Why A Chinese-American Investor Brought Moneyball To A Sleepy English Town

If Google translate works our town's motto shouldn't be "Spectemur Agendo" but "non amo mutatio"

 

The day supporters of less successful clubs view themselves as customers is the day the club dies. If I am a customer, as someone who has seen three wins in twelve months, I will take my custom elsewhere. As a supporter I'll put up with it.

 

If they did that and I had hundreds of pounds invested in their company and it was a company whos quality of product changed from week to week then I'd take much more interest in what they do

 

well said..
Sublime

 

Just checked. All the information is on the website

https://www.barnsleyfc.co.uk/company-details/

And here's the Who's Who...

BOARDROOM


Co-Chairman: Mr Chien Lee

Co-Chairman: Mr Paul Conway

Director: Ms Grace Hung

Director: Mr Neerav Parekh

Director: Mr James Cryne

Director: Mr Dickson Lee

Chief Executive Officer: Mr Gauthier Ganaye

Finance Director: Mr Robert Zuk

 

I have written down everything that I know so that others can comment on the same basis as I have. If you have additional knowledge, I would appreciate you sharing it so that I can amend my opinion on the basis of that new knowledge. Surely, part of the reason that we have a forum is to collect and share knowledge and opinions.

 

And do you think they give a **** if you do that? No multi-million pound company/business/sporting club can please every individual.

 

What you 'know' is absolutely no different to anything else that is in the public domain. You've made quite clear your scepticism bordering on distrust of the new regime, so much so that you've contradicted yourself - previously you've asked what the point would be of new ownership wanting to buy the land, implying that would signal dubious intent - more recently you've alluded to the fact that the new owners have not (yet) completed the purchase of that same land as some sort of evidence to their own dubious intent.

When you try and make events fit your narrative, there's not much scope for debate.

 

To be honest if I was in Mr Lee's shoes I doubt I'd be throwing vast amounts at a push for the premiership. I'd be following a plan a plan that would be getting our young talent experience in the lower leagues by loaning them out then bringing them back In hopefully with enough experience to make the step up to championship level and beyond
All done at a fraction of the cost it would take to have one push for the premiership by throwing millions at something that is a gamble when all said and done ...whist at the same time stabilising the club's position and still generating income by not putting its future at risk
Hang on a minute I've heard that said before somewhere

 

Not only do they not own the ground, they did not seem to think that there was much point in owning the ground, or redeveloping it either.

As I said at the time, I am interested in their motives. In their original press conference, the phrase, "We are not going to do anything crazy", came up many times. I guess it hinges around what you think that phrase meant in the context that it was used. Personally, I think that it meant that they were going the continue along the path that had been set by the previous owners. That suggests that any investment will be limited, that they will hope to be successful through clever buying and clever management and that their focus will continue to be on improving young players. Now if those sentiments had been expressed by different people, I would have been saying bravo. That is exactly how I want my club to be run. But our new owners are not local people with limited capital who love our football club and who are in it for the love. Our new owners are people who have no interest in Barnsley other than whether they can turn a profit from it. Having reached that conclusion, I wonder what their motives really are, because no-one can turn a profit from any football club that plays in the Championship. So given that the policy they are using for running the club is unlikely to result in promotion, and given that they have to gain promotion in order to turn a profit one way or another, I ask myself why they have invested at all. Motives you see.

Clearly, I do not know the answer to that question, so the rest is mere conjecture, but what if they just wanted to gain experience of football in England on the cheap. What if their aim of investing in Barnsley FC is mainly to gain that experience prior to investing in another club that they think is better placed to give them the returns on their investment that they want, and Barnsley is just dipping a toe in the water before moving on. What happens to our club if we are just the throwaway part of a bigger plan. I have no evidence for any of this of course and the only substance to the whole thing is the lack of coherence in their visible thought processes.

 

Yes this is how I feel about it. Disaster to me would be when a club goes down with overheads they can no longer manage as a result. Hartlepool a recent example. For the most part we have it would appear run at our league one budget in the championship so we would be fine in that regard.
As for a sporting context as supertyke said it is the worst outcome but I don't like the word disaster as that feels final. We have gone down before it would be naive to think it won't happen again at some stage.

 

I have no knowledge other than that which is in the public domain and I have never claimed that I have. I have interpreted that knowledge as we are all entitled to do, but that is all that I have done. I make no claim that I am right. I have just asked questions based upon missing information. Why don't you try to make events fit your narrative and we may be able to debate who is right.

 

But who owns the club?

 

You mean like deciding that not owning the land around Oakwell can mean 2 very different things depending on what I want it to look like ? If you move the target with such impunity then debate is pointless.

You like to dress things up in flowery language, but at the end of the day once you cut through the bluster it's mainly waffle & bullsh1t. I refer you to the original precis.

 

Whilst using the not crazy phrase copiously I thought Mr Conway set out quite clearly what the intention is. That is to increase the clubs revenue with a view to increased investment as that revenue grows and comes in. They do intend to progress but within means - and the means has to come first. So patient progression with patience the key.

 

Lack of coherence? What lack of coherence?

They are basically saying the same as Mr Cryne used to say, try to let the club live within it's means without developing huge debts and putting a dark shadow over the club. Their vision to me was plainly coherent, they aim to use the same type of player recruitment alongside the traditional scouting methods, trying to get the balance right. They aim to try and develop the club, increasing revenue etc through increased commercial activity / sponsorship. Using their extensive business portfolios they intend to increase the reach of the club to appeal to china / india and spoke about doing this on a year by year basis trying to increase income which can then allow the club to develop on the field.

That to me is the sort of business model I like. Silly money has ruined football, with their strategy at least we are keeping things more real. If we do achieve any success via this model, I will gain a lot more satisfaction than if our Billionaire owner had come in and effectively bought the league..what enjoyment is there in that sort of football? Success for me will be firstly, retaining our championship status this year and building on that in forthcoming years. For me we have had a decent transfer window and strengthened the squad, adding some new options for the remainder of the season. I firmly expect us to achieve that first step of staying in this league.

Looking forward to QPR... Keep that fast pressing pace to our game, closing players down like we did to Fulham in 1st half and use our Subs wisely, we can for the first time since 1950 get something down there.

Youuu reds!!!

 

So why do you think the new owners do not want to own the land or develop the stadium?

 

How do you know that ?

They stated in the press conference that they'd be looking to take on the assets.

 

What I heard from Conway was surprise that the question had been raised, followed by a statement that they still had 6 months to decide. A subsequent question about redeveloping the stadium was also greeted with surprise, followed by the statement the the stadium had adequate current capacity and he liked the stadium. I mean, you may have heard it differently to me, but it seemed like he had little interest in acquiring ownership.

My position on stadium ownership is this. I do not think that it is neccessary for a football club to own its own stadium, though I do have questions about how redevelopment is financed if it does not. Indeed, if a club does not own its own stadium, it cannot mortgage that asset in order to find capital to chase an unaffordable dream. However, with the size of the organisations we are talking about as our new owners, we are hardly talking about that sort of marginal investment decisions are we.

 

After reading the article - and the Chinese and India connections - a phrase from the Jaws film popped into my head .....

........ "we're going to need a bigger boat"