Meeting with Ben and Patrick

Thank you Mr Gally for your time and patience posting this !

 

Thanks for that good read but

might be me but the Watkins bit lost me, its a bit like saying he's really good but unfortunately he hasn't any spare time to do owt at Barnsley

 

Tah, lad.

 

Didn't understand the Watkins comment , basically said he's done all these great things elsewhere but didn't say anything he's done good for BFC.

Other than that can't disagree with everything else that was said


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We've been claiming to be getting the club standing on its own 2 feet for god knows how many seasons. Cant believe, as PC claims, we are still in a position where if he went under a bus we'd go bust in no time.

What we laiking at? Hardly owt left to sponsor at the club, lost all the high earners, most of the squad are loanees and the rest of the club is run on shoestring with 7K season ticket holders. I appreciate everything PC has done for the club and I am not calling for him to go but where the **** is all the money going?

 

This

Part 2 was supposed to expand and likely answer that.

Did nothing of the sort.

Load of waffle.

 

So in answer to the first question then - who is to blame for the current run of results?

 

Once again thanks to all concerned for the honesty shown within the meeting.

All the words and rhetoric mean nothing to us if we end up in League 2 and believe you me that's where were going with this Head Coach

 

I agree with a hell of a lot of what he says. However, it brings into question the decision to sack Wilson even more than it was before IMHO.

If he wants out let's give him an option. I refuse to believe Barnsley Football Club would go bust if he walked out tomorrow. It wouldn't die like he seems to be implying.

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how though?

 

Thanks Gally. Good read. Come on you Reds

 

Thanks Gally, this is most informative and helps to put my mind at ease as to the present situation at the club and as to the future plans. This is exactly the kind of communication we need from the club, it's just a pity they don't seen to realise the importance of this.

 

Mansford & Watkins might be great at what they know but we still don't have anyone on the board who knows football

 

Well I am quite reassured by that on two counts.

a. He said he doesn't know if LJ will be here in a month. I was beginning to despair that he was here forever no matter how bad things got. But that leaves the door open for him to go. Thats good.

b. He confirmed, if we believe it be true, and I do, that LJ identifies the players he wants, and is fully responsible for coaching and team selection. That leaves me confident in the knowledge that this horrible season is LJs fault and leaves me reassured that I am not wrong in my opinion that he needs to be sacked asap for the good of the club.

 

Backtracking on his earlier statement that LJ would be his last appointment?

Maybe has a plan where someone else is ready to take over?

Judging by his comments doubtful but maybe he is keeping his cards close to his chest.

 

When reading these "open" discussions with the fans, a large pinch of salt is required.

 

Fair Do's Loko

 

See, I read that as we'd failed to bring in any of the experienced players LJ has identified.Not saying I necessarily blame others for failing to conclude the deals but there's an obvious acceptance through that interview IMHO that LJ has been left with an unbalanced squad and until that is addressed we are going to struggle.

 

very long (as ever) part 1

Firstly, thank you to the supporters trust for the time and effort in putting this together. And to Patrick and Ben for agreeing to meet them; they didn't have to. It's appreciated.

I write this from of position of never once stating the manager, the owner, the chairman or the chief excec should go. I may feel that we could do better without one or more of them in position, but I have not demanded they leave or be sacked.

I don't believe that any statement or interview given should just be taken at face value, I believe the content should be analysed. Or to put it another way, "segmented, taken out of context and re-interpreted." There you go, I'm ****** before I even start. Even by drawing your attention to that I'm guilty of segmenting, taking things out of context and reinterpreting. Very clever.

The blame game
I agree with Patrick that money doesn't necessarily buy success. The examples he gives are good ones, but not quite as good as the example of Barnsley FC, currently in the relegation zone in League 1, despite having, according to Ben Mansford in February of this year, "the third or fourth highest cash equity injection/donations, whatever you term it under the SCMP rules, from an owner."

https://audioboom.com/boos/2887580-barnsleyfc-chief-executive-ben-mansford-on-wilson-sacking

If Patrick knows this, if he knows that pumping money in to a club does not guarantee any success, why has he continued to do it? The fact that, getting on for 15 years after he first became associated with the club "we’d be bust in an instant" if Mr Cryne walked away or if anything happened to him, is nothing short of negligent in my opinion. How have the board allowed us to get in to such a perilous position? The future of our club should not be reliant on the health and welfare of one man.

This is not our fault. Despite years of some of the most abject football you could imagine, the Barnsley public have continued to support the football club. Last season we had the 5th highest average attendance in the division.

http://www.worldfootball.net/attendance/eng-league-one-2014-2015/1/

We do not draw up a budget that requires financial input from Mr Cryne. The board do that. The situation Mr Cryne describes is entirely of their making, not ours. It is their responsibility and I feel very aggrieved that they've put us in this position. You want a fix, a remedy? Budget for the money we make and no more.

I've scoured the article for any sign of collective responsibility as to why things have gone wrong and I simply can't find any. According to Mr Cryne "Mansford is the best chief exec, or club secretary I’ve had in my time"; "Good governance is imperative in the modern game and Maurice is key to that"; "As a candidate, he (Lee Johnson) was the best candidate from those available I would say."

As for Mr Cryne, he states he would like to leave, but these are for reasons of health and well being, and his enjoyment of life (all perfectly valid), not because of a lack of success under his stewardship and a share of that responsibility. In fact, he actually gives reasons why he should stay (we'd go bust without him) and suggests those calling for his head are attributing fault to the wrong people, "The baby has to go with the bath water sometimes."

Saying what you will do and actually doing it are two entirely different things. "What is needed is a definitive statement of intent from my part..." Indeed.

I can find four reasons given for our current predicament:
1. Recruiting senior players. While Mr Cryne admits to the club's failure in doing this, there is no acknowledgement of any fault on our part. We haven't done anything wrong, it's just that, "It’s harder to get the experienced guys in. Those experienced guys have choices. If they are likely to be able to make the difference to us they are likely to have choices. They are likely to be well paid and its’ hard to attract them to come here.”

Thing is, we have the youngest and most inexperienced squad in the entire football league. We have attendance figures higher than most, so a bigger income, yet other teams don't appear to have problems recruiting experienced players. Mr Cryne can explain this too, "What’s happening is, rich men put money in, they don’t have to be billionaires at this level, to sustain it, but you certainly need millions. There are hardly any profitable clubs in League 1, unless they trade players as a policy both successfully and regularly."

So, we can't compete financially. The experienced guys want a good wage and the clubs with rich men putting the money in can beat us to their signature. Fair enough, except... Last February when Ben Mansford attempted to explain the sacking of Danny Wilson he justified it by highlighting our financial clout compared to other clubs in the division. I've already posted the link above and he gets to the point early on. Not only do we attract more fans than most, generating more money (our attendance figures are more than double nearly half the clubs in the division) but our rich man puts in more extra money than all but 3 or 4 of the benefactors of other clubs. He does this to the point that we'd be bust in an instant if he walked away. It's a double whammy for the rest of the division, the club generate more revenue than most and we are supplemented with more extra money than most. We win twice (if you think that supplementing the budget to the point that it risks the future of the club is winning).

But we haven't got the experienced players in. They went elsewhere. We failed. And yet we're still screwed financially without Mr Cryne's financial backing, moments away from going bust. Far be it for me to break this to you all, but that doesn't make any ******* sense.

2. Recruitment to the academy. "So we need to ensure the recruitment into our academy is outstanding. It’s not as good as it needs to be at present in order to for us to be a competitive force." Poor scouting then I presume? Certainly not the fault of the major players.

3. Being over cautious. "We have a system, we track players, but scouting is still our main approach. Often we don’t act quickly enough because we are too risk averse and go through the full scouting appraisal approach. We watch and watch and watch." This reminds me of one of those answers a candidate gives at a job interview when asked for their faults: "My trouble is that I'm a bit of a perfectionist, I like to get everything just right." Yeah, that's a terrible fault you've got there mate. We all do it, try to turn a negative in to a positive. If you tell the interview panel that you're a raging alcoholic and have a habit of kicking **** out of your co-workers, you're not going to get the job. I doubt anyone reading Mr Cryne's interview will be up in arms because we "go through the full scouting appraisal approach." You check if players are any good before signing them? You b'stards. However, I would like to know how this approach results in us signing the calibre of player we've recruited since Wilson left. Other than Hammill, who has really impressed you that Johnson has recruited?

4. Luck. "Luck in games plays its part, otherwise we would all be able to predict the results of games. Certainly we have not had much luck with injuries or the run of the ball in a number of games."

I don't believe there's such thing as luck. If you kick the ball, it hits the post and goes in, it's because you hit it at such an angle that it would always do that. It's geometry, not good luck knocking the ball in to the net. Similarly, bad luck doesn't knock the ball away from goal if you kicked it at an angle that dictates it goes in. The run of the ball can be described my mathematical equations, not luck.

We cannot predict the results of games because we are dealing with human beings whose performance levels fluctuate, as do the performance levels of the opposition. Putting our poor results down to the few injuries we've sustained pushes credibility even further. We're performing badly because recruitment wasn't good enough, individual performances haven't been good enough, tactics and formations haven't been good enough and the opposition have been better than us, either at putting the ball in the back of the net or the whole game of football.

Bad luck is a good excuse for those who don't want to take responsibility and I don't see anyone taking responsibility for our plight in that interview. If you don't do that, if you don't accept mistakes have been made, if you don't acknowledge your own failings, how do you rectify the situation and move forward?