At the start of each of the last three seasons I've genuinely believed we were about to turn the corner as a club. The start we made three years ago, culminating in the majestic 5-0 away defeat of Birmingham quickly turned to dust. The sheer grit of Flicker's great escape gave rise only to the abject surrender that was last season. And the promise suggested by this year's recruitment of ambitious, enthusiastic up and coming players looks to have petered out, with four defeats in six home games. The soul of the club seems to have died. The biggest mistake in this time, in my humble opinion was the adoption of the austerity policy (as exemplified by the sale of Shackell) and the appointment of Keith Hill. I said this time last year that we needed to wake up, because relegation would lead to us cuttting corners even more and further lowering our targets in terms of where we recruit from. I guess the knowledge that we have had some weird system for identifying targets might partially explain why we have failed to finish up with a real team. I wish we'd left it all to Danny, and trusted his experience and his proven eye for a bargain, rather than giving him a shortlist - if that is what's happened. Danny, Hutchings and Crossley look like the right sort of coaching team to motivate a side, given the right raw material. But we desperately need a REAL leader on the pitch (a kind of lower-rent Neil Redfearn?). Beyond that, I think that only a 'park the bus' mentality for the next few games will help us to stabilise. I hope I'm wrong, but that's the only way I can see us steadying the ship.
I think that the 'statistical' approach is likely to work better for top clubs than for teams like Barnsley. So Barcelona need a striker, and he needs to be able to fit into a style of play which hasn't changed much for the last seven years. They know that David Villa had certain physical, mental and technical qualities, and they're looking to not only replace him but find his upgrade. Combing through Opta stats or whatever might lead them to decide it's a straight fight between, say, Luis Suárez and Robert Lewandowski, and they go for the one who most wants to join/they can most afford. It's basically a real-world version of Football Manager, as other people on here have alluded to. Suárez's pace is 20, but Lewandowski's awareness is 19, and so on. I think that works when you have the cachet of being a top club, a definite style of play. Barnsley don't have either of those things. There will be differences between striker A from S****horpe, and striker B from Dagenham and Redbridge, but it's (in my mind) better left to the judgement of the man whose job depends on whether the player he chooses scores goals or not. People say football has moved on since 1997, and they're half-right. It's still about being able to fuse disparate elements into a team, to motivate them and give them confidence, and asking them to carry out instructions. Good players are more difficult to come by, certainly for Barnsley, and even more difficult to retain, but I still think we have the right man to stabilise us in the long-term. He just needs to know he's trusted, and if the stories coming out about the type of scouting we do are true or close to true, then in my mind Wilson has been undermined. The director-of-football model (which is, by proxy, where we seem to be at) doesn't really work in England. It was a car-crash at Tottenham, and I just feel the lower down you go, the less likely 'modern' methods are to have any success. I can't justify the second half of that last sentence with anything other than good old, blind intuition, but it's what I reckon.
So, the "won't be reliant on high cost, short term loanee" speech we hear every summer is again to prove a load of ******** as soon as their arses go after a poor run of just four games?! Can't wait...
