Minority Report 2019-20 v Preston North End

Well, I glad you got that lot off your chest, and I hope you feel better for it. Unfortunately, without number and names, it is just more shouting at the moon. We signed 12 players over the summer and we sold 3, with another couple let go on free transfer, so you just wanted to replace the guys that we sold. The guys we sold were sold because they did not want to stay. They did not want to stay because they thought that they could make more money elsewhere. If we sign players for exactly the same money as we got for those who left, it does not cost us the same wages as we were paying the guys who departed. It cost us the same wages as those guys are getting at their new clubs, that is, the same money that we could not afford previously. That is the unfortunate economics of football.

I know that you have a huge ego, but what makes you think that you can negotiate transfer fees better than the professionals.

If a player is coming out on loan, there is a reason. If you do not believe me, just look at the players that we have loaned out, and ask yourself why. There is no doubt that the older players that you describe are sometimes available. They might be getting over an injury, they might be getting towards the end of their careers and can no longer perform at the level they have done. There are other reasons, but there is always a reason, and some of those reasons are not a loan recommendation. Your post suggests that there are lots of players that are just right for us, but in practice, there are not. Most players of the quality we would want are playing in the first teams of Championship clubs already, or close enough to the first team of a Premier League club to make a move to the backwaters of Barnsley unattractive. Then of course, there is the loan fee, and the players existing wage. Most clubs would want enough of a loan fee to reimburse them for the part of the original transfer fee paid represented by the loan period, but that is not the kicker. A club loaning out a player will only pay part of the players wage if they see something in it for them (eg the club loaning in the player will be getting the player fit after injury). If the benefit is heavily weighted towards the club loaning in the player, then the club loaning in the player would be expected to pay a high proportion of the player's wages. This is going to put us right out of many of the deals that you describe. At the end of the day, our owners say they do not like loans because someone else benefits for the time that our coaching staff spend with the player. I guess that applies less with the type of player that you describe, but that is offset by the cost of the loan. My guess is that these things are not as straight forward as you describe.

We are not gambling that Birmingham City or Sheffield Wednesday will receive points deductions. That would indeed be silly. We are gambling that if we are relegated, we will be able to hold onto the majority of our players, and that we will return to the Championship better able to compete in the bear-pit next time.

 

The problem is not you not changing direction. It’s those in charge not changing direction, that’s the problem. Before you say it, I have indeed read your Financial Report, and I guess at least some of your analysis may be correct. Unfortunately, once you take hope and aspiration away you are robbing supporters of most of the raison d’etre for supporting a club like ours (even if those hopes are invariably forlorn) I’m probably of similar vintage to you, and have therefore also lived, for more seasons than I care to remember, through the ups, and mostly downs, involved in following Barnsley Football Club. Yet I cannot remember a time when I felt as dispirited as I currently do. Reality has certainly dawned. We cannot compete at our current level and, as things stand, with the current policies in place, there is absolutely no prospect of us being able to do so.

 

I do not think that our approach is scatter gun. I do not think that if you spend the money that we are reputedly spending on analysis tools, and specialist football analysts, and then go through the exhaustive process of reducing the numbers of possibles to just 3 probables, who you watch in live play before you begin negotiations, first with the players club, and then with the player and his agent, that the process is scatter gun. It clearly anything but.

 

I will make no bones about this. The Championship is the financial wild west. If the club allowed itself to be drawn in, it would inevitably lead to administration and closure. The is no way that we as fans should encourage that process to happen. I have had one taste of Administration, and I do not want another. That means that our finances must remain under tight control. What happens to the rest is up to them, but that is something I will not compromise upon.

 

Scatter gun or not, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Out of interest, which of the players signed do you believe to be living up to the recruitment process?

 

5 wins from 29 suggests it maybe is, just a teeny-tiny bit, scattergunesque. Either that or the scouting is dreadful

 

Red Rain
We've had our disagreements but in this thread, your initial report and your subequent responses are like a calming wind in a sea of madness.
For all the logic and reasoning you put out there I dont think the majority on here will ever come over to your way of thinking.
It is the way of the world it seems.
Preach patience and what follows is impatience.
Suggest supporting the players and what follows is openly destructive criticism of young footballers still in development.
Point out the inequity of FFP and what follows is denial.
Offer up the thought that if we go down we will come back stronger and what follows is that we're not good enough.
Point out that we dont have the cash to throw around and that the players who left in the summer actually didnt want to stay and what follows is "the board don't care".
Your 50 + years of supporting the club breeds a loyalty that many won't understand.
It's all a bit sad really.
For what it's worth, I my opinion I think we will stay up. 50 points should do it. 26 to get. 17 matches. win 7 draw 5 and lose 5.
for all the criticism these lads get, I believe we do have the ability with this better management team, to do it.
Keep at it Red Rain.

 

There is no doubt that we have too many youngsters to be competitive in the Championship, and as I have said over and over again, the problem is that too many of them are outside their current comfort zones, and the result is error. However, individually and as a group there is hope, and I would be very surprised if in12 months more people than me do not think so.

 

We have been in administration once in our history. Largely caused by the ITV Digital debacle, exacerbated by a diverse shareholder structure that effectively prevented investment. The club had a relatively modest long-term debt and low current liabilities. My understanding is that Cryne wanted to inject capital at the time but insisted, understandably, on changing the ownership structure. John Dennis presumably could not see how this could be achieved, or was unwilling to do so. Administration made it happen anyway, and it was only the unfortunate involvement of a certain ex-councillor that delayed Cryne taking ownership (and having to deal with a significantly increased debt in the process). So, while none of us would wish to repeat the experience, using the once-in-120 years administration experience as a reason not to pursue a recruitment strategy that may have given us a chance of finishing outside the relegation places is pushing it a bit. In my humble opinion.

 

Well I'm glad you got that off your chest, and I know you have a huge ego.

It is not my job to find these players, as suggested by another posted on this thread. But the fact is that they are there. I am also aware that this does not always work - for every Kevin Long there is a Matt Mills. And for every Matty James there is a David Fox. But experienced players who want to play football at Championship level are certainly available. As we will see in the coming weeks, bottom half premier league and championship players will go on loan. Like Malik Wilks for example.

To even suggest that what we are doing is correct is naive at best, and purely arrogant at worst. But judging by your own ego (calling your own threads Minority Report is a perfect example of this) you will not see this.

As many posters have said on here whilst we are blue in the face, it was not the selling of players this summer that was the issue, it was replacing them with players who clearly are not ready for Championship football.

Answer me these 2 questions.

- Are you happy with this summer's recruitment?

- Do you believe we will ever become an established Championship Club whilst utilising the current Plan?

 

Thank you for your kind words. I was stating to feel a bit like Mads Andersen must be feeling today, until your kind comments.

 

And 12 months further on?

 

So do you think the owners knew that the recruitment process would lead to us having too many players who were outside their comfort zone? Or were they just hoping for the best?

 

If it isn't scattergun, then it's simply poor then.

Which of our summer signings (most successful transfer window ever....) is of Championship quality?

Radlinger? No.
Diaby? No.
Anderson? No.
Bahre? No.
Schmidt? No
Oduor? Appears to be.
Thomas? Jury out
Chaplin? Yes
Sibbick? No
Wilks? No
Ludevig? Too early to tell
Halme? Jury out
Collins? Jury out.

So I would say we've made one very good signing, one very promising left sided player, 3 young players who '"could" step up, and 8 duds.

I'd take a scattergun approach to a 12% hit rate.

 

If we go down we will be an average league 1 side with subsequent losses of key players, Woodrow, Mowatt, Chaplin and Brown.
We will have regressed as a team from the previous relegation from the championship as the squad will just not be as good. This will be purely down to the current owners of Barnsley FC who have properly ‘cake and arsed’ our chances of championship survival but whom suggested from the off, that their aim was to reconsolidate in the championship then build for a push upwards season on season.
None of this is happening or I’d wager, will ever happen under these owners.
As the speculative youth prospect tree bears less and less fruit as has been exposed this season, the owners will probably cash out and sell us on as they have previously.
Defend them all you want, they are clearly rank bad at football club ownership if on field success is the aim and are clearly potentially regressing our club, the opposite of what they themselves stated they were here to achieve.

 

The owners probably do not think in those terms. They probably think in terms of long term strategy, short term tactics and budgets. They would have looked at their alternative short-term strategies and the budget that they had. They would have bought players according to that strategy, and they would have hoped that they had done enough to survive. They would have known privately that it would be close, and Paul Conway's statement about the "best transfer window ever", was an error of judgement. The other side of the coin is that they have never suggested that they were here to spend their way to the top, nor that they were here for short term profitability. They are here to manage the club as well as they can, and they believe that a well managed club will eventually give them a better club and a financial reward when they sell. I think that sums up their long term strategy.

Unfortunately, fans do not think long term, and that will always create tensions between business managers and owners on the one hand, and fans on the other. There is unfortunately no way to reconcile those tensions. The two groups are bound to think in different ways.

 

No. It explains why in your personal opinion we need to buy a lot of poor players. All your reports, despite their length, are nothing but your opinion and no more valid than anyone elses.

Using FFP to justify us having to sign players like Mads Andersen is frankly laughable

 

And what are your qualifications. I just need to compare them to mine.

 

On football? Watched it all my life. Don't start coming acting all superior and like you are better than everyone else because you aren't despite what you think. You are not this all knowing oracle of football you are a Barnsley supporter like the rest of us and your opinion is just that. It's an opinion just like mine is and just like everyone else's is. There's no need at all to talk down to us and come with the attitude that you are educating the thick masses

 

But we weren't talking football. We were talking FFP and that is finance.