Interview with Danny in The Times

I'm angry again.

 

Is this in today's paper mate?

 

It is indeed.

 

And I'm angry they gave him the job in the first place.

 

Me too if they had the intention of just dropping him at the first opportunity.

 

Don't suppose you have a bigger image? I'd love to read it, but can't.

Thanks.

 

Full transcript here

In the same office, in the same ground, beneath the same stands his team and that giddy, gilded season of lightness helped pay for, Danny Wilson posed a question: “Why can’t we build a dream again?” The answer was cold; a 9.30am knock on the same door seven days later, Barnsley’s chairman and chief executive fidgeting outside, the squirming sorrow, the words of thanks and another ending.

On Thursday morning, Wilson was sacked. The week before, after Oldham Athletic had been beaten 1-0, he was asked in his press conference about the play-offs. “We’re not unrealistic, but it can be done,” the manager responded, couched with a laughing reminder that Barnsley’s away form was s***.” Then came two defeats, the echo of footsteps in the corridor. The knock.

Even as he spoke of dreams, of persuading people “to have that emotional pull of Oakwell again”, of taking a team apart and packing it with youth, of his memories of 1997 when Barnsley reached the highest echelon of English football for the first and only time in their history, Wilson had an inkling. He has managed more than 1,000 professional matches and his instincts are honed.

“I felt it; you pick up a sixth sense,” he said by telephone that night (he was having dinner with Karen, his wife), but you also hope you’ll be able to persevere, take that bit of flak and get through it. When you build something, you know you’ll have to accept some pain. Sometimes that pain comes in results.”

Wilson emptied his desk, said his goodbyes. After 14 months of intensity, “the shutters come down very, very quickly”, he said. “It’s strange. You probably spend more time with players than with your own family, but football moves on. It’s very sad because my affection for Barnsley is well known, but I’ve got to move on too.”
February 3, 2015; one of those frigid nights that infiltrates the bones, but the Bovril was scorching and beside the beautiful old West Stand, Adrian McNally talked about location and meaning, football, music and home. He is a musician, a producer and arranger with The Unthanks, whose glorious, dreamy vocals are rooted in the northeast, but he is a Barnsley lad and a Barnsley supporter.

The Unthanks have just released a new album, Mount the Air, and between that, planning their tour and two young children (Rachel Unthank, his wife, and Becky, her sister, are singers), sleep had not featured much in McNally’s life. Oakwell is a release. “I only have a feeling for two places on the planet,” he said. “One is Was****er in the Lake District, which makes me go wobbly at the knees, and the other is here. It’s as close to a spiritual home as possible.”
He first came with Max, his father, at the age of five. There was a metal lip at the back of the stand, “and I’d perch on it, leaning on him for the whole match. I think that’s everything to do with my nostalgia; being so close to him, that being our main point of contact.

“Coming back is very emotional. If I can get here two or three times a season I’ll have done well, but it’s like going to your mum and dad’s or seeing an old mate. You don’t really need to catch up. I struggle to care so much about the young men on the pitch, but it’s definitely good for the soul. It nourishes me in a way that nothing else does.”

McNally was a season ticket-holder when Wilson led Barnsley to promotion 18 years ago. “Was the game against Bradford [City] when we went up the happiest moment of my life?” he said. “Until getting married and having kids it probably was. Except I was in floods of tears for the whole match,
hyperventilating, because the prospect seemed so unreal. And then that Premier League season was like being as light as air. Barnsley was such a happy place.”

After the Oldham match, we waited for Wilson outside the press room. McNally gave him a copy of his CD; it turned out that Carrie, Wilson’s daughter, has seen them play live and when he showed it to Karen later she remembered them from a TV appearance with Jools Holland. He likes his music — “my second love,” he said — and he invited McNally back for a bite to eat, a chat.

February 5. A tour of the first-team dressing-room at Oakwell, soup and chilli in the canteen and into Wilson’s office. His second spell at Barnsley began in December 2013, but his legacy is in the girders, the academy and the training ground. After 15 years away (Sheffield Wednesday, Bristol City, Milton Keynes Dons, Hartlepool United, Swindon Town, Sheffield United), he told McNally that he still felt the itch.

“It was always in my mind,” Wilson said. “I felt I had something to make up for because I’d left, that I’d let some people down emotionally. When I got asked again I just thought I had to do it. People told me not to, but it felt right. I just thought, ‘You only have to get it going a little bit and all that feeling will start to swell again’.
Barnsley were at the foot of the Sky Bet Championship and would be relegated. “I didn’t think we’d have a chance anyway,” Wilson said. “But I also thought we could strip everything back, get in some young ones, grow together and have a real good go. Whether I’m there to see the end of it doesn’t matter, but I’d like to start it again. I like a challenge.”

It had been the same when he first arrived at Barnsley in 1993, initially as player-coach. “It culminated with the Premier League, but leading up to that was a story in itself,” Wilson said. “Three sides of the ground were shut because of the Taylor report and we were playing in front of tiny crowds.
“We went to Bromsgrove Rovers in the FA Cup and were 1-0 down with a few minutes to go. There was a stone wall around the pitch and our fans were going bananas, chipping off little bits of stone and throwing them at us.” Barnsley won 2-1.

Promotion was accompanied by strains of “It’s Just like watching Brazil”. “From being on the floor as a club to getting up there within three years, a bunch of nobodies, really, with a bit of luck and a few good results, was a dream come true,” Wilson said. “I’ll never forget it. Not that I’m allowed to. Guys who had been made redundant or lost their jobs in the mines . . . they were so full of football.”

A few days on, between record launches and sessions for BBC Radio 6 Music, McNally sent an email. “Meeting Danny meant more to me than any of the Hollywood actors we’ve been lucky enough to meet,” he wrote. “. . . he’s the bloke that achieved for my town what has only been achieved once in its history and so I think lots of us are emotional about him for that reason.

“The town was such a buzzing place during that time and the whole community, regardless of football interest, benefited from the positive energy and confidence. If there isn’t a statue of him in the town centre before I’m dead, I’m leaving my earthly possessions to pay for one.”
February 12. “When that knock came on the door, I knew straightaway,” Wilson said. “At the same time, it leaves you with a bit of disbelief. It hurts, but the one thing I’ve learnt is that it’s pointless arguing the toss. You try to leave with as much dignity as possible.”

He and Karen spent Friday with close friends. On Saturday, they watched Laurie, their son, play for Buxton against Blyth Spartans. At 55, Wilson is still a young manager. “The ambition burns very brightly within me,” he said. “I want to get back in straightaway. I don’t need a rest.” Does he still hanker after the Premier League? “Absolutely,” he said. “You’ve got to have a dream, haven’t you?”

You do, but when he spoke to McNally, Wilson acknowledged that the landscape had shifted. “The dream goes with the money most of the time now, not the emotion,” he said. Ben Mansford, Barnsley’s chief executive, explained that the decision was taken because “some of the results and the performances have not been acceptable from a business perspective”.

There has been no balm for Wilson’s itch. “There’s that empty feeling, because it feels unfinished,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a sense of closure. Coming back answered a few of my own questions, but I think I had a lot more to offer. I know we could have been a very good partnership.”

McNally was dismayed. “Danny wasn’t just trying to win points,” he wrote. “He was trying to rebuild from youth and create financial value in the team so that players would make the club money. This is the first time in my life that I have felt alienated and disconnected from Barnsley FC.”

It feels like a sad place to end, but football is nothing if not abrupt. As with good music, we feel it in our hearts and we feel it for Wilson, for those who adore him and what he represents. The man who made Barnsley mount the air.

 

I have heard you can buy a large version from a place called a newsagents ! So for being sarcasic couldn't help it.

 

Can't believe you thought it would end any differently , and you lads who were kids in 1997 have seen one of your boyhood heros come back and its all gone pear shaped like it inevitably would . Should always leave memories for what they are and not try and recreate them.

 

I thought he might get more opportunity than he has. For me, he hasn't failed - you can't fail if you get sacked half way through something. It remains unfinished. You never know.

 

Any chance of a readable version? Or do I have to buy the ****ing times?

 

That's made me relatively despondent again.

 

Me too. Maybe even more so. I was angry & frustrated last week. Now I'm just sad.

 

He was failing though.

I agree he was sacked at least one game too soon. But a poor result/performance against Crawley would have seen the majority turn for sure. Would we have got a result there under Wilson? Like you said we'll never know

 

I've copied & pasted the transcript above you lazy communist b.stard.

 

He was sacked one season too soon. Regardless of the result at Crawley.

Yeah, performances were bad. So what? To go through change & do things differently you always hit rocky ground.

 

Thanks. You must be at work

 

Going to a workmates funeral today , sad day and sad to see Danny leave

 

Is it that obvious?

 

I'm angry too that for the image they had to use the stereotypical image of Oakwell by showing the west stand.