I disagree.that the club is rotten to the core. The core staff arent, a lot of the players weren't last season. Losing so many key personel has been disastrous, but the problems have come from the owners and the CEO.
We could try not buying so many players. We've a full team out on loan. Not buying so many Austrians would be another piece of advice I'd offer the recruitment team. And not buying so much crap. But my main problem with this model is that it eschews any player without potential resale value. There are literally thousands of affordable players in the second half of their 20s or even early 30s who would improve the team and help bring on some of our younger players. You couldn't ask for a better example than Sol. We've done it once, never to be repeated. There isn't only one way, and the current model is garbage. And it burns through money. As I said dozens of times during PC's tenure when he forever brought up how he was having to fund the club: You're in charge, you write the cheques, stop bloody spending so much! And I say it again now. It isn't difficult to balance the books. It just isn't. You just don't spend any more than you make. But you have to have the will to do that and no one ever has.
It's the way the club has always operated more or less. In today's landscape spending no more than we have means accepting being a yo yo club between levels two and three with longer spells in tier three than we've become accustomed to. That can be alleviated by astute management of the club by doing the things you suggest, being more flexible. Unfortunately this lot barely know the meaning of the word. They nearly got us relegated two years ago through sheer wilful insistence on the youth and nothing but youth mantra. This season they've succeeded in self destruction. And they don't care and can't even be arsed to show their faces.
Don't all roads lead back to the Cryne family? They either did lots of research on the 80% and decided they would be good for us or sold to them just because they agreed on the fee they wanted. Either way if it wasn't for them the big majority of the club wouldn't be owned by charlatans.
You realise that Patrick cryne was dying right? He was in a desperate rush to sell the club so that it had owners before he died. I think he can be a bit excused for not spending 3 years researching them first. Also if you're going down that route don't all roads lead to John Dennis? He took us into admin which led to Peter Doyle saving us which led to Patrick buying us which led to Conway and co buying us etc. There's only you could manage to blame a man who died years ago for the actions of someone now
I think what we call agree on is that there have incredible levels of incompetence right across the club. There isn't a single department at the club that hasn't fu cked up in some spectacular fashion over the last year. Right from board level, to catering and stewarding and everything in between, it's been bottom-of-the-barrel stuff all year.
it seems obvious for all to see, that their experiment in British football has failed miserably. they clearly don't give a fk about this part of their portfolio, as their focus now shifts to Europe. the hope is that they chalk fk on it and bail out. the fear is though, that we no longer have people who care about the club, so we could end up with anyone.
Football clubs used to be owned by local business men. Men who like being in secret clubs and like to know things you don't know. It's the mentality that still runs through the FA and why it's such a closed shop. Like the Masons but with grass. It's hugely outdated. But these local business men did support their local club and were prepared to offset the odd losses here and there. Some of these local businessmen started becoming massively wealthy and rather than offset a few losses proactively funded the club. Blackburn won the Premier League. These very wealthy businessmen also loved their local club. So just being a big club wasn't enough to bring success, you needed investment. So we saw even richer owners coming from abroad. They weren't buying their local club, but they were buying a club they wanted to win games and trophies which would return prestige. We haven't got that. We don't have local business men sitting in the directors box as frustrated with one of the Callum's as the rest of us. We don't have a rich bloke from Russia kicking every ball. No one who owns us watches us because they don't care. Winning football matches doesn't matter. It's an investment to make money, not a passion. We have no chance under this kind of operation.
I agree with you to a certain degree, it has been a shambles across the board this season, and it's going to take a lot of fixing. But I can't level blame at the catering staff or stewards etc. They're hamstrung by the poor decision making coming from above them. When observing them, you wonder how much or how little training they've actually had. That's not their fault. It ultimately goes back to whoever makes decisions on the day to day running of the club. Whether that was Conway during the summer, or Khaled now.
One of the reasons I have been recording the 2021 Accounts as they are published is to show how unfair the Championship is. Frankly, it is hard to compete on the field if other teams are spending up to 4 times as much as your club is, in wages. That spending is bound to attract better players, and more of them so that injuries do not have the same effect on the quality of the team that you can field as at Barnsley can. Yes there are teams that have similar pay budgets, but then it becomes a function of how lucky you are. Last season, we went through the season with practically no injuries. The team was picked from the same basic squad every week. This season has been totally different, and if you want to count the injured players, who could not play on Saturday, you will find that is true even now. No-one likes relegation, but I do not like witch hunts either. Unless you have a different way of running the business, and you start this analysis by telling me how we can compete, you are not facing up to the new problems. Our strategy means that we have to recruit players before others recognise their talent and snap them up first. That is becoming increasingly difficult as the road to Europe has been narrowed by our departure from the EU and teams have been much more aware of the value of their players in the UK. It has become far harder to compete with teams willing to spend more, far harder to stay up with the teams in the Championship who have owners willing to pour money into them. We do not have such owners, but my analysis of the 2021 accounts shows just how deeply many teams have been affected by COVID, and just how desperately some of them are hanging on in spite of huge losses. The Championship is a mess and something is bound to happen soon with many of those with owners who are becoming sick of spending money just to keep their team competitive and with their head above water. Unless you take into account the spending of other teams and their Balance Sheets, you cannot make any valid long term comparison with Barnsley. You really can't!
Absolutely agree. Under the prevailing conditions in english football it's extremely difficult to compete in this league. Harder than it ever was and some seasons we'd simply be up against it no atter what. I've always accepted that. This season, however, should never have been one of those seasons. This season we should comfortably stayed up. We didn't because of sheer negligence, intansigence and incompetence. We relegated ourselves. And that's what is so annoying and unforgivable.
Their model isn’t working because they keep making rank bad decisions. For a club with such a low budget, we seem to spend transfer fees on a hell of a lot of players. Was it 6m that we forked out in 19/20? And the only player that was ready for this level at the time of signing was, funnily enough the most experienced player. Doubtful that any fees for Andersen and Collins will offset losses for Odour, Halme, Schmidt and Thomas. We seem to disregard our academy, and the free transfer market. Which will ultimately benefit other teams as players like Marty Wolfe becomes a free agent, while we give Burnley cash for a player that is a similar age and not as good. It would appear that the bulk of the bad decisions seems to happen during the summers of Conway, costing a fair chunk of that 12m, along with covid and relegation in 2018.
2020/21 season Accounts Filed so far. Team | League | Payroll Cost (£m) Barnsley | Champ | 14.4 Blackburn R | Champ | 27.6 Blackpool | Lg2 | 8.2 Bournemouth | Champ | 57.4 Bristol C | Champ | 30.3 Coventry C | Champ | 13.2 Cardiff C | Champ | 33.5 Derby C | Champ | In Admin Huddersfield T | Champ | 24.6 Hull C | Lg2 | 8.4 Fulham | Prem | 115.9 Luton T | Champ | 14.1 Middlesbrough | Champ | 27.0 Millwall | Champ | 20.8 Notts Forest | Champ | 37.2 Peterborough U | Lg2 | 7.0 Preston NE | Champ | 23.4 QPR | Champ | 24.1 Reading | Champ | 32.2 Sheffield U | Prem | 56.5 Stoke C | Champ | 47.9 Birmingham City, Swansea City and West Brom are yet to file their 2020/21 Accounts. Barnsley finished 5th in 20/21, and yet only 2 of the teams listed as Championship teams had lower pay costs (Coventry C and Luton T). We were lucky with injuries and we had a coach who matched his system of play to the strengths of the available players better than the current manager or his predecessor.
Loko the tyke you keep saying the signings were bad. I don't agree with that. The only BAD signing at the time was Davante Cole who I was fuming with. It was an awful signing and an awful away to announce it from the media but the less said about them the better. I spoke to an agent a couple of days before the signing of Oulare. He said the signing was coming and said it was a good one. He also said the squad should be a mid-table at least. That agent represents Brad Collins David Bremang Tomas kalinauskas ..... plus, others and Toby Sibbick. Talent wise it was a good summer. We see that with EVERY player signed. Confidence and team selection can't be pinned on a guy that isn’t in the Uk once a month. You have to expect those at the club taking money out of it each month to take responsibility and see those problems. Why don't we have simple fitness data for the summer. Chris Sedgwick and Vicky Stevens were still at the club over the summer. Shouldn't they have realised? What are the others doing and bringing to the table. Neerav Parekh apart from he manages family investments and went to school in the Uk we haven't heard a peep from him. James Cryne. I was listening to a former Manchester grammar school pupil recently like James and he didn't and doesn't like doing media and wants the boxers to speak but at the end of the day he said he had to bite down and face up. Speak to the media and now he's getting better. That person Ben Shalom
there is a lot wrong in our club. I don't believe it's rotten to the core as there are some great people doing their best at the club. However a few key people, the ones who make the main decisions are the absolutely fundamental to the issues we have. You could even narrow it down to one. Change that and give the core of people at the club the chance and we could get back to our best and the fans would get back behind the club. I strongly believe and have on occasions listed these, that there is a growing number of issues. Doing nothing can often be worse than doing the wrong thing. The longer it goes the harder it will be to restore fans trust, develop an infrastructure and game day experience that's enjoyable and fun, and give us an on field squad that entertains, gives there all and is competitive in the championship. I didn't sign up to see a club starved of ambition and desire and to see the minimum level of business decisions take precedence over football. I don't believe the Crynes gave me that.
