There has been a lot of rubbish written on this site about budgets, and how Patrick Cryne is controlling and restricting said budget for player’s wages. Sadly, there will not be many potential contributors interested in the budgeting process, but for the open minded this is what budgets are and how they are used. Before the start of each financial year, the board and heads of departments get together in order to discuss their plans for the year. Those in charge of sales and sales revenue will table their estimates for the amount of revenue from each of the many different sources. In the case of Barnsley FC, the sources will be match day tickets, season tickets, boxes and corporate entertaining, advertising, sponsorship etc etc. These figures will be gone through in great detail and explanations and justifications sought for every assumption. They will assume the club is knocked out in the first round of both cup competitions and will assume a mid-table finish in the league. In other words, the will be prepared prudently. It is unlikely that any player sales will be included as that source of revenue is so unpredictable. The amount and size of the sales budget will determine how much can be spent in all other budgets. There will be those who argue that it should be otherwise, that the club should spend more than can be justified within the sales budget, that we have a cash pile sitting in our bank account that should be allocated to player wages, rather than for transfer fees alone. Please read on. When I consider the amount that a player will be costing the club in wages and his on-costs, I always look at 50% of the transfer fee per year. So a player that is signed on a 3 year contract will cost the club 1 ½ times his fee in wages over that period. When assessing whether it can afford that sum, the club must look forward beyond the current budget to the budgets of next year and the year beyond. Who knows what our revenue will be; who knows what division we will be playing in. That risk is all on top of the risk that is associated will all transfers, the risk that the player will not be a success. We all know about Iain Hume, a player we signed for £1m and who was put out of the game. The lesson learned was a painful one. The lesson was that you can lose £1m transfer fee and the £1½m in associated wages in an instant. In my view, Mr Cryne learned more about running a football club from the Hume story than you will read in all the books of football management. Essentially, running a football club is about managing risk and reward in a challenging environment. Unless you accept that, and are comfortable with accepting that, then you should not be anywhere near the management of a football club. That is why the club has to manage its wages budget within the on-going financial discipline of its Revenue Budget. There are those who insist that Barnsley are a selling club, a club whose only aim is to buy players, improve them and sell them on. Our player acquisition strategy is certainly to buy young, not only because these players are easier to improve, but also because their wages are more likely to fit in our pay budgets and wages structure, when a £1m acquisition probably will not. At the time when Stones and Mawson were sold, there was an argument that they were sold because the club was running short of cash. This is no longer the case. The club will have a solid financial position that will help to protect it from the risks that I have outlined above. The most recent sales have been because players have been unwilling to sign extended contracts on terms that the club can afford (see above). In that case, there are few alternatives open to the club. It can either sell, or it can let the players contract terminate when the player will leave for nothing. Many contributors accuse the club of mismanaging player contracts. I do not agree. No matter how long a contract may be, it will surely terminate at some future time, when the decision making process is exactly as described above. Our newly established financial cushion has given us the leeway to offer 3 year contracts instead of 2 year contracts, but they will still run out. Now clearly we are all fans, and even more clearly fans do not spent their hard earned corn in order to listen to lectures on financial prudence from the owner and managers of their club. They want to be inspired, but most of all they want their team to win. Nevertheless, this is what is bound to be going on behind the scenes. You see, someone has to be the one who does not get carried away, who has to think of the longevity of the club, who has to say no when someone suggests we put the whole lot on red. There has to be that sort of person, otherwise there would not be a Bulletin Board to discuss things on, because there would not be a Barnsley FC. I will end this as I always seem to end my contributions. PATIENCE.
We also signed Ashley Ward for a million quid and flogged him fo 4 times that so I'm declaring ******** bingo on Ian Hume.
So in short then Patrick cryne as sole owner does decide on the budget and his employees work to that. I'm not sure how the other few paragraphs in any way say that this isnt the case.
We had risk managers where I worked. With the knowledge and skills they have they can save any Company or Organisation an absolute fortune in cost avoidance. Very interesting piece Red Rain.
No doubt Super Tyke and his boyfriend Conan will find mass faults in this thread and turn it into a 'we think the owner is a fraud' thread....... By the way, a great post!!
The Ashley Ward signing was before Mr Cryne took over. I was illustrating what Mr Cryne has learned from his time of ownership and how it has affected his thinking. There is nothing like taking a big risk and seeing it fail to pay off to change your attitude to future risk taking. Mr Cryne has picked up a lot of bills and paid them from his own resources during his time of ownership. I would hope that he has learned valuable lessons as a result. Of course, I know nothing of his thinking personally, I do not know him, but the Hume incident seemed to be a turning point in the way that the club was run. The club seemed to turn to a new way of operating, a way that offered less risk of crushing losses, a way that put the club on the same side of the fence as the players. Whatever the players say about loving the club, theirs is a short career and they have to maximise their earnings. The way that the club currently operates helps them to do so, but it also helps the club financially. Both player and club are pulling in the same direction. Players are happy to sign for us and to give of their best whilst they are here because they know that we both have the same goals. To improve them and to sell them on so that they can maximise their earnings elsewhere. There seem to be many on here who believe that we have the potential to be a Manchester United, to compete at the very top of the national game. When their ambitions are frustrated, they turn their ire on their nearest and dearest, those who have given most to their cause. They accuse them of not giving it all. Frankly, it would be far easier if they went off and supported another club with ambitions that match their own, because Barnsley FC never has been and never will be a team capable of competing at the very top of the game. Unless you accept the limitations of supporting a small town club, then you will tear yourself apart in your frustration and simply alienate those who do most for the club. By all means support the club, but remember where you come from. PATIENCE.
I do not bracket your contributions to this forum with those of Conan, who is I believe, something of a lost cause. Nevertheless, there is a bitterness about your contributions when it comes to Patrick Cryne and I am not sure why. He undoubtedly saved the club when it was at its deepest point of despair and he has continued to fund the club when it has been in difficulties since then. His foresight in splitting the Land and Buildings from its playing and trading side has meant that when he is gone, no future owner can get the club into the depths of despair that it found itself in when it went into Administration. In many ways, his tenure of ownership has been a hugely beneficial one. And yet, you cannot bring yourself to grant him any credit whatsoever. There is a suspicion that it is all down to your own frustration and in fact Mr Cryne has really not done much to antagonise you. Please enlighten me.
I have granted him a lot of credit. Patrick cryne has done some great things for Barnsley FC and the vast majority of his decisions have been with the club's best interests at heart (I say that because undoubtedly a few decisions big or small will be made in his own self interest as they would by anyone). My biggest complaint is and always will be that when one man has absolute power then mistakes will be made because nobody can challenge him. Is that a dig at Patrick cryne? No. Is it an issue with the setup of the club where we are owned solely by one person who has power to make ALL decisions if he so wants? Yes. Ideally I wouldn't want Patrick cryne (or his family) to leave or sell the club to anyone. I would want him to dilute his power by selling shares to a second and third party in order to have two or three people making decisions rather than one person. Anyway my post in this thread was simply that as sole owner then big decisions such as how much money hecky can have are made by Patrick cryne regardless of how he comes to those decisions.
A company is owned by the shareholders, but the decisions and policies are formulated by the managing director in consultation with the board. If the shareholders are not happy with his decisions, they can remove the Managing Director, but the shareholders do not run the company even though they own it. Of course, it is not working like that at Barnsley FC at the moment. We do have a managing director, a CEO if you like (Americanisation), but in a company that is owned by one man, who is also the source of additional capital when required, he surely has to have a say in how the club is run. But there is a fundamental misunderstanding at the heart of you objection to the way that the club is run. The club is not run by one man. It is just that one man is the figurehead, a go to person when anyone has an issue or a complaint. All companies have them. Someone with a sign on his desk saying the buck stops here. That does not mean that he does not consult his fellow directors and stakeholders. It simply means that he takes the final decision, and every company, every organisation must have someone who takes the final decision and takes responsibility for it no matter how the organisation is constituted. I have explained the thinking concerning the clubs policies in other contributions to this thread. That thinking is, I believe, a reasoned one which is the result of a thorough analysis of the club's position. What you are demanding is that all reasoning and policy is thrown away in favour of the Viv Nicholson school of management and you are using false logic about Mr Cryne to justify your contention. Come on, lets have some real thinking on this one rather than just, Mr Cryne is holding the club back.
