Would Schopp offer the same loyalty?

Well, I thought that Doug O'Kane wrote it, but I have gone right back through his tweets and cannot find it . Perhaps I dreamed it.

 

Well, it’s a business, so we’ll never know.

And to me here lies the problem - the objectives of the business aren’t the same as the objectives of the fans.

As a fan you want entertainment, passion, commitment. A business, while paying lip-service to these words, does not understand them.

Fans want a shot at the Premiership. A business, while paying lip-service to this aim would never commit to it. That would involve the only thing it does understand. Money. It would involve an investment that might well not pay off. It would also involve employing a manager with passion and vision. Business does not understand these things but it understands such people cost money.

Anyway, the club has already fulfilled the owners’ objective by being one small part in their growing business portfolio. Whether Barnsley FC is in the Championship, League 1 or 2 doesn’t matter. Hire and fire managers / players according to the spreadsheet – because what really matters is to keep Barnsley FC ticking along in the portfolio, to pick up the odd million or two from selling assets (we call them manger or players) and get every last penny out of the club. As for loyalty, the only people who remain loyal in this business are the fans. Or as the businessmen would call us ‘a guaranteed income stream.’

New scoreboard anyone?

 

Found it and it was on here.

https://barnsleyfc.org.uk/threads/obbi-oulare-set-to-sign….306281/

 

The only way they can extract money from the club is through management charges, or by continuing to pay off their debt through the club, if the club is insolvent (and I think if we aren't already, we're heading back to that given the speed of the cash drain). Though claims in the past were they hadn't taken a penny out of the club. Though with that £700k extraction, they can't claim that again.

We don't know what their objectives are. And the more time passes, the more opaque the reasoning becomes. What we do know is they have a lust for buying cheap distressed clubs across Europe. Allegedly waiting for a American revolution of TV moneys to rampage through the leagues.

I do wonder who's funding all this. Where the money for the investment vehicles come from and if there is a fund (a la RedBall Co) where it resides.

It makes no sense to me at all. The potential returns for such nominal investments for such allegedly wealthy people doesn't make sense. The spin offs for their other businesses (if any are left) doesn't seem to be evident.

Maybe one day we'll work out what this grand plan was. For now, it continues to look like good old distressed asset purchases to me.

 

Thanks for that. At least that offsets any problems to a degree if we can't get him fit, would be interesting to know exactly what the performance bonuses are. Though we're still paying wages out if the worst comes to the worst.

 

I KNOW. That's why I said "technically".

 

Derby have entered Administration recently and were deducted 12 points as a result. Their punishment for breaking FFP regulations has not yet been determined. You are effectively asking that Barnsley follows the self same path to oblivion.

 

Its no wonder we couldn't find it. Its in French.

 

Summarised as no upfront fee, performance bonuses and a sell on (but doesn't give detail).

 

Yeah, fair enough. His PPG would net out at 58 per season which is 15th on average over the last 5 or 6 seasons, which is lower mid-table.

Anyway, it's saying something when lower mid-table performance sees our boss getting cherry picked. Demonstrates that no one has to be particluarly successful here to find the exit soon enough.

 

I strongly suspect it’s simply the building of a portfolio, the bigger the better. “Hey look I own a lot of businesses.” “You must be very successful then.”

Much the same happened in my business years ago. Look up Martin Sorrell. He bought just about every ad agency going through opaque accounting practices. He’s a finance man. He knows nothing about advertising. His aim was power and money. Of the agencies he bought some continued reasonably well, others eventually failed or were rolled into others in the group. None became Premier League. All were screwed for every penny in profit not matter what the human cost.

Financial transparency? I gave up on that when my own company was shown to be making a healthy profit, then literally one week later as news broke that we were to be bought I was shown figures that showed we were making a disastrous loss. I was expected to believe both sets of figures.

If my analogy is right all we can expect is to tread water or fall backwards.

 

Where did I say anything about breaking FFP regulations?

And I wasn't asking Barnsley to do anything. I was making an observation about the fans and the business objectives being different.

 

What’s the £700k you referred to about?

 

Many many moons ago he was doing a speaking slot at a networking event for turnaround practitioners. Didn't get a good feeling about the guy, nor on his many slots he's had on Sky business news and even BBCQT if I recall rightly.

Didn't stop him becoming a Sir though.

From what I can see though, the other clubs are just loosely associated. We're not part of the same ownership vehicle. They've obviously gone on this acquisition phase for a reason. But it's neither obvious, nor likely to be lucrative.

 

A payment made by the football club to the Crynes instead of being made out of their investment vehicle that owns the club which it should have been made out of.

 

His own group eventually got rid of him. Hated throughout the industry. On the day after 9/11 - and I still can't believe this - he actually said this event would be' a great opportunity to re-energise business.'

 

Didn't stop Fred Goodwin becoming a Sir either. RBS was one of my clients. The stories they'd tell about Fred were inhuman. And yet they admired him.

 

There are a long line of people who got rich for doing little of good. Especially in the manner they did it. Been some very interesting studies in the past and perhaps not surprising that high level entrepreneurs rate highest for sociopath and even psychopath traits compared with the general populous.

 

You get what you deserve over the season & we stayed up to therefore we deserved to stay up .

 

Technically you are wrong, the league is decided on points & you do not have to put words in capitol letters to try & intimidate it doesn"t work .