Ditto. Maybe next time we develop a player of the quality of Hourihane we can persuade him to accept a contract three times less than he can earn elsewhere and cloud cuckoo land will have become reality.
I Like the look of Payne personally. But judging on our last few seasons is it fair to say that the spreadsheet doesn't work for signing strikers like it does other positions?
The whole argument is based on this.... and a ball hasnt even been kicked in anger yet... We implode year after year ....amongst ourselves
That definitely crossed my mind. It may be though that all methods of player identification have a lower success rate when it comes to strikers. At the end of the day, it still found us a 20 a season man in Winnall. None of our previous "systems" had managed that, in all the time I'd been supporting us.
i love the way that scratching around the lower leagues and places in Scotland most people couldn't find on a map is some great strategy all of a sudden. If this years crop turn out to be good enough to see us all right in the championship I'll perhaps have some faith in it, until then it looks more like a man drowning then waving from where I'm stood.
Paisley, on the outskirts of Glasgow and Partick, part of Glasgow itself, are pretty easy to find on a map.
What part of I agree with the strategy don't you understand. Just because your particular argument is pretty hollow and shallow doesn't mean I am moaning just that thinking that we can only sign dud players like Lita and Kennedy outside it is daft. Neil Redfearn would have been too old. David Currie would have been too old. De Zeeuw would have been too old. They were ok players in fact possibly slightly better than Cole Kepewka... Also our currently strategy Is not the best we have ever had. Clearly the one in operation under Wilson was better which mixed youth development and experience. It also rewarded us financially as it made money and got us promoted to the Premiership. The one under Hunter which produced our best ever team was better again blended youth and experience. You could even argue that the one Machin and Collins was better given that we regularly finished higher than we do now in the same league by pretty much spending nowt. Football didn't start 10 years ago as you know. In terms of our current strategy what has it achieved thus far? A very successful 2016. In part this was achieved by abandoning the strategy and signing Hammill whilst chucking money at a load of loan signings after the 'plan and poor management left us at the bottom of L1. In L1 over a cycle of a few years you would 'expect' us to get promoted given that we are one of the biggest and financially powerful teams in that League. Of course this doesn't always work but given their advantages even Sheffield United got promoted eventually. It also won us a cup. That was a great day but at the same time it's a cup that Carlisle have won a couple of times and again we used financial advantage to do so just look at the scorers in that match. Turning to last season. It gave us an ok season in the Championship and a fairly disastrous 2017. Finishing 14th was good compared to the previous 10 years in the grand scheme of things it was no better than ok. Bobby Collins once got sacked for finishing 11th in the same league to put it into historical context. None of that makes me anti the club or anti the plan. In fact rationally the plan is the only way a club like ours can survive in the shark infested waters of the championship with parachute money and foreign 'investors' gambling with the future of other clubs. It makes sound business sense off the pitch which *could translate to long term success on it. Thus far the business side of things has gone well and on the pitch we have made real significant progress. We have also made some mistakes around contracting that have cost us and we have looked to rectify this with our latest batch of recruits. Post January is a test of the long term viability of operating the plan at this level. I hope we succeed as I can't see any alternative and it's genuinely exciting to see young untried players develop with us then move forwards. It's fair to see at the moment the jury is out. Our signings last season were patchy at best with only MacDonald really being an unqualified success. They arrived in a team that had a strong core and had time to blend in but still by and large struggled. This year we have no core and they will be thrown in the deep end to sink or swim. Some will thrive some won't. Or problem is that we need a something like 90 percent success rate on the signings which will be very difficult to achieve. The crucial thing for us ( though I both hate to admit it and it saddens me) is the loan market. If we recruit well in that market we may have a chance of survival which in turn may allow us to further strengthen and build on a new core of players with a years development and experience under our belts. If we manage this then Hecky should have a statue built outside the town hall. There's nothing wrong with the plan or defending it but chuntering on about Lita or Kennedy is both facile and counter productive and doesn't further your/our argument in any way. It's just as bad/counter productive as those who whinge at every opportunity Onwards and upwards. Sent from my iPad using Barnsley FC BBS Fan Forum mobile app
You call it scratching around. Others call it targeting the best talent in lower leagues and Scotland, and investing some significant money in their recruitment. Each to their own. Guess none of us really know. Some see it as exciting and look forward to seeing what happens, others feel the opposite and believe it's a disaster. Neither opinion is right or wrong.
A balanced post in general but it's wrong to compare a team of Bobby Collins era to now. The playing field has changed because of two simple things. sky money and the premier league
I take the point. Though you have to look at the historical context to compare the two. The Collins team played in the year of the strike. The town was literally being attacked by the forces of Thatcherism. We had also alienated our core support by our attitude towards striking miners. The following year we were offering the chance to sit on the managers bench for a 100 quid we were so skint. Crowds had collapsed as people could barely afford to eat let alone go to the footie. I'd say these 'disadvantages' though different were equally as potent as Sky money or the Premiership ( imo of course). Sent from my iPad using Barnsley FC BBS Fan Forum mobile app
I agree. What I saw was a rough round the edges type and slightly raw. I liked what i saw too. What I also could see was loads of championship defenders struggle against him. Because they didn't know how to handle him. I was gutted for him when he got injured. He could become a dangerous player for us and inthink he deserves that chance Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
I might be wrong but I don't think that winnall was from the spreadsheet. I think that Patrick cryne himself highlighted winnall and funded the signing rather than him coming through the same way that the other spreadsheet players did. I think you're right though that signing strikers isn't as easy as signing other players
Does anyone know the story of why he was loaned out last season when it seemed as though there might be opportunities for him to play for us?
Did it get us promoted? Or did breaking the plan to sign Hammill and a slew of expensive loanees get us promoted? Look at the scorers in the play off final. It's not quite so binary is it? Sent from my iPad using Barnsley FC BBS Fan Forum mobile app
The comment i replied to was "If we are saying the spreadsheet has identified every player since 2014, what's the success/failure rate?" I believe my response was valid to that particular comment
Not sure how that translates into saying it got us promoted and that from someone who supports it. Sent from my iPad using Barnsley FC BBS Fan Forum mobile app
Correct... we were rock bottom of the league and had lost at Altrincham. But all the blame was on Lee Johnson, Which was stealthily encouraged . Where in fact It was LJ with his hands tied, that knew the only way to climb the league. was to break our ...self imposed budget.. and bring in better quality and experience, which then enabled us to kick on.