[Official Site] LOAN ROUND-UP

LOAN ROUND-UP
Club News

With a busy schedule across the divisions, several of our players out on loan have been picking up plenty of minutes over the past few weeks.

Continue reading on the official site...

 

Has Herbie been to Advance Hair Solutions?

 

Are we likely to see any of these in a Barnsley shirt again? Aitchison was an odd one. Signed on a three year deal and spent the first two out on loan. Miller out of contract in the summer. Kane possibly our most saleable player after relegation, Thomas and Schmidt with a year left next year and less said about Oulare the better.

 

Saw Kane and thought we had made a really good purchase. Something not right for him at Barnsley, but smashing it at Oxford.
Thomas debut v Fulham, thought we had made a reet signing. Lads obviously had issues, but hardly ripping L2 up.
Aitchison - well thought of at Celtic but if he ever makes a start for us, he will be entering last year syndrome.
Not sure Miller fancies coming back. I liked him but successive coaches didn't.
Sraha seemed to have something about him ........ then disappeared whilst we seemed to focus on re-inventing Hondermarck. Who in turn seems to have something about him.
Schmidt .......... meh. Not sure he is worth what we invested, and not sure he would be up to the task of hairy-ar5ed L1 defenders.
Oulare. As per previous poster, enough said. Next time I read about him I hope it will be in @YTBFC 's autobiography.

 

I reckon Aitchison and Thomas could be back next season as part of a L1 squad. Possibly same with Kane although I suspect we'll be looking to offload him in the summer for a decent fee.
Schmidt will no doubt be out on a similar loan next season up to the end of his contract and as for Oulare.....who knows?

 

Forest Green are in League Two I think. Given they will almost certainly be in the same division as us next time perhaps they might be interested in buying him.

 

This post really brings it home to me how the club is now run. The focus is no longer on the first 11 and the team but a plethora of potential signings that may or may not come off.

Aitchison - 2 years in to a 3 year deal signed as a free agent. Hasn’t pulled on a reds shirt apart from this signing photo. Current loan at Forest Green a regular starter and scored 4 goals. Next year last year of contract, likely to leave for nothing but may play next year.

Miller - Signed a 3 and a half year deal in January 2019, contract up in a few months and a transfer fee, albeit modest, was paid. Pulled on the red shirt nines times. Will leave for nothing

Thomas - Signed a four year deal in June 2019 for a transfer fee of around £1m. Next year last year of his contract and currently on loan at Bristol Rovers and not a regular in a league 2 side. Made over 50 appearances for the reds before going out on loan. Will leave for nothing.

Herbie Kane - As others have said, looked like a player when we signed him from Liverpool for around £1m on a four year deal in 2020. Made over 20 appearances for the reds before going out on loan to Oxford. Extending the loan when the team was desperately short in midfield seemed a strange one. Doing well for Oxford and the one player out of the bunch who may leave for a fee.

Patrick Schmidt - Signed a four year contract in 2019 with a further year in the club’s favour, debate on the fee but likely to have been over £500k. Limited appearances but scored a couple of important goals. Currently on loan at Esbjerg and will likely leave for nothing.

Obbi Oulare - Will likely leave for nothing, one day.

All my opinions and I may be totally wrong but it’s hard to see, with the exception of Kane, who might add to our team or leave for a fee.

 

I'm not convinced, six goals from 37 isn't groundbreaking so unsure how he'd fare with a step up. Probably worth a chance though.

I think Kane will come good. Not sure about the rest. Maybe Thomas if he can sort his wellbeing out.

 

He plays for FGR as an attacking midfielder. 6 goals in 37 and a similar number of assists looks pretty useful to me.
I'd definitely be giving him some game time in L1 next season. If he hasn't cut it by the January transfer window we could probably get a nominal fee for him then and it wouldn't be a lot less than we'd get this summer.
He's got to be worth a punt.

 

I'd have Schmidt in league 1, depending on who we lose up front.

 

I have seen Jack A a bit,being a fan of FGR. I honestly don't see where he fits into our team. Not a striker,drifts into midfield but not very creative, too small for the Championship. A sale at the end of the season would be good,the same for all the others on loan. As has been mentioned before, the swuads are bloated with players who are not good enough. Time to reduce the number of players at the club in the first team and U23s.

 

Couldn't agree more. The thing that stands out most for me under this ownership is the incredible waste. Yes, you never know if a player is going to work out, but given our situation, at the stage we pay a fee, you need to be very sure in the player you're signing and that they can firstly have an impact on your team to the positive, and subsequently can be sold for considerably more than what they were acquired for.

It's ironic in some quarters there is a perception that everything is for sale and we do nothing but sell. In the last few years, we've not sold that many players. We've offloaded a fair few, but we've sold very few first teamers at significant profit. Jacob Brown the last most likely.

This being the case, the owners "strategy" (i reluctantly use that word as a strategy tends to require thought and planning, neither of which I'd attach to our owners) is an abject failure and seems to largely cost us more than it generates.

The need therefore is not only to retain our place in the championship, but to sell our better players at way in excess of what we paid for them, just to stand still and claw back some of the losses we've made on transfer fees.

Our best player this season was a free transfer.

A good team has a blend to it. It can have a mixture of youth, loans, experienced players and overseas players. It can have stemmed from the academy, other teams academies, championship offcasts, league 1 up and comers, league 2 punts and overseas players that meet border force criteria.

There is another way.

 

Fair dos, wasn't aware.

 

Atchinson should be with us next season , he is with a team at the moment that are ripping up division 2 & you would think would be a shoe horn for division 1 next season the same league we will be playing in & as for him being too small I do not buy it, he plays in week in week out in a division which is full of big rugged defenders & does well ,also I did not see Chaplin having too bad a time of it when he played with us at that level & managed to cope o.k , what I do not want to see is us waste 2 years of developing the lad for him to go elsewhere & do a decent job for another club in the same league , we made that mistake with Jorden Clarke for example, we at least need him to play in the pre season with us & not jump into any decision on his future .

 

I genuinely haven't a bad word for him. He was polite, well-mannered and we struck up a decent relationship.

I'll give you one tale about a former player, without naming him. This one, and plenty of stuff around it, would definitely make the book.

Player X was in the CEO's office for a good half-hour. We were in the open office at the time, so you see and hear everything, if they're loud enough. This player was loud enough. He was dead set on this particular move to this particular club. Now and again, you'd see him (stood up) remonstrating, swearing etc. We knew what it was about anyway, so we expected his reaction. We'd turned down the latest bid. Anyway, on his way out, he forgot that to exit the main office, you have to hold down a button on the desk to release the door. He punched the wall to his left, then went to kick open the door and go through. But of course, the door wouldn't budge so all that transpired was him walking head first into the door.

Plenty of funny moments too. Like last summer at Loughborough, when I tried to do a Tyson Fury and out-last big Jo Laumann in the sauna. That went badly.

But yeah. I definitely intend to write a book of some sort in my retirement. If everybody wants to send me a tenner now, to pre-order it, I can get to the Bahamas this summer and crack on with it...

 

I for one would not be keen on Thomas returning , he had cartloads of opportunities at Oakwell but was very poor & as soon as he left us & went to Ipswich he took great joy in parading in the Ipswich shirt & declaring how delighted he was to be there , well that went well & he has had big issues with Joey Barton who publicly called him out over his football performances & I know he has had personnel issues but he did not have them when he joined us & considering he is in or around the 1st team at Bristol Rovers I would hope for the lad that he has overcome them & goes on to pick his career up but not with us .