This Tuesday Q&A with Stendel, Zuk, Murphy

O.k

 

Sorry, Gally asked for some questions for Stendel/Zuk/Murphy and I thought that I would try to be helpful. Which one of those 3 gentlemen are you?

If the duties and responsibilities of the Chief Coach do not include a direct responsibility for finding and signing the right players, if his suggestion that we need more experience in certain areas is ignored and he is basically told what his squad will be, then how can the CEO judge his performance as a Chief Coach on the basis of his playing results. Surely, it is much more appropriate given the situation that I have described that the CEO judges the performance of the Chief Coach on his ability to improve the players, and the value that he has added to them as represented by the profit that the club earns when they are sold. If those are the criteria that he will be using, why not tell the fans that? Frankly, the CEO is caught. If he tells the meeting that the Chief Coach is judged on results, the subsidiary question is, well why has he not had more say in the players we have signed then. If he tells the meeting that the Chief Coach is judged on his ability to improve the players, then that will suggest that results do not matter unduly and the fans will react accordingly. Or the CEO could have a completely new answer, and we will all learn something new. I am not prejudging here, as you seem to be doing.

If the CEO says that the club missed out on some targets. If the CEO says that we missed out on a few experienced players. If the CEO says that we intend to try to put that right in the next transfer window, it will lead on to a wider discussion on the subject of why we missed out (selling club would not agree a fee or the player could not agree terms), and how if our league position is poor/bad in January, we would have any better chances of attracting our targets then rather than in the last window. Once again, I have not prejudged how the discussion will pan out.

My guess is that if we lose £6m in revenue, as was noted by Paul Conway the last time we were relegated, the reduction in player's pay does not cover that sum. If not, then players have to be sold, or the club incurs increased financial losses, which have to be covered in a different way. Once again, the opening question inevitably leads to subsequent questions about funding the losses.

I have long believed that the academy is not paying its way, and that it is a better plan would be to use the money that we spend on the academy on transfer fees for young/promising players from other clubs. However, I am making that statement blind. I do not have the full picture of costs and I am not sure how the academy is credited for players who go on to play in the first team or on what basis any transfer fees received are allocated between academy and club. Now, for most fans, this is dry stuff, but I would expect the Company Secretary to have a professional interest in these matters, after all the club should be doing things in the most cost effective manner.

If we reached the Premier League, the players that we would require in order to compete in that league and the pay costs of those players would wipe out all of the £120m additional revenue that we would earn. If we were relegated after our first season, the parachute is spent paying the wages of those players until they reach the end of their contracts or are sold. We went into Administration less than 4 years after our last visit to the Premier League. If it truly was the land of milk and honey that you suggest, would that have happened?

I am asking about their subsequent investment in order to clarify their intentions and to contrast their investment intentions with those of Patrick Cryne. Patrick Cryne had loaned the club more than £6m by the time he sold it. He did not take that money out of the club. Instead, he converted it to share capital, meaning that no-one could take it out. At the time that Patrick Cryne sold the club, it had £5m in the bank and was owed £5m in transfer fee installments. Effectively, the new owners bought a company with £10m of spare cash. Yes, they have invested in players, but where has that investment come from and how much of that cash/debt balance was spent on funding the losses last season? If we go back along that path, how will trading losses be funded next time?

 

Int first question when we getting a new scoreboard?

 

Head Coach.

 

Pedant.

 

My only question is what is the plan?

We know what they have done so far in terms of player signings but what do they want to get out of Barnsley Football Club? All I know is that the club aren't going to do anything daft and that we've just had the best transfer window in the history of the club.

I spend most of my working week with private equity businesses and, with hardly any exceptions, the plan is to buy a business, improve operational and financial efficiency and then sell within a three to five year window.

Given that, unlike the prior owners, John Dennis and Patrick Cryne, these guys have no affinity with the club or the town, this is a financial play. As a fan it would be nice to know their intentions.

 

You cannot allocate a transfer fee both to buying new players and paying academy costs. Neither John Stones nor Mason Holgate would have been worth the fees that we got for them unless they had been playing first team football. It is clear to me that there has to be a formula to determine how much of any fee is allocated to the academy and how much to the club. If I was in Zuk's position, that is what I would do, because he is responsible for the club making properly justified and accurate financial decisions.

Please excuse me for being rude, but my original reply was to Gally and the questions were for the 3 gentlemen from the club. Why are you even getting involved?

 

I only wanted to know if he’d ever watched any red on red

 

Just correcting you.

 

It hasn’t taken long for you to revert to your true obnoxious colours.
The final paragraph above is nearly as bad as Jay’s last night where he told a fellow poster he was a better writer.

 

To be honest mate. A set agenda and questions up front lead to a better response. Yes the responses are pre thought out. But believe me better than a free for all. The times I’ve been to meetings where so and so are going to stand up and ask the tough questions invariably don’t get asked because some clam up and some do not like to stand up in front of a crowd. So You end up with someone hogging it just to get their point across because they don’t like the response. Happens on here ALL THE TIME. and I can be as guilty as anyone else. If anyone thinks Stendel will criticise his employers in front of fans. Dream on. There will be probably be a short period of open questioning. But some of the stuff that gets asked is sometimes embarrassing and not appropriate for the meeting. Most present then think Sit the f——-k down but darent say it.
Do I assume you will be attending. If not Gally is a good way of getting your questions asked.

 

re Questions

Gally - have mentioned it before -

100's of empty seats at many matches - 100's of children/adults little spare money - not enough to pay to get in.
Can the club offer reduced/free rates?

Possibly BFC appoint someone to do a feasibility study on this??

 

Nuts!

 

To Mr Stendel (without inferring any criticism on any players within the squad)
1 - Are you happy with the squad?
2 - Do you think it is capable of doing well in the Championship?
3 - Did you want players with more experience in addition to the players we have signed?

 

With all due respect Loko, you have been rude in this thread, Red Rain has not.

For reasons I can't explain, you often answer on the behalf of the club, often give an opinion as though it is an official club answer, often give answers when most others ask questions. I'm only surprised you haven't been picked up on it before.

 

Edit - 4 - Do you believe we have enough cover in all positions?

Edit two: They're all sort of the same question. I, along with many others, have been critical of the owners due to the players we've sold, the signings we've made and the current make up of the squad. I've concluded, maybe mistakenly, that our manager, like many of us, would have liked more cover, more experience, possibly more quality. But maybe that isn't the case at all, maybe he's perfectly happy with the squad and he thinks we've just had a couple of bad performances, which can happen to the best of teams, particularly in August. In which case, criticism of the board is entirely unwarranted if they provided the manager with what he wanted and he's happy. So I'm trying to ask, without asking him to criticise any players we have, which he obviously isn't going to do, for very good reason, if he's OK with what we've got and if he isn't, what additions he would have liked. If you have time and can think of a better way to do that...

If he is happy, we really should lay off Conway et al