Some views expressed at the time of the takeover

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/42426661

Interesting reading!

"I think this is one of the best-run clubs in the country. We're just trying to bring that little extra push that helps this club to be successful.

"We're disciplined people. We're not going to do anything crazy but we believe year after year we can improve performance. We'll take our time."

Perhaps the last sentence is the most telling. They didn't appear to subscribe to Red Rain's council of financial despair. Then again, do they still think it is all possible in time? Or are they secretly reviewing their whole involvement and assessing how realistic their original aims were?

Nobody knows, because they are not talking!

In the meantime, our best players continue to be sold, a second relegation in three seasons is looking on the cards, and we have parted with an able and much-loved young coach.

 

Personally, I think they are assessing thier aims. By now they will have seen what's going on here and seen how the fans are reacting. You would have thought if they have any spine then they would come out with some more of a statement in regards to what is actually happening at the club.

I've said it before and I'll say it again and I probably am speaking for most here but we have to hear something come Saturday or we're just going to be stuck in a downward spiral.

I didn't actually realise that about 2nd relegation in 3 years, reality has hit, that is poor. It would be very hard for anyone to come in and replace Stendel and take the club by storm like he did.

 

Club interview 5th August 2018

Lee: We did a lot of improvement in the stadium

Conway: We’re going to be here for the long term, and we’re going to grow the club each year.

Lee: We are long term investors, we are long term here.

Conway, (re Stendel appointment) To be able to get some really incredible talent from a big club like Hannover, that’s really al part of the original plan which is to further commercialise the club, further internationalise the club, and you saw with the Dougall signing coming from Holland, we’re trying to build Barnsley into a bigger club and we’ll do it the right way.

Conway: There is a concerted effort by everyone at the club to keep the team together, theres been a lot of interest in some of our players, but we’ve been very focussed on promotion and keeping the core of the team together and hopefully that core will help us grow into the championship too.

Lee: The fans are really important to us. We want to make sure they have a good experience at the stadium.

Conway: As we said at our opening press conference, improving the fan experience is one of our top goals and it will come every year, bits and pieces, throughout the stadium, online, the whole experience and with the new app launch, some of the improvements to the stadium, you’ll see it each year, but we’ll be living within our means. We’re not going to do anything irrational and I think the sanctity of the club is important and what Patrick built we want to continue to build on.

Conway: We both reside in the US, so we cant make every match, iFollow this year is working really well and we hope all fans around the world are better connected to the club.

Lee: Whenever we have time we’ll be here (Oakwell) and go to the match.

Conway: Well we’re looking at building the brand of the club on a cost effective basis and the promotion (in Times Square) didn’t cost the club anything, and people around the world want to be associated with a club like Barnsley and its history and we’re going to look at improving the fan experience here, for the fans that visit, but reaching out to new fans that can both follow the club and once in a while come to Barnsley from around the world.

Lee: I’m really happy on the improvement on the stadium.

Conway: We love interacting with the fans because a lot of them have some really good ideas on how we can improve the club. We like the feedback and we want to thank everybody for their support.

Lee: Absolutely and we are here for the long term and we want to listen to the fans and make more improvement.

 

This is brilliant, listening to the fans now would be a good start.

 

Actually talking to us at all would be a better start.

 

Very true

 

Great interview- I’ll take all the snake oil you’ve got, please!

 

Well, we seem to be some way off that lot, don't we?

 

"Yeah, cos when we get promoted we can sell all those top players for more dosh than if we didn't get promoted. Lovely, lovely money"

 

Did Conway show him a picture of oakwell from the 1970’s and then one from now and say “hey chien, the builders have been busy over the summer”

 

7th February 2019, Paul Conway interview with Andy Giddings

“We believe we had a very strong window, George Miller was our top target and today, we believe he’s a top 10 league 1 player. Now we have a bit of a different perspective here at Barnsley on the football world but when you look at his productivity at the age of 19 and 20 for one team that was relegated and one team that’s in the relegation zone this year, 18 goals in 41 starts, that’s exciting to us.

The only disappointment was that Middleboro didn’t have a recall clause on his loan, so we fought to the bitter end to get him here now, but, we still got him, but he’ll be at Bradford for the rest of the season.

Jordan green was an important addition that the coach wanted, a pacey right winger and I think you see that already”

“We’re committed to keeping a good squad together, so throughout the summer, throughout the winter, our goal is very clear with automatic promotion, so of course theres a lot of interest on the squad but we basically had the “not for sale” signs out and everything is focussed on automatic promotion”

“In the championship, we were one of only 2 clubs that broke even, the rest of the league, the average loss was £8-9m per team. That’s not out business model. That’s not the way we run Nice. Nice breaks even, everything is reinvested into the club and that’s how we’re going to run the club here. However, upon relegation, we lose £6m of revenue. So we start the year with a relatively material loss for Barnsley. Strategically, you’ve seen some of the transactions that have incorporated that, so Tom Bradshaw, good servant, last year of his deal, didn’t want to extend, so we already had Woodrow lined up for that. So the club has further grown from that transaction.

And you’ll see things like that where we’re going to be smart about things and reinvest every pound into the club, every pound of every sale, every pound of every ticket, it’s the same policy we have at Nice. So we have to deal with getting closer to a balanced budget, we’re not there yet, for this season. But we’re well positioned for next season.”

“We believe in financial fair play. Other clubs in England do not. So we’re not going to run a club so its 2 weeks away from bankruptcy. And we’re shocked, coming here as investors to see many clubs run like that. That’s not how we do our football business. We have a balance here. When we came here Patrick Cryne saved the club. The last thing we’re going to do as a new board is to put the club on the wrong direction. So we’re committed to a balanced budget, we’re committed to FFP, we’re committed to the Academy, we’re committed to young players. We have one of the youngest clubs in France, we have one of the youngest clubs in the EFL, but we’re not going to do anything reckless.

Balancing a budget is important and when you look at a club like Liverpool, what they’ve done since the Fenway Group came 7 or 8 years ago, commitment to the academy, commitment to youth, improvement to infrastructure, building a budget, that’s a similar strategy to what we have.”

“If you have a long term strategy, if you have a commitment to an academy when youre seeing players like Ben Williams, Jacob Brown coming through the system and having impact, you also get that benefit of homegrown players having impact much earlier in their careers compared to other clubs.”

“Upon promotion we then regain £6m, so we’re managing the club conservatively in L1, but that revenue coming back in, guess what? That money gets reinvested back into the squad and that gives us additional possibility to do more. I think the core of the squad, today, is a championship squad, but we’ll look to strengthen when we get promoted back up.”

“I think you have to look at whats the plan here. The plan here is to stabilise in the championship. We think we have a competitive championship team today. But we’re not going to stop there. We’re going to reinforce the squad but still with a commitment to youth. Now the upper championship, frankly, is another step. We’re not there yet. Obviously the first step is get back promoted. Lets strengthen the squad, lets be a comfortable mid table championship team and from there requires more work.”

[Giddings asks how much the project has so far cost the consortium]

Conway: I’m sorry?

Giddings: How much have you spent on Barnsley so far? You’ve obviously had incomings and outgoings, can you shed any light on how much the consortium have put in?

Conway: Well… we’ve bought 80% of the club…. And… every pound… every quid, has gone back into the club. At Nice, 3 years ago. We also bought 80%. For long term, for growth projects, we will invest more money. So at Nice we built an 18m Euro training centre academy football headquarters which has over 70 beds for the first team and U23 team and some academy players. So for long term growth projects, we’ll reinvest. We’re not going to throw money at reckless spending on… in transfer windows…… However, in Nice, in every transfer window we’ve still increased our spending. All time records each one. First year 14m, second, 21m, last summer 27m. All new records for Nice. Now that was part of growing the squad too. Growing the revenue. We’ve increased the revenue of Nice in less than 3 years 80%. All gone back in the squad. So we will spend more here incrementally but we’re still focused on balancing a budget.”

“Nearly every new player that’s been signed, 4 year, 5 year deals. So we want to reinvest in the club, We think the best acquisition is often extending an existing player who is performing well.”

[re fan engagement] We need to do more, so we’re doing some of the same things we did in Nice. We increased attendance 10% per year over a couple of years. We have a kids zone there, we have a kids zone here. We have a fans zone in Nice, especially during the holidays. We’re working on a fans zone here that will come here soon. Being more creative on ticket packages. So in Nice we have ladies nights, kids nights, senior citizens specials, trying to look broader within the Barnsley landscape of supporters who’ve maybe fallen away, but maybe also trying to grow younger new supporters too.

The club is part of the community, its really the centre piece of the town and so we want to give more reasons for people to be around Oakwell even outside of a match day. We have a lot of work to do on that, we do things step by step and I think the whole organisation with many great accomplishments over the last year in the community, its been impressive and the clubs been recognised for this. So we’re a smaller club with big aspirations, so we want to fulfil those.”

[re the ground] So its definitely something we’re pursuing. We don’t have that yet but we’re working on that in a judicious manner. I think everyone knows the club is part of the town and a healthy ground, a healthy infrastructure is good for the whole community, you just walk around town and see the amount of construction, the Glassworks for example, it’s a huge investment, so we want to be part of that, but we’re not there yet, we have a lot of work to do on that and we’ll have more report when we get closer.

[Giddings asks if this could happen in a few months or a more medium term]

Conway: “I think this takes time because we have to first have to get control and bring back the stadium to the club which I think is everbodys intention and then what do we do next? So what we’ve done in Nice on the academy side, we’ve reinvested on the academy and its something we want to do here for sure. But, just having an year sports bar and things like that, I think the community would like that so it I imagine it would bring people here during say European tournaments and this is a central part of the community so we have a lot of work to be done, but its not going to be in the next few months though.”

 

https://m.ogcnice.com/en/news/36265/chien-lee-we-aim-high

A rare interview with Nice, some of the questions look very familiar all of a sudden!

 

Meantime, I've been looking at Adam Murray's profile. Left Mansfield Town in November 2016 after one win in eleven games that season. Left Boston after a slide to second bottom of National League North in October 2017. Clearly well thought of in some circles, but is that a CV to succeed where Daniel couldn't? Or is he just a temporary fall guy?

 

Well.... if we look at the statement which the owners released telling us what was happening....oh... hang on....

 

The Chairman’s wife of Mansfield made it very clear she didn’t want him to leave

 

I guess that the way you read those statements depends upon your current outlook as compared to your expectations when they took over.

I never thought that our owners were here to make us into the next Manchester City. It was always my opinion that our owners were here to organically improve the way that the club does business, to try to generate additional income and to not invest their own money unless they could see a financial return. I was asking the questions that others are asking now 18 months ago. I got no answers then, and there will be no answers now.

I am not disappointed with the way that the new owners have chosen to do business, because I never thought that they would do business in any other way. They are not robbing the club. They are not taking money out of the club in share dividends. They are not creaming off transfer income as others have alleged. In that respect, all the money that comes into the club through transfers will eventually be reinvested. It is just that the word reinvested can be interpreted differently by two listeners, dependent upon what they would like it to mean. They will be as disappointed as any of us are that their reign has not brought with it better financial performance, that they have not been able to generate more cash, that they have not seen a more immediate improvement in the way that the club is being run. Does that mean that they should engage in some of the more hysterical actions that many fans have advocated, or should they just keep their heads down, wait while it all blows over, wait while the future looks a little more rosy, wait until circumstantial evidence is not conspiring to throw any comments that they make right back in their faces.

They are businessmen. They have come to Barnsley from across the world, not because of some undying love for our club. They have come here to make a profit. That profit will come through making it a better club, and then by selling it on to the next owner. Any other views about their motives for ownership are naive.

 

"we believe year after year we can improve performance"
Thats a very ambiguous statement and can mean so many things......looking at it right now that could be applied to our bank balance and player sales!!
On the footballing side, you could argue that it has NOT improved.

 

I never expected them spend a red cent of their own money but they have made several, shall we say statements (as quoted) on hiw they wish to proceed.
If you were an accountant, it looks like we are probably more succesful than before they came.
This success has been achieved be a very short term thinking "sell the players" with little or no other evidence of improving the ground or acadamy etc etc
They have been here just over two years and are now antagonizing the fan base...as business people and succesful ones we are lead to believe....i am beginning to wonder about these guys.
would you pee off your regular customers if you were a supermarket? people vote with their feet. To me this shows that they are demonstrating they are at best very arrogant in their appraisal of the loyal fan base (ahem)income stream.

 

I think its fair to say that at the time of their takeover I was sceptical of their intent. My perception hasn't shifted from an expectation of their investment being to make profit.

The questions I've always had have been about the how and why.

Barnsley Football Club was a distressed purchase with an owner who had sacrificed some of his wealth (thought to be lower than the incumbents at the time, but that is looking more and more questionable as time passes). A distressed purchase of a break even or slightly subsidised company with a benefactor with emotional attachment is about as good as it gets for Private Equity.

To keep the status quo you don't have to do much at all. That the ground was separated from the Club asset would also have been attractive if they perceived they could add that. Add the ground, retain time in the championship, a fair wind on currency exchange and a few management charges to claw back purchase cost, and any sales proceed looks more attractive for the investors hidden in the HK investment vehicle.

In terms of their developments, from what they've said, very little has changed that they have been directly involved in. I thought it was moderately amusing that Conway tokenly eluded to ifollow allowing an assumption they were largely at play for creating this thing to us... rather than just a player substitute that derives revenue for club and the aggregator... just as most of the other 92 clubs (now 91).

On the pitch... they've clearly invested, doubt its all of the additional revenue, but its what they've done that is "crazy". Just as was the appointment of Morais, and the sacking of Stendel.

The positives they've been associated with in nearly 2 years are the appointment of Stendel and the acquisition of Woodrow (could have already been on the radar though) who was an excellent introduction.

As you can see, as the scraping away of assumption of our owners wealth and interests continues, we're building up more questions than answers and less and less makes more sense. The Academy at Nice is a particular issue. And if they are to develop our Academy, how on earth would they fund a development of any sort of size comparable with Nice, and how on earth would that get ROI on top of their purchase price?

If we were sold for the mid point of the suggested £10-20m (no idea how accurate that is as Conway refused to directly answer a question put to him by Giddings) of £15m. You're looking at a similar cost for an Academy (maybe more, but lets be prudent), so you're then £30m of investment. Lets say they want to develop the West Stand and a few other capital improvements, of say £5m.

This could take what, 5 years of their ownership... maybe more? Lets also assume we retain championship status or have bounced back to the championship.

There are supposedly 5 Stakeholders of the investment vehicle, Hung, Lee, Conway, Parekh and Beane. And the Crynes 20%

Lets say that after a £35m investment, they want a £15m profit before interest and tax. So a £50m sale. That's a heck of a lot of money for our club for starters, but lets continue.

80% of £15m is £12m. Divided by 5 stakeholders, that's £2.4m each. Divided by 5 years to get an annual return each (though shareholdings will not be necessarily be even) you get £480k per year return. Obviously that will have some tax to be deducted along the line.

And there is some likelihood an investment vehicle we cant see the structure of, may have other shareholders or funds involved.

For supposedly wealthy people, who suggest every penny they generate goes back into the "club", that's not a massive return after tax.

and of course there is no guarantee the council will allow them full ownership, there is no guarantee of the academy being built therefore, or even being in the championship.

When you look at what they did at Nice, its not evident what they succeeded in doing other than lucking out to get in the champions league in year 1 and riding off the back of that, a pretty new council stadium and an already agreed to and already commenced state of the art training headquarters.

I think its right to be healthily sceptical and important to pose the questions. Whether they are answered or not. I suspect not.

 

Beane isnt a Director, hes a shareholder.