Bigger Question

Discussion in 'Bulletin Board' started by icer, Jan 14, 2017.

  1. icer

    icer Well-Known Member

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    I guess we have seen numbers for barnsley salaries banded about and also those of clubs like Wednesday, Aston Villa, Leeds, Brentford etc.

    Do we really have the financial clout to sustain a long term competitive position in the Championship. Will we ever get to pay the 15-30k per week salaries? Will we find a business model, sponsor, owner that enables this? Will we accept the consequences of not being commercially competitive?

    Discuss.
     
  2. Dja

    Django Well-Known Member

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    I think the only way it happens is if we build a really good young side similar to what we have done & somehow manage to get one season in the premiership & can use the money to completely change the club like Burnley have. We'd be able to pay good salaries with the knowledge that you've got guaranteed parachute payments for 3 years.

    The only other way is if the way the TV money is paid changes so that it's a much more even split throughout the leagues.

    I don't see any way that either our fan base increases by a significant amount or we get increased sponsorship to pay them kind of wages
     
  3. blivy

    blivy Well-Known Member

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    I think our only hope of competing in the championship is stumbling across a large group of players from lower leagues in a single season that immediately gel and can sustain a promotion push. It's no good slowly building as we won't be able to hold onto our best players once their contract run out or their heads are turned.

    We're never going to be able to pay 15k - 30k a week unless we start filling the stadium every week or we get someone prepared to just throw money at the club, which is unlikely given we're not in London or a big city.
     
  4. Jimmy viz

    Jimmy viz Well-Known Member

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    I think both the long answer and short answer is no but with some caveats. The 'business' model followed by some of the clubs offering these wages is clearly unsustainable.

    Eventually inevitable a few big clubs will go out of business leaving spaces for well run clubs to move forwards.

    TV viewing figures are in decline. The proliferation of streaming sites and dodgy boxes threatens the stability of the financial arrangements with sky that underpins premiership football and chasing that cash is behind the foreign ownership model that underpins a lot of championship clubs.

    If you put in place a recruitment strategy like ours underpinned with a moneyball statistical analysis model it regains some of the advantages you have lost against people who 'discover' players by chucking money at them to run this model to its full advantage you need to be very good at contracts clever and innovative this is an area if we are to compete we must improve.

    So I guess my answer is maybe after the **** has hit the fan.
     
  5. Ext

    Extremely Northern Well-Known Member

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    No, because I think PC is possibly still scarred by the thoughts of journeymen coming here on a pay day or to toss a few months off on loan - committing ourselves to long contracts on unsustainable money is the way back to administration.

    What we can do is carry on with our policy, which admittedly becomes more difficult as we look for players now who can cut it at Champ level within a short space of arriving. The policy needs adjusting as Hecky alluded to yesterday by structuring contracts to try and stop them getting run down - but again, that's a piece of piss sat here - not so when you're battling agents and other clubs waving multiples of our wages at them. As we establish at this level, it allows us to operate this policy, but at a higher financial level. We quite simply can't gamble the clubs future. But we have to be smarter.
     
  6. Mike Lowry

    Mike Lowry Well-Known Member

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    You mean like the side we have/had this season?
     
  7. Old

    Old Gimmer Well-Known Member

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    I thought that when we were promoted this time, we were likely to become a yo-yo club between league one and the Championship in the same way that some clubs are between the Championship and the Premier League. Our good start has perhaps raised expectations, but I still think that realistically it's probably as much as we can hope for.
     
  8. Sta

    Stahlrost Well-Known Member

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    I think it's a problem for football in general, not just for Barnsley FC.

    Some clubs have rich owners who are prepared to prop up their clubs with no regard for return on investment, almost as a hobby. A normal business, which can only spend what it makes in income, cannot possibly compete with that. But it's transient, until the owner moves on or gets bored. Look at what's happening at Forest. The Fowls must have a wage bill that is unsustainable without their owner's input.

    Clubs in the Premiership have the SKY TV money to support them, even for 3 years after they've failed. Name me any other kind of business where you get rewarded for being ****? I know people with Sky paying £120 or more per month. They think it's great value. What if Sky goes belly up one day?

    Our model is not perfect, and we all know that Patrick Cryne has spent lots of his own money to keep us where we are. But the model is better than the Wednesday model, despite the ridicule we have to endure from their massive army of fans. Our model is close to being sustainable in the long term, their's isn't. Sooner or later they will have to win promotion, or they will go bust.

    I prefer our way, even if we end up in league 1 again. It's the only credible long term solution.
     
  9. Sup

    SuperTyke Well-Known Member

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    I think we can. The problem is that people look at the top teams and say we can't compete because they pay a lot so we should really be in league one. That's not how it works though is it, we aren't just in a league with them we are also in one with Rotherham and Preston etc.

    We get attendances bigger than around another 5 or 6 clubs in this league and we have a smaller backroom and office staff setup so the question is that if we cannot compete or even outbid them in terms of wages then why not?

    We can't compete with wages against the big boys but we CAN compete to be in this league
     
  10. ark

    ark104 (v2) Well-Known Member

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    You're constantly trying to compete against the odds. Sometimes it will come off, sometimes it won't. The last time we were genuinely competitive was 2011/2012. And then in January it fell apart. That was part bad luck in Butterfield's injury and then the Drinkwater scenario which was pretty unusual. But we then contributed by letting Vaz Te leave. I appreciate he refused to play but we should have called his bluff. He would have needed to play to be in the shop window for a summer move. Stand up once to a player and it won't happen again.

    Point is the strategy then was the same as it is now. Sign good hungry players from the lower leagues with a few higher quality loan signings thrown in. But after a great start the next year the reality bit that if you have a much smaller budget player recruitment is a gamble. Some lower league players won't be able to step up. And back then the board never had the strength of character to stick with it. They abandoned it and went for the last pay day players and it backfired spectacularly.

    This time they seem to have stuck with a strategy when it wobbled, refined it, and stuck with Johnson. And we've flourished from that. But we as fans have to accept that every player we sign won't be able to step up and it won't always work. We need to be patient and accept we're doing it tge right way against the odds.

    But what we certainly can't afford to do as a club is let proven players on low wages walk away mid season. Because we'll never replace them. For our strategy to work we need to do business in the summer.
     
  11. Young Nudger

    Young Nudger Well-Known Member

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    Totally wrong question
    Of course we cannot compete with £30k per week wages
    The question should be - HOW do we compete with £30k per week wages

    And the answer is very simple - we find a way to nail down players contracts.
    We can then on occasion sell a player for a good fee - enabling the club to accumulate funds to bring other lower league players in that we can develop.

    At the moment there are 5 or 6 first team players that could just leave the club for next to nowt because the club hasn't secured their contracts
    It's just crazy management by the club.
     
  12. icer

    icer Well-Known Member

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    Totally wrong question for what? Your own personal and unique hilltop? I guess in a way you are answering the question by saying we can't compete. You do realise that a contract by its nature is intended to service the desires and needs of all parties involved. In the current modern footballing world contracts are signed by players, then agents are employed to exploit it and also beyond it. I know there is no right / wrong or perfect answer to the question posed (whether it suits you or not) but it was will we be able to compete or not with salaries.

    Personally i think we won't. Im also less convinced that the teams paying above their station at the top level won't change. We have seen massive debts run up but no top level clubs go under. Wednesday were close to liquidation not long ago and highly in debt yet they pay 4x our levels
     
  13. icer

    icer Well-Known Member

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    Yes thats true and i agree. The wage levels have increased over the years as more parachute teams have come in and less have moved back up. I would love to see a trend of the average salary Chanp level past 5 years
     

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