The cycle of decline

My attack is not on the fans in general. My attack refers to those who are happy to withdraw their financial support by not attending home games or not buying season tickets in order to get their own way. Often these are the same people who criticise Patrick Cryne because he has not broken the bank to buy this player or that manager.

 

We are discussing Barnsley Football Club and I am interested only in how it affects us.

I have noticed that you are fond of quoting other clubs who have inferior budgets to ourselves who are doing better than us. I am sure that there are individual reasons for this that are contained within the arguments that I have listed elsewhere in this thread. Whether it be past stability, building upon the groundwork laid down by a previous manager or a richer owner who has invested more in his search for success. Frankly, I have not done the detailed analysis and I do not intend to. The fact is that over the last 5 years, we have changed managers every year, and this churn is the biggest factor in our continued long term decline. Perhaps you would like to add up how many times the clubs you quote in your examples have sacked their managers in the last 5 years and report back on your findings.

 

Current League One managers and their records:-

http://www.managerstats.co.uk/league-one/


Eleven managers have been at their current clubs less time than Johnson. All of them are above him. Make of that what you will.

 

Bristol City and Preston managed it

 

I have been a season ticket holder for every year in the last 32 years except 5 in the late 80s, 3 when i was away at university and the 2 prior to that when i had a saturday job whilst in sixth form. I have never considered stopping attending, but I have to say that I find your assertion that it is the fans who are fickle about their attendance that are to blame for the mess we are in to be reprehensible. Even though I have renewed every year, the club should never be in a position where they take that for granted, and if I were to choose to spend my disposable income doing something else because of the continued propensity of the people who run the club to make mistake after mistake, then the future fortunes of the club and any decline in them will most certainly not be MY fault.

I find it galling that you seem to believe that the club's management are mere puppets making decisions as best they can in the face of the nasty fickle fans and the horrendous obstacles that such fickle fans throw in their path, and that, no matter how monumentally stupid those decisions are, even without the benefit of hindsight, the most monumental of which was to ditch our last manager after selling us a dream that we had to stick to a long term plan, thus severing in an instant the connection many fans felt they had with the club, we fans have to bow to their superiority, suck it up, carry on paying our money regardless or suffer being cast as the villian of the story.

As already mentioned by quite a few, the fair play rules affect every single one of the clubs in this division. All bar one of them is doing better than we are. Most of them have inferior budgets, in many cases vastly inferior budgets and yet somehow, they seem to manage. Many of those clubs will also have made many stupid mistakes over the years, they do not all have fans that have vastly different outlooks to us, or different capacities of accepting failure. They have their own fickle fans who will allegedly influence their boards decision making. But they are ALL doing better than we are. So whatever the rights and wrongs, Barnsley face no situation that is not faced by every other club, and have boards that are accountable for their decisions, and fans that are fully entitled to choose to spend their money elsewhere.

 

SCMP is a red herring. If we had to adhere to it but no other team in the division did, then it would be of utmost concern. But every club we play against are also governed by the rules of SCMP, it's a level playing field, it's therefore not an issue that is restricting us. In fact, because we attract significantly bigger crowds than a number of other teams in the division, it is legislation that works to our advantage. The majority of teams cannot offer higher wages than us in an attempt to attract players. Because the wage budget is limited to a certain percentage of income, having a rich benefactor doesn't help (although we've got one of those too). We can, however, offer higher wages than most because our income is larger than most.

While it's true that teams in the Championship and the Premier League do not have to adhere to SCMP, they're not our competitors so it is of no concern. Losing out on a potential player who chooses a Championship club does not put us at a disadvantage in respect to the teams in our division, the teams that we play.

Using SCMP as a reason/excuse for our plight is akin to claiming that our troubles stem from playing on grass. Well, everyone plays on grass, so it's not a factor. Everyone has to keep within the rules of SCMP so it's not an issue.

If other teams can put together a squad of experienced players while staying within the rules of SCMP and while operating, in the majority of cases, on gate receipts inferior to our own, then we should be able to too. If we can't, it's not the fault of the rules, it's the staff at our club that need to be questioned.

 

V good point

 

It is indeed a question of perceptions, and how one views things. One man's "fickle" is another man's "discerning"! All I can say is that if I was served a terrible meal in a restaurant, I wouldn't keep going back for more because I'd been promised that within a three year period the chef might improve at his trade! Football has changed - it is a business. The ordinary rules of business can't be suspended just because it is football. There aren't many businesses where the price is paid up front, in the hope that something of merchantable quality might be provided three years down the line!

Fair do's though Red Rain for triggering one of the more interesting debates on here.

 

SCMP may not be an issue if you have already built of team that complies with the rules. Most teams in the division are in this position. They have been living within the rules for a long period. However, It does have an effect if you have been living according to a different set of rules and suddenly have to adapt to a different set. It means that you have to have to sell your better players and get rid of everyone else and build a team from nothing, because the combined salary of those players would take your budget way beyond the budget limits of SCMP. Changing most of the team is not the best way to build. The best way to improve a team is to add just a few players every season to an existing strong core. Adding just a few players who the manager knows will strengthen the team enables the established playing style to remain strong and enables the few to be integrated into that style, which the majority are already comfortable with. In this respect, the sudden jump to SCMP rules is similar to constantly changing your manager and the new guy wanting to construct his own team with his own players. It is better to build gradually than try to change everything at once.

Not only is SCMP an issue in that way, it is also an issue in the way it forces the team into the transfer market at a time when finances are already weak because of a disastrous final season in the league above. The money that the team would have liked to spend on recruiting new players has already been spent on players that failed in the division above, and now have to be sold or gotten rid of at knock down prices leaving little to spend in the transfer market in recruiting their replacements.

For teams already established in the division, you are right that SCMP applies equally to all. For teams coming up from the lower division, which has a version of SCMP which is even harsher, there is little effect. But for teams coming down from the higher division is imposes sudden and game changing conditions.

 

My team is not something that I judge with the same criteria that I would apply to other services. My team is a choice that I made as a callow youth. For me, it has been a life choice, something that I could not change, even if I wanted to. I made that choice when most others in my school chose to support Leeds United, who at the time were at the zenith of the Don Revie years. Whilst we languished in the 4th division, I had to listen to my mates telling me how great things were at the top of the first division, just 20 miles away. My choice was not made because I wanted to chase success. My choice was made because the team represent my town, and whether it is a good town or a bad town it makes no difference. It is the place where I was born, and it is my place. I care passionately about the team and could never base my attendance pattern on the standard that I was watching. Of course, I would like the standard to be better than it is. Of course it hurts me to see that we are so poor. But I know from past experience that the best way to bring about improvement is not to turn your back on the team and deny it your financial support. The best way is to keep supporting until stability returns, and we can begin to build once more.

 

Superb post. Many of us from that same era will be able to totally relate to those sentiments.

 

I agree. But this was a reason/excuse for our performances last season, not this. When Johnson arrived, we'd got a team. That team went on a six game winning run. The fact that we ripped it all up and started again in the summer has nothing to do with SCMP, it's because we chose to do it. We had a core of good players, which only needed a few good additions, but we chose a different route that had nothing to do with SCMP.

The rest of your post again refers to last season, not this. We encountered our problems with the legislation last season, now we're on a level playing field and it can no longer be seen as something that affects us adversely compared to our competitors. In fact, like I pointed out in my previous post, it's an advantage to us as we have bigger crowds than most.

 

That's all well and good, and I am of a similar mind even though I've 'only' been watching for 35 years, but you've got to accept that it isn't the case for many without being derogatory towards those fans. You, and I, are not the people the club must strive to impress, we will attend regardless.

 

Most of my answers to the points that you make are contained within the remarks that I have made elsewhere in this thread and I do not want to repeat myself again. However, the one thing that I would like to address once again is your point that my comments apply to the loyal fans. I am not trying to force people into spending that hard earned cash in a way that they do not want to. I am simply pointing out to people who hold the club close to their hearts, that the effect of withdrawing your financial support is exactly the opposite to the effect that you hope that you are having.

It is frustrating watching a small town football club. Success is a rare beast and it is often a here today and gone tomorrow thing. But most of us did not chose to support Barnsley Football club because we thought that the club would be successful. Most of us chose to support the club because it represents our town. The club will hopefully continue long after the players, staff and owner are long gone. We do not support the people. We support the club, and through it, we support the town where most of us were born. The club represent our heritage and our history. It is too important to me to be something that I can cut from my spending because of temporary lack of form or disagreement with the people who are temporarily in charge of it. As someone else has said, for me it is a lifestyle choice, and after 32 years, I guess that it is for you as well. As someone who has made that choice, it is a constant source of irritation to me that in making decisions like when to sack the manager, I, and the loyal fans like me are the last to be considered. The board is more interested in the floating fans. Those who come and go according to the league position of the team, the fickle fans who are prepared to withdraw their financial support in order to get what they want, but who instead, encourage the board to make bad decisions.

 

They've got to consider those fans though, to increase the fanbase to more than the loyal few.

It's 35 years btw. And I've never lived a single day of my life as a barnsley resident. I was taken by my fatha, who did grow up in barnsley, and have stuck with it.

 

You seem to be suggesting though that the loyal fans tend to have a different opinion on when to sack the manager than the floating fans. I would suggest that, whilst there is a broad range of opinions on whether it is time for the manager to go, the length of time you have been a supporter or the likelihood that you will keep going regardless has no measurable effect on the likelihood of your opinion falling into one camp or the other. When you get to the stage where long standing and loyal fans are of the opinion that it is so **** that they may struggle to renew next time, then perhaps the board has to listen and it is not just the fickle fans they are listening to.

 

Our SCMP allowance dropped by another 10% at the end of last season because of the end of transitional arrangements aimed at clubs dropping from the higher division. This meant that the remaining few members of the second tier team had to go. Specifically, I know that many on here did not rate Cranie, but I did.

It takes 3 years to build a team from scratch, and scratch is where we found ourselves last season. Scratch is where our current manager had to start from. I have already conceded, elsewhere in this thread, that we tried to replace too many players during the summer transfer window. However, I have no inside information about the reasons for this, and as with most things, because I am not privy to all the facts, I am prepared to give the benefit of any doubts that I have to those who know the full story. I guess that is the difference between my position and that of the majority of those who comment on here. I accept that I do not know the full story and am prepared to accept that there were valid reasons for making a decision that I am not aware of. Others are not.

 

There is no chance that my words on here will influence anyone. I am using the BBS as a safety valve, just as hundreds of others do. I am frustrated and I am venting my frustrations, and that is all.

 

I'm aware of that, and I too rated Cranie. I thought he was our best player. I was sad to see him go. But I don't think we can blame our current problems solely on the loss of Martin Cranie.

I agree that it takes time to build a team. However, we are, without any shadow of a doubt, worse than we were last season, by any criteria on which you would like to judge. Building a team over three years doesn't mean you're crap for 3 years then it suddenly all clicks together. There is slow progression, with ups and downs along the way, but we're going backwards.

I'm not privy to what's going on behind the scenes at Oakwell either. How can anyone be? Everyone but the manager has shut the hell up and taken themselves well out of the firing line. Nowt like a bit of solidarity. But I don't think it makes me any less of a fan to want to know what the hell is going on, like why we sack so many managers, why a half decent team was disassembled in the summer, why everyone else in the division appears able to afford experienced players, but seemingly we don't, and why we need £million of capital injecting each year when clubs with much smaller attendances but more experienced players and better football teams don't.

 

Early start for you this morning Mr Jay.
Decent post by the way!