Loko Gally

What did you find out that you didn't know already? Asking for a friend.

 

I've got it off my chest now.

 

It just feels like the club will only engage with the trust, the events I mention are the ones where organisers of supporters groups attend only.

 

Stay silent? Start asking questions? The Trust spent over two and a half hours asking the CEO questions the other week, questions submitted by THE FANS. Let's not talk daft. I think you should give them some credit. Also, how much weight do we give the Trust? They can only do so much, and they're doing all they can. They aren't responsible for what's going on on, but again they spent over two and a half hours questioning what's going on on the pitch just last week.

 

I think, but can't be certain, that in the prediction thread at the start of the season I anticipated we would struggle (I might even have predicted 23rd). So, you are therefore right, I didn't anticipate finishing 24th!! We are clearly miles apart in terms of the current owners and their 'business model'. I stick to my view that it's toxic.

 

CONWAY, not the place with a castle in Wales is to be blamed & the rest of the board. Half of the first team squad too & the 2 useless managers we've had this season. To blame the supporters trust is daft.

 

Apologies. The village idiot has been laughed out of town.

 

I think the CEO couldn't give a toss about your questions and p1ssed up your back for two and a half hours though. Just my opinion.

 

I think ultimately it’s a tough time for the supporters, we’re frustrated & want some answers. The problem is Paul Conway is nowhere to be seen & our CEO is only a mouthpiece. The question is could the supporters trust be doing more to get some sort of dialect with Conway & co? Otherwise how else is the average supporter going to get the attention of Conway & co? Our only other hope is this Facebook group, whether it is hoax in terms of what’s been said about potential new owners, they seem to be proactive in getting a protest going. Hopefully then the board will actually listen.

 

Like I say not blaming the trust but your response backs up my point if you don’t run a supporters group you aren’t a Barnsley fan so get scraps

 

This is an echo of one of the problems being seen on the 'Hoax' thread a few days ago, fans are frustrated, rightly bloody so, and in turn, venting that frustration against other fans in the Trust. So instead now of working together, sorting out as best we can as fans, we will just get the usual us v them narrative yet again. Someone will vent and blame, then people will rightly defend the trust, so it just boils down to a p1ssin contest yet again instead of positive steps forward.

 

As someone pointed out in another thread, part of our success last season was the use of 5 subs, but this season we seem reluctant to make use of the 3 available. When we do, I usually see the wrong option taken off and replaced by another wrong option. I see people on the bench who many think should start, and vice versa. I see people left out in the cold without explanation. Being shorthanded tonight aside, there seems to be some very strange decisions going on player-wise at the moment. Tonight was an example of all the above.

 

Excellent post. Articulated better than I did. It did come across as a pissing contest.

 

Loko, I have a lot of respect for you, as I do Gally. You do tireless work on behalf of the rest of us and your love for the club is clear.

But read this thread, many others.

Read the Conway Out posts (or remember the ones you read whilst you could!!!). I’m not sure how you can conclude that there is no toxicity.

There is a huge amount of division amongst fans. Anger at the situation might be growing but more concerning is the growing sense of apathy. The rising numbers of decades long fans throwing in the towel.

Folk are arguing with eachother, blaming eachother, when it is clear the issues at the club stem from the very top.

It is very clearly toxic - I don’t just mean directly in the club, which I assume is what you are trying to suggest isn’t the case; but the demeanour about the place, the way fans are interacting, the views being shared. The very fact the Facebook group even exists.

There is a disease in our club, a cancer maybe. Sucking the life out of the club from the inside. We are losing so much more than football games. This isn’t about being relegated, we’ve all seen that before. This is about a football club once rooted in its community being self harmed and imploding in the vain name of sticking to a fundamentally flawed ‘plan’.

I’ll be there Saturday. Mainly as I’ve not been for quite a bit due to work, catching covid and games being cancelled; but also to assess the mood of the rest of the supporters.

I watched tonight a team be beaten before it kicked off, a bunch of individuals clad in green, supposedly a ‘team’, amble round without giving two *****. This is caused by who and what they are working for. They ran through brick walls last season, and look at them.

The worst thing about it is, I watched, and I wasn’t particularly happy obviously - but I really didn’t care that much, at least not as much as I really ought to. What has caused this? It isn’t losing games and being crap. I’ve seen that plenty. I just don’t feel like the club is still the club - I’m completely detached from it.

I’ve been attending games for over 27 years, a season ticket holder for over half of those in two stints, including for the last seven years with my boy. Yes I’m a relative newbie compared to some - but if I can lose all hope and interest, if fans of forty and fifty years can do the same (and it isn’t hard to find the posts saying that), when these people have seen some real lows on the field and carried on regardless, surely it is time to accept there is a massive issue? This isn’t just about a few bad decisions in the summer. It’s the fact that they would make the same decisions again for the same reasons, rinse and repeat. They don’t care about the team, the club, the town, the people. They aren’t interested in the team being successful. That’s a secondary or tertiary concern at best.

A club can be run, spending no money other than what it generates. It can have aims. It might struggle to compete, it might get relegated, but it can do its best in the face of these adversities. That was Barnsley. The club is no longer even pretending it tries to do that. The paltry budget we have is spent on a conveyor belt of young, statistically appealing but realistically mostly tripe ‘assets’. Including coaches. In the hope that one or two might come good and be sold on. Rinse and repeat that as well.

We have seen that at other clubs these owners have interfered with team selection, it’s not too big a jump to suggest the same happens here - and in fact there is some evidence to suggest it might with some baffling selections at times. We know for a fact that they have dictated a style of play here ‘to maximise player value’ - as the most successful season we’ve had in over two decades was a ‘failure’ because they didn’t sell anyone or get any acceptable bids. Definitely nothing to do with the dead market and everyone outside the biggest clubs being skint. No, it’s because we didn’t have Mads Andersen trying to play it out like Beckenbauer. I mean what could go wrong with changing to that?

I have zero issue with owners not throwing money at it. I have very little issue with them skimming a bit of cream off the top. But at least spend the club’s money on trying to make the club as successful as possible: it is called Barnsley Football Club. We exist to play football. The fact we compete in a league and have supporters who would like us to try and finish as high up it as possible, with realistic expectation, is completely ignored, disregarded and not cared about. The team isn’t there to compete, it’s there to blood assets for their immediate liquidation as soon as any promise is shown. Competing and success on the field isn’t actively avoided, but it isn’t an apparent aim or priority.

And whilst that is the case - or at least whilst the evidence suggests it is - the club cannot be seen as healthy.

 

Excellent post.