plucked from Bury two years ago, and a second from the striker Cauley Woodrow, whose reputation continues to blossom.

Styles referenced the players “togetherness and mentality”, the detail of Ismaël’s game plans and new “triggers” in the team’s pressing, which remains among the most intense and effective in the division.

“It’s a dream,” Ismaël said of his start at Oakwell. But, more than anything, this is the result of a clear plan.

 

He is a Miwwaw fan after all. Seen him a few times over the years in one of our local parks kicking about with his kid. Well, he lets his kid run around him with a football while he has a smoke.