Been a tad bored this morning and was on TransferMarkt and there are still so many good players on the free agent list that I am shocked have no club yet. Makes me wonder why Barnsley do dip into this market more especially in the current covid climate. Some standouts I saw were: Stephen Kingsley - 26 Year old left back (position we need and champ experience) Jordan Obita - Same as above - 163 apps in championship Naby Sarr - 27 Year old left sided centre back - very tall and powerful defender who was recently in the champ with Charlton. Kieron Freeman - still only 28 and could offer competition for Ludewig in that wing back role (not a major position we need though) Aleix García - 23 year old creative cm released by Man City potentially out of budget wage wise maybe Arnaud Lusamba - 23 year old cm - released by Nice so should be on the radar of the owners, had a good season recently in Ligue 2 on loan. 109 career apps in Ligue 1, Ligue 2 and Belgian league. Calvin Verdonk - 23 year old left back - I have no idea who this is but played a good number of games in dutch league for FC Twente and Feyenoord. There are so many more too that I haven't named. Surely we should be looking into some of these players from the free agent market?
We can only speculate as to what sources our recruitment team are using, and which names are on their shortlist. Over the last 20 years reading the message boards, I can’t think of a single occasion where a fan suggestion has culminated in the signing of a new player. Using that logic, the one thing I can say with reasonable confidence is that we won’t be signing any of the players you have mentioned.
Not expecting the club to scramble and sign all or any of the names listed as I would guess with good confidence that no one who works closely to the recruitment team is a member of the BBS. I was just mentioning these names as players that I feel would do a job for us. Just makes me wonder why we aren't in this market for free agents. We don't seem to have signed many over the last few years to my knowledge.
We probably are looking at many players at the moment, which is indeed incredibly harder than normal due the the Covid crisis, which has meant clubs have shed more players than normal. So there are so many more players "available". Several questions spring to mind relating to the players mentioned like what wages were they on, what wages do they want etc. Just googled Stephen Kingsley and the next questions are: Why has he only played 44 games in 3 seasons for Hull? Why did he only play 8 games last season? Is he injured? Is he injury prone? Did he not fit into Hull's style of play? Will he fit into Barnsley's style of play? etc. etc. I'm sure the club have a list of players they are after and I'd be surprised if any of these are on that list.
Think we're abit snowed under with creative centre-mids mate.. as always.. could do with getting shut of one or two.
Think out of all them names only Obita is the one that may be worth looking at. Was once highly rated at Reading and was touted for premier league moves but never happened and I believe he suffered quite a serious injury because he missed 2 seasons of football a couple of seasons ago. At 26 and with almost 200 games in the championship he does have the experience that we are possibly lacking at full back/wing back with the rest of our full backs being fairly young.
I have no idea around wages they are on etc. but as you say given the current crisis many players have now found themselves without a club which should mean that they may not be in a strong position to demand 'huge' wages when seeking a new club. The players mentioned in my list in the most part were not at huge clubs so cannot imagine many of them being on mega money (bar maybe Freeman and Garcia coming from BPL sides) As for the questions around Kingsley, I am no expert on this lad by any means nor can I admit to having seen him play many times. It seems he has had some injury issue recently but now claims they are done and under control and is eager to kick on and get back into the premier league where he has made appearances before. He wasn't offered a new deal as they needed to trim the wage bill due to relegation not due to lack of quality. I am not saying Kingsley (or anyone on the list) are the greatest players about etc. but was just mentioning these as squad options to add some experience and strength in depth without shelling out fees. I can't imagine Kingsley for example being an expensive signing, he is still a good age so would hold some future sell on fee for example if he performed well. They may not be currently suited to the Struber style either but then again I can't imagine many players are as his style is fairly unique in the way we press etc. any player coming in will need to learn and adapt to that.
They've probably been burned for life after Danny Wilson's signings the year we went down! (I know they all weren't his choices, etc)
I did the same about Kieffer Moore. http://barnsleyfc.org.uk/threads/kieffer-moore.260913/ Look at this corker of a reply...
The summer we were promoted to the Prem, I remember we were linked with Kevin Davies and ended up with Georgi Hristov
Wouldn’t take it as given that all these are available. You’ll probably find quite a few have deals in principal in place but just waiting for timing.
