I heard that Roberts wanted to stay at Barnsley but we wouldn't meet his wage demands. All he wanted was to be financially secure and retire a millionaire. Not phased where he played his football.
Imo there’s no comparison to Brentford to us . History means nothing nowadays for unfashionable clubs . The thing Brentford have is that they are in London , foreign investors will favour big City clubs especially London . There’s no line of proper investors for teams like queuing up , by proper investors I’m meaning those that havnt come to asset strip if we don’t make it to the prem etc . We were very lucky with Patrick imo because we would now be watching an AFC team as Wimbledon coming hopefully through the ranks . It’s my opinion and I know it’s controversial to some but I don’t think we could attract investors or investment to the tune of Derby ,Forest etc . these owners have made mistakes there’s no doubting that but I believe they will learn , it’s painful as a fan but I think of the alternatives and tbh I can’t see any other than lower league obscurity .
Not untill they can get at least their investment back . I think the fans will drive them away tbh and I just hope theirs another decent alternative .
I'm always amazed to read how much players earn, as it's confidential and not published anywhere, but someone somewhere always manages to start a rumour. But anyway, you're right, we can't afford to compete with such wages. What we can do though, is try to hang on to our contracted players for longer. With the exception of Davies, all the above players were under contract and could have been made to stay and do their jobs. The state we are in is because we cash in too soon. As I believe most people would agree, if we'd kept Pinnock and Lindsay until now, we could well have been a mid table side.
How? How are our owners going to get us in a similar position to Brentford without using some of their supposed wealth which now appears yet another unknown, think they’re potless in football wealth personally or totally risk averse and not totally invested in making this club a success. They haven’t spent a jot of their own cash, all they’ve done is take this club severely backwards with this crackpot plan. They are just playing at football club ownership, very badly may I add, at no risk to themselves but long term harm to our club as this plan goes farther and farther off of the rails. They also appear to not be bringing in all this international investment they alluded to on initial purchase, they’ve done virtually nothing to try and enhance funds to take us forward, another false promise. Perhaps if they stumped their own cash up they would have been far less frivolous with the clubs meagre budget and done their jobs properly, buying adequate footballers for the championship? Just a thought...
They cannot just spend their own cash, they can only loan it to the club, a-la Brentford. Which is fine, if Brentford get promoted before their owner gets sick of loaning them money. Given the low regard in which you hold our owners, I can't imagine you'd want the club to owe them 100 million pounds, though, would you? Look at Wednesday, for example, and their financial problems. Got so close to the PL but failed and could face a serious points deduction, etc.
With two relegations in three seasons I think it's the Board driving the fans away, tbh. I suppose we'll only know once we're past renewal time.
Haven't you been away from Oakwell for a season and a half now? Considering how we performed last season I'm not sure what the owners did that year to make you stay away?
Fans will come and go always have done tbh . We were regularly mid table in the nineties with low crowds . For those of us who go choose what and I’m not advocating better fans etc but there are those that will go choose which div we’re in . Fans will come if we doing ok and more fans will come if we’re doing well it was always the case with every team in every division. Fans have their different cut off points my own would probably have been signing Ched Evans etc Some fans will have still carried on and that’s up to them , there’s no better or worse fans in this regards imo but as you say people voting with their feet will have an effect especially if STs fall next season which I expect they will if we go down or keep a similar team in Championship next year . I can take most scenarios ,relegation points deduction etc etc but I don’t want to go down the roads to our last brush with administration or Burys or anyone else’s including Wendy or Derby etc .
I get it, I really do. But, and this is a big but, my point here is specifically due to these owners not investing their own money, there is no risk to them personally therefore they can dick about with this hair-brained gamble of buying average footballers from all over Europe after selling our best players to fund their plan and crossing their fingers as they have probably already recouped the loan they took out to buy us in the first place. It’s clearly not working and taking this club backwards. I know if I was a supposed billionaire businessman and I wanted to succeed in football club ownership I would know it would require my own investment and that I would plot my course very carefully, buying the correct standard of player as it would be my own money i was using. Precisely because these owners are not using their own personal wealth, they are either naively or bloody ignorantly trying to do things in a bizarre fashion, gambling the future of our club without any personal risk to themselves imho. It’s the town and supporters that will be left with the wake of this foreign ownership folly long after they’ve made a small profit on the sale of BFC and disappeared off to whence they came.
We started off buying players with a little more than just potential. Hourihane, Mawson, Pinnock, winnall had all done it at their clubs and were better players in their teams. So risk wasn’t as big. Now we’re just trying to polish turds
How do you propose they spend their own cash? I would like us to adhere to FFP. On this basis, the owners of a football club cannot just spunk their own money on players/wages, etc. They have to loan money to the club. And, as per Derby and Wendies, be creative with their profit/loss columns. I don't want the club to owe any owner tens of millions. I prefer this buy em young and sell 'em on model - failing though it is currently - to when we were signing 36 year old Rory Delap or 33 year old Liam Lawrence, and the likes of. Got relegated then, 'n all. Yes, we'll probably be relegated this season. No, the plan didn't level up from League 1. Still, no, I don't want the club to do as Brentford have done.
Bizarre innit? The higher up the league we go, the lower down we appear to look for players. Somewhere in the spreadsheet there's a stray minus sign.
Caveat: the following numbers are plucked from thin air. We signed 13 players this summer. Say the average wage is 4k a week. That's 52k a week. Surely it would be better to sign maybe 5 players on 10k a week who would actually make a difference? Instead of 2 average keepers, sign one good one plus Walton. Instead of 3/4 poor centre backs, sign 2 good ones Instead of Bahre/Schmidt/Thomas/you streamline it and sign 1 quality player. The squad is huge, out of the 13 players I would wager that only 5 or 6 of them make the matchday squad anyway. You then have your quality (relatively) starting 11, with lads like Walton/Williams/Sibbick/Simoes as your bench. And that doesn't count Pinillos/Cavare/Thiam who can at least sit on the bench. We may as well use them whilst paying for them. Have a 20 man squad instead of a 35 man squad. Yes we have to cut our cloth accordingly, but bringing in loads of bodies for the sake of it hasn't helped in that respect.
And that’s all fine however we will continue to drift backwards under the current ownership and plan as I see it. Other clubs find a way is what I’m saying. Hopefully FFP will miraculously come into hard effect but I wouldn’t bet on that or anytime soon, meanwhile we will continue to slip down the leagues. Regardless, the owners plan of unearthing youthful gems has massively hit the buffers and the sub-standard product and effect of this has been there for all to witness this season. In any case, Barnsley FC as a footballing force this season are a train crash due entirely to the owners shocking decisions.
Why is a refusal to lumber the club with debt being risk averse? Why are so many fans so keen for the owners to throw money at the club, knowing full well that it could all come unstuck and we could be in a position where we might not have a football club? It will probably never happen, but Financial Fair Play is the only way to go. Simon Jordan's thoughts on it last week (you can search the clip) are exactly why from a business side I have no issue with the owners. In a footballing sense, we've made some mistakes for sure. How will we get to Brentford's level? By having a long term strategy that has flexibility within it without throwing the baby out with the bath water when things aren't going exactly to plan. They've always said that the idea is you use the funds from the players moving on to sign a better quality of player to develop - cue the incoming replies of how we haven't signed a better quality of player (no disputing that). But I don't think these players as a whole would be viewed as badly as they're being viewed right now if two quality players would have been brought in to lead them, rather than all of them being forced to learn together.
