Minority Report 2019-20 Talking Finance 5

Nail on head.

 

I believe that they will eventually sell Barnsley FC. In order to do that, and do it at a profit, the club needs to be worth more at the time of sale than it cost them to buy it. I do not see anything wrong with that, do you. If they get more for the club, then they will have had to improve it. We will worry about the next owner when we get there.

The evidence for the long term plan is what this series has been about. I believe that buy young, improve and sell is evidence, especially when every other club concentrates purely on today. I believe that the investment in the academy is evidence, it could easily be closed with a £500k saving. I believe that investment in the backroom staff and the subscription to the facilities of the data provider is evidence. Those expenses could be saved if they wanted to be short sighted.

I guess the biggest thing is the drive to be different. I do not see how the club can compete if it does things in exactly the same way as every other club. Other clubs have either parachute payments or owners who are prepared to subsidise their club. It looks like we do not. The answer is to try to be more clever, and finding talent before anyone else is both different and clever. However, we have to wait before we find out if it is going to be effective. That is where I am at the moment.

 

Could you point me in the direction of investment in the academy please.

 

If you believe that the market for players is an efficient market place, then if you buy better players, those players will cost more in wages. That is the problem isn't it. We do not have the money to compete in an efficient market place. We have to find a market place that is less efficient.

 

No. All that I can tell you is that they have not closed it down, and that, in itself is significant. They could close it down. They could save £500k. They could invest that money in buying ready made players. But so far, they haven't.

 

The issue is they haven’t bought any ready made players.

 

Their investment then starts and ends with not shutting stuff?
You've convinced me, I've got it all wrong, they're great.

 

They are more ready than the 8 to 18 year olds.

 

Debateable that the points tally would be much different.

 

But that surely that is the aim of the game, sell and buy better...... If we cant do better than leeds reserves or danish lower league then id be asking serious questions of the recruitment team.

 

No. Their investment started with buying the company.

I guess that nothing I can say could convince you. Convincing you is not my aim. I would settle for making you think to be honest.

 

It would be if we had cash to spare... But we don't. We have less than any other club in the Championship, so we have to be clever and we have to do things differently.

 

Thinking is not something I have a problem with. Whether the conclusions I draw from that are valid is another argument. I spend most of my wage shovelling intoxicants into me in an attempt to stop thinking.

 

I find all this an odd line of argument. The modus operandi is not something fans should have to think about. It is something the owners should have to think about in order to overcome the present conundrum and present an acceptable offering to the fans, whatever that takes. They are the wealthy and clever entrepreneurs, not us.

 

I keep hearing the phrase "long term "....may i ask what is deemed to be long term in their language.
In finance terms 5 to 10 years is deemed medium term. Am i to think that this board is going to be around for the long term? I very much doubt it....thats why i like some of the plan but find it wildly too stringent....and un workable.
If you look at the Nice model (which scares me) they also stated they were there for tbe long term....they were not...was it 3 years?
Im sure i read they had a 5 year plan here (have i dreamt that) if that is so, then they are nearly 50% through their tenure and we seem to be in the same position , if not worse.
So patience etc etc is not for me and not with this board. I want to see a footy team, my town footy team compete....if luton and charlton can do it, so can we.
They have made bad executive decisions and we the fans, are not impressed. It seems their sums are bigger than their parts.

 

Ooops, sorry jay ive just read some posts back and i think ive more or less duplicated one of your posts.

 

Balancing the size of the squad seems to be a real issue as the recruitment system is hit and miss. Last year the squad was too small. Now Dougall’s fit, we have two decent midfielders but a suspension or injury would leave us very short. Woodrow is the only striker. We need a starting eleven, plus a good bench with the younger players as back up.

 

You put it more eloquently.

 

There was a very long interview with Bobby Hassell in the match programme on Saturday where he gave some great detail on the progress made in the Academy the last few years, and he referred to recent investment in terms of buying accommodation to house young players recruited from further afield. He suggested we now pay fees for outstanding teenagers for the under 23s such as Simoes. He referenced the three England call-ups for kids in our Academy, I think one was Aidan Marsh who is from Barnsley and was involved in some pre-season friendlies. Highly rated apparently. He spoke about the great coaches recruited in recent times and how we have scouts from the biggest clubs constantly watching our players. His only criticism seemed a bit of a dig at head coaches for not giving more of our 'own produced' youngsters a go in the first team. It was a great read and from one of the people at the club that I think most of us trust and believe in.

 

Thank you for your response, genuinely interesting reading. But I'm still struggling to nail down any investment from the current board other than a continuance of what had previously been put in place - and to use my previously used Darton West vernacular - not shutting stuff darn.