Lee Johnson time at Barnsley (SAFC Supporter here)

Wow, I think you really are getting confused now. That is nothing like what I remember the games under LJ. I was bored as ****, continually sideways sideways. No forward momentum, no shots on target. Bored bored bored. He was also as stubborn as anything, NEVER attempting to change the system or the players. I nearly stopped going because of Lee ******* Johnson. My wife did stop going, even with a ST she couldn't hack it anymore.

 

Rafa's a top manager. There were personal issues with Rafa & Alonso. You're making it out that he thought Barry was a better player.

You can't make out Eddie Howe's a top manager & then call Rafa a clown. That's ridiculous.

I'd love to see a list of managers who've won a European cup with players on the level of Tralee, Kewell, Biscan, Finnan, Baros & Cisse

 

Rafa tried twice to replace Alonso with Barry, whether there's personal problems (something ive never heard of before) thats completely ludicrous. He got lucky in the 05 Champions League victory and has lived off that reputation ever since, achieving nothing.

Howe is a current PL manager and Benitez is not. Enough said.


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Lol

 

Fans need to have a focus for their love or their hate. An icon who they can deify or who can become their devil incarnate. Some high profile managers attract so much media focus and so much TV publicity that they seem to become bigger than the club itself. They seem to be able to attract the best players, and of course, when a club has the best players, it can play the best football. The whole edifice is a façade that has been built around a reputation. It is a façade that benefits the manager himself because he is seen as almost a god by the fans, and it is a façade that benefits the club, because when the fans are happy, the club makes money. But it is a façade that relies upon cash, and lots of it. It is a façade that can only work for the top clubs, those that are very rich. And yet, that façade is so powerful that it drips down from the top clubs to those lower down the league hierarchy. The fans at clubs without the financial resources want a manager who can manipulate the board, who can persuade the board to spend money that it knows it can not afford. A manager who can become a cult. The cult works, not necessarily because a manager has more talent than the next man. It works because the fans believe in him, and if the fans believe, they are prepared to tolerate more. When the club changes its manager, the new man comes with a reputation that is already established. The new man is allowed time to get things right based upon an already established reputation. If your name is Keith HIll or Lee Johnson, you do not come with much of a reputation and it is assumed that you will fail. That assumption drives expectations. If your name is Danny Wilson, you have done enough to forestall any judgement. If it works for them, who am I to destroy their illusions.

However, the board of a small provincial football club is less concerned about a manager's self interest. Members of the board observe a manager on a day to day basis. They know how effectively he conducts his training, how much work he puts into planning, how he thinks and what he believes. In short they know far more about him than we, the fans. They have an idea whether things are getting better or things are getting worse and very importantly, they know how effective the manager is at working within his budget limitations. Most of these thing are of little interest to fans, who are concerned only with the result of the match each Saturday, and who have little interest in the problems, difficulties and restrictions imposed by budgets behind the scenes. They have paid a lot of cash to see their team win, and if it is winning they are happy and the man at the top is great, but if they are not winning the man at the top must go. It reflects badly on many boards that they often give in to pressure from the fans, pressure from outsiders who very often do not have the information available to them that would allow them to make the right call. They react, because they fear that the club will lose more money by not making a change, than it will by making the change. But they know that the club will lose money whatever it does, and since the main source of that money is the fans, the fans lose whatever. The board gives in to those who are prepared to withdraw their financial support for the club that they purport to love. As you can probably tell reading these words, as a long term and life long fan, it is a situation that I find both depressing and frustrating. I have never withdrawn my financial support and you can imagine how I regard those who are prepared to do so in order to get their own misguided way.

We are never going to be a Manchester United and we can never ever do things like a Manchester United. We have to do things differently. We cannot afford to buy the best players and pay them competitive wages. They go shopping at Sainsbury's and we go shopping at ALDI, but even at ALDI, you do find the odd bargain. They have more money, they have a strategy of employing cult managers and these managers look after themselves firstly and the club after that. They know that they have a better chance of maintaining their cult status if the can get the club to shell out huge sums on cult players, and the whole edifice is kept up in the air by the fans (plus SKY TV) who shell out increasingly vast sums of money on season tickets and merchandise. Our club has to do things differently. Our fans complain about the price of season tickets, missing the link between revenue and good players. As a consequence, we buy players from down the leagues and use our coaching skills to improve them before selling them on. In this way, we supplement our revenue earning capacity. We survive on a budget that is tiny, even compared to many clubs in our league. But as fans, we have to have something else, something that is in very short supply at other clubs and which costs them a great deal of money. That vital ingredient is patience. That is the vital ingredient that the board had when Lee Johnson was in trouble. The board went against the general will of the fans, and the board was proven right. So let us rejoice in the fact that we have a board that made the right decision, in spite of the pressure from the fans, and move on.

Now of course I realise that the vast majority of people who read this post will rush to ridicule it, just as I knew that the majority of those who read my original post to the Sunderland fan would rush to disagree with that. People need to be proven right. Neither of those things bother me too greatly. I am not trying to win a popularity competition. I say what I feel needs to be said, and others react as they feel they must.

 

"People need to be proven right"

Quite.

 

People need to be proven right

Yes they do. Some will even write war and peace in their pursuit of it.

 

Boooo. Gerroff.

 

Kin ell.

As if Bournemouth are a bigger draw than Newcastle.

Achieving nothing? Could've sworn he took over a Chelsea team in crisis & won silverware & won silverware at Napoli as well.

Maybe bottling it when you get a bigger move to Burnley & then going back to your home comforts at Bournemouth & gaining promotion through the owners millions is the measure of success these days

 

I get the impression you think most fans don't rate Lee Johnson because he left us for Bristol when for most I'd say it's because of the football he produced & the baffling decisions he made.

I lost count of the times we would proceed with our long, slow build up without players overlapping, where we would play slow cautious football where we would allow the opposition to set themselves up defensively & they'd then hit us on the counter & pick us off.

The most obvious example was the Shrewsbury game because I remember it was Jordan Clark who scored the winner but it happened plenty of times. His teams had no defensive shape without the ball & no cutting edge with it & this was with talented players like Winnall & Hourihane.

He seemed to play a team devoid of any flair. The one player who had any flair was Crowley but it was like he'd never had any coaching & was like a performing seal.

You can talk about recruitment all day but defensive shape is something Johnson had plenty of time to work on, when your team is failing to get back into position when they lose the hall almost every week that's not coincidence it's a lack of work on the training ground.

Hecky's made a point of stating that we still like to move the ball but we've improved ourselves defensively without Johnson & that's definitely true.

He had a knack of shattering players confidence as well. Killed all Winnall's momentum by sticking him on the wing, turned 2 promising keepers into nervous wrecks.

 

No, I think most fans do not rate Lee Johnson because his team lost 8 on the trot and lost to a non-league outfit in the FA cup. I do not think most fans are interested in my arguments about having patience. I do not think fans are interested in my arguments about him managing the team through a period of change, managing the club through a culture change or seeking to find a balance in a team that was struggling to find one. I think the most fans will counter my arguments by telling me how bad the team was under Johnson, and how good the same team was under Hecky. They will explain to me how none of Hecky's success was because of the foundations built by Johnson. There is simply no end to this debate. My opinion is miles away from that of most Barnsley fans, and at the end of the day, that is how it will remain, no matter how much time I spend on here explaining my opposite position.

Johnson is gone, and no matter what the result today, it will not rewrite history, and neither will it reconcile my position with that of the Johnson hate brigade. I would hope that no-one shows themselves up badly during the game, but there are some fiery tempers out there, and anything could happen. I hope that we will be victorious, but that has nothing to do with Lee Johnson and everything to do with supporting my team. But if we are not, and without pre-judging the Minority Report, I know that a large part of the reason will be the injury and suspension problems that we face. Lee Johnson is not important to me now. I have moved on. I raised our experience with Johnson only by way of an answer to a Sunderland fan wanting David Moyes sacked, and used him only as an illustration of our boards successful strategy of showing patience. That strategy saved us an estimated half million pounds, so it was successful.

This is my final contribution to this thread.

 

If there are any songs/chants derogating Johnson hope they are drowned out with ones celebrating our team and staff , these are the ones I will be joining in with.

 

If you class a Europa League at Chelsea and an Italian Cup at Napoli as success then your easily pleased. Has he ever won a league title?

I know which one of the two is most likely to get a top job next and it certainly isnt Benitez.


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In nearly 40 years of watching Barnsley, I have seen some good times, some very good times and some bad times. I have never ever wanted a manager sacked or to leave. I never believed that sacking the manager was the right thing to do. That changed last year, with LJ. Believe me, it was nothing to do with results or league position. It was everything to do with the football being played. It was boring, very very boring. I was bored, bored, bored. Yes we were a team in transition, but why can't 11 men on the field pass forward? Why can't we get the ball in the box? Why can't we shoot? I remember the games against Fleetwood, Shrewsbury & Crewe (god I wish I didn't have to) where we must have have about 3 shots total for those three games. For the first time EVER, I was thinking why am I here? I've got all these jobs to do at home, reports to write for work etc. etc.

That is why LJ had to go. I didn't hate LJ, I hated his football. People were voting with their feet and money was not coming through the club. But PC kept faith (god knows how) and the Messiah arrived in first Hammill & LJ had to change things to accommodate an ATTACKING winger, then the unlikely happened and Bristol C came and poached him. Actually paid money to take him off our hands. Happy days to me & thousands of other supporters.

You seem a good guy & I've nothing against you whatsoever, but I must make one other point. You seem to believe that people are not listening to your views. It seems you are right and ten thousand other people are wrong. It seems to me that you are not listening to other peoples views. You seem to be to be as stubborn as LJ

 

And what exactly has Howe done? Seen as major trophies are worthless I presume promotion isn't worth a lot.

Howe isn't getting a top club job. The only big job he might get a sniff of is the England one & he's only be getting that due to us feeling we have to appoint an Englishman.

Benitez is happy managing in England as his family are settled here & will have Newcastle in the top half of the Prem in a years time so I doubt he'll have interest in other jobs.

And yes, of course he's won a league title. He produced that great Valencia side that bet Barca & Real to the league title