Matty James

We are maintaining our historical average and I'm immensely proud of that. However, you have to admit that it is now far more difficult to sustain that given the artificial monetary boost that has put the likes of Reading, Bournemouth, Wigan, Blackburn, Brighton, Watford, Brentford, Cardiff and QPR ahead of us. Granted a couple of those are on the slide but you also have clubs like Burnley and Hudders who have got up with more modest investment and will for the next 5 years be light years ahead of us in finance.
Call it punching above your weight or not but we have to be operating very near the ceiling of our capabilities to survive in this league.

 

Totally agree Churtonred,this we are skint malarkey is wearing abit thin.Relatively speaking we have spent fu__ all.If people are comparing us to Derby who operate on 3 times more than us crowd wise and they're putting 4 million bids in for players then surely we can stretch to a million or so for the in Hecky words "the right player".

 

There have always been bigger clubs than us. We are at now more of a disadvantage than after the miners strike with gates of 5-6 thousand.

I think we are a bottom 6 Championship /top 6 L1 team said say we are about on target over the last 10 years no better no worse than where we should be. It's easy for any era to think it's special im just not sure it's true.

 

It wouldn't surprise me to see us pay a million for a striker this summer. Despite the scepticism of some I reckon we've already paid somewhere close to that for McGeehan if you throw in add ons etc.

 

When we got promoted above Wolves their budget and ours were roughly as unequal as our and Derby. That's overachieving. We had tbe smallest budget in the league. Nowt changes we just like to pretend it does.

 

Agreed. In all the 75 seasons spent at this level its never been as hard for us to compete.

 

After the miners strike we let people sit on the managers bench for a 100 quid. We were a club un turmoil. The club had alienated the town with its attitude towards the miners. Gates were through the floor. Often 5-600. It was much harder to survive. you need to cut back in tbe hyperbole and gain some historical perspective.

 

What was that exactly? I'd never heard anything about that before you mentioned it.

 

Me neither .
I would like to be educated .
All I remember is that we had a poor side , money in the area was tight , so people had other priorities .

 

During the strike miners wanted to fund raise the old shake a bucket thing. They were told the club could not take political positions and we banned from doing so. Many stopped going and never went back. Placards/banners etc were banned. I'm meant to be writing summat about it for 4-4-2 if I ever get it done. There's more to it but that's it in a nutshell.

 

I wasn't watching bfc on the miners strike I'm 30 although my dad and grandad both struggled through those times. Mr Wilson got me hooked on bfc 21 years ago Football has changed massively in that time the wages the transfer fees the contracts the billionaire owners. And with out a billionaire owner or alot of luck I cannot see us ever playing in the top flight again.

 

I can appreciate that it makes your statement a bit daft though doesn't it? Given you said it's harder than at any time in tbe last 75 years. There have been several occasions that it's been harder or equally hard. It's no harder today to get promoted or relegated from this league than its ever been. I also can't see us getting promoted again to the Premiership. Last season we had a chance albeit a very slim one I don't expect it to come round again any time soon.

 

The chairman at the time was, "allegedly" a staunch Thatcherite and was quoted as saying that he wouldn't do anything to help the miners as he didn't want to get involved in politics. He showed his contempt for a good many fans in that statement and in doing so alienated them, many never returning to Oakwell. During his tenure he undid a lot of the good work achieved by Arnold Dennis. In my opinion he did more damage to BFC than any one else in our history.

 

Aye I'd agree. Having done a bit of research on it.

 

Although I started this thread with "shows what we're up against" I don't want to take away the great job that BFC are doing.For all the differences in Championship finances on the pitch we are still holding our own and more.If I were a Wolves fan for example I would question my clubs strategy on spending millions of pound and finishing below "little old Barnsley".

 

No I don't think it was daft it was.my opinion, I didn't take the miners strike years into account admittedly but when you have wolves spending 14million on one player and the likes of brentford with billionaire backers I'll stick to what I said.
What Wilson achived was massive back then but if hecky was to do that next season it would be a even bigger achivement as football has changed so much and no for the good for club like us.

 

It would be interesting to know the reason why the Board took that decision at the time they did.
Part of their reasoning might have been no matter how worthy the cause was it might set a precedent for other Unions or groups to request that they be permitted to hold a collection which could have had an adverse effect on the Clubs fundraising prospects at what was a very difficult time for everyone.

Can you remember that youth who used to stand at the top of the hill with his bucket when you walked from Town down
to Grove Street.? He had a different "cause" every week. He was collecting for a new lifeboat one week.!!
Somebody told me he was eventually detained at the pleasure of Her Majesty at some future point but I don't know how true that was. Anybody know what happened to him.?

 

You said it was harder to survive. How about just after WW1? Or WW2. We face obstacles now as we have always faced obstacles. In some ways it's harder in some ways it's easier. How about in the centenary season when we went close to going out of business?

I'd probably agree with you about promotion being harder now. Though since we did it Blackpool, Burnley, Bournemouth and Huddersfield have all managed it. Similar or smaller clubs than us.

The Wolves example you gave is an interesting ones the gap between their budget and ours percentage wise is probably very similar to the difference in 97.


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I'd imagine after the wars everyone was in the same boat but point taken. And yeah scince we did it Blackpool burnley and Huddersfield have done it the right way like we are trying to do all well run clubs at the time with a bit of luck. Can't include Bournemouth as they have a Swiss billionaire throwing money at them. But yeah I agree with you all similar and smaller clubs than ours.