Khaled: "The vision of the club is to have 23-year-olds and younger."

you ask for honesty and a plan but the plan you support has been a failure and created debt. So ask yourself the same questions.

 

You're not wrong mate.

 

The problem here - if I may interject - is that it matters not a jot what your 'policy' is, or what @SuperTyke's is - they are mere hyperbole. If we call it as it is, you two are engaged in an extreme form of the age old titty-for-tatty. It will get you both nowhere, because the only policy that will affect BFC is that of the club.

 

Think that’s fair. Whatever policy we have been running and it isn’t really clear to me we need to change immediately

 

Bit unfair to use Benson and Mowatt as a comparison as Mowatt was also crap in his first season.
Correct about fee, just should compare in a few years.

 

Or implement it better!!

 

That would be my choice but you need a full 360 review and go back to in the main targeting the best players from teams below us in the pyramid rather than absolute gambles. And if we ever get promoted you then need to increase funding and target better.

 

I fully agree. Clearly the policy ain't been working. I just wish @Red Rain and @SuperTyke had got themselves down to Grove Street Friday night and presented their drafted paper policies to Neerav first hand. They may be at loggerheads, but at least he could have taken a look, and the two posters could've saved a lot of time and energy instead of arguing the toss on here

 

The precise idea behind the policy of "buy young, improve and sell on" or "raise your own, improve and sell on" worked very well in the final season of Patrick Cryne's ownership. He sold the young players that we had improved, and we got the bonus of Everton's sale of John Stones to Manchester City. It gave us a large cash war chest that could be invested in the next generation of players, and it enabled the club to get promoted back to the Championship.

Once again, I will refer to my thread that detailed the financial results of clubs in the Championship. Many of those clubs lost more than £20m in that season. Barnsley has never been in the position where it could afford to compete with clubs, and particularly club owners, who are prepared to throw away that sort of money. Personally, I believe the Championship is full of clubs that are in deep trouble if/when their owners walk away. Derby is a good example of what could happen there. The question that you should be asking yourself is this, can Barnsley ever compete with clubs/owners willing to lose that sort of money. In the season we lost £4m, we thought that we could win promotion to the Premier League. We chased the dream, but we failed. Chasing the dream had a knock on effect in the season after. There was no money left. There was no money for transfers and no money for big wages. Belts were tightened and we lost a lot of our senior management, who could see what was around the corner.

The question is this. Were we right to chase the dream, even with its consequent knock on effects, or should we have concentrated on the long term. The strict plan was broken in the previous season, and that led indirectly to the season that we experienced last season. Boom and bust. I will leave that question hanging.

 

I would love a chat with Neerav, but meetings such as that are not about details, and even if they were, very few people would be interested in such a chat. Most of the people present are not interested in the minutiae of financial management, budgets, cash flows and management accounts. They are interested in the team, and they want to see it winning. Even on here, I resist such things most of the time, because I realise how boring it all is to most people. However, I raised myself from my self-imposed isolation last night because a view seemed to have established, a view that I believe is not only wrong, but a view that had established out of ignorance. I do not claim to known much about running football clubs, because I have never done it, but others seem to have all the answers, even though I know they have never done it either. In short, none of us have the information or ability to run a football club, but many of us think we know it all.

 

That doesn’t answer the question harking back to 5 years ago Isn’t an answer. Since Patrick sold on the policy has been an abject failure. So please outline how you would change that to make it successful and break even.

you talk about others teams that chase the dream but not our own. they are completely irrelevant. Teams like Luton, Millwall, etc show you can establish as a championship team using a different model and actually break even unlike the model you champion.

No one other than you is talking is spending millions. In fact we have wasted millions on people like Kane and Thomas following your model.

For me you do a full 360 review of the strategy what evaluates it’s financial success / failure.

From there you confirm what’s worked and what isn’t.

You acknowledge that the time the plan worked you blended youth with experience (Hammill / Solbauer). You acknowledge that the plan fails when there is no experience.

You revert the recruitment back to the strategy that was successful that had sporting success at his core. You look to recruit young players who are the best players at teams below you with 100+ games played in the right age bracket and target your recruitment on those.

So you don’t have to highlight a plan I’ve done it for you. But parroting inanities about other clubs is not an answer. If you expect others to find a solution you have to offer one yourself.

Other than you no one want to spend millions. No one wants to compete with Fulham financially. We just want a club that is run with the aim of winning matches. Patrick’s plan was aimed at that. Since he left winning of losing has become irrelevant.

 

Millwall lost £12m in 2020/21 and £9m in 2019/20.

As for finding a solution, I am simply advocating doing what worked for Patrick Cryne.

 

The Board has changed, the shareholders are much the same.

 

I haven't seen the interview or conference where he's given this quote, so I apologise in advance if this has been answered.

Did he go on to say we'd only be signing players 23 and under, or was it a case of, he'd like a squad of players aged 23 and under. The two are subtly different, and don't necessarily mean we'll try and offload everyone over 23,and never sign a player over 23 again.

Something similar is said every year, and yet we don't stick rigidly to only signing players under 24.

 

If we look at our recruitment post Patrick, let's be frank, it's been all over the place.

Data driven signings, non data driven signings. Fees paid, some free transfers, some loans. Some very young, some young. Some inexperienced. Some from top end clubs with virtually zero experience, some from never heard of clubs on the continent... and much more.

What has been pretty consistent have been losses every season and the level of player sales has actually been eclipsed by sale of head coaches.

The alleged model professed just doesn't equal what has actually happened. Of course covid has had a big part to play in how it's affected the transfer market, especially at Championship level. I think that's more to blame than "chasing the dream". Our wages have been regularly in excess of break even. And we have carried a massive squad. In part by aggressively pushing younger youth groups into higher ones. In principle I've no particular issue with that, but you do then carry a lot of players that by default should be challenging for the first team.

I'll judge our board and CEO on the next two transfer windows. The obvious thing is we need to get the squad level down, and given the high numbers of attempted contract offers we've seen, any such change is going to be saleable assets and with some hope, the fringe players that we want to get rid of, though it's very likely those players will require some form of sweetener to jump, unless they get some amazing increase which given this season, I'm not sure is too likely.

If we can run a squad in the mid 20's rather than the mid 30's, if we can stop paying significant fees for gambles and we simply bring in players (once we've steadied the ship) that are in budget and aiming to improve our first team immediately, then we can break even.

 

I suppose its a sign of where we are now but "cheap" is now the new buzzword from Oakwell!

 

Be precise. That’s not a plan. Outline your exact plan for us to break even. Under Patrick. We were able to sign the sone of the best players from any team beliw is in the pyramid. Do you still plan to do that? How do you find it given everyone else is doing the same niece. Again be precise.


We have allegedly stuck to Patrick’s plan and lost millions.

Nice evasion on Luton and Blackpool

 

You never mentioned Blackpool, but for sake of completeness:

Luton Town

20/21 loss £2m after profit on player sales £2m
19/21 profit £3m after profit on player sales £9m

Blackpool

20/21 loss £5m after profit on player sales £0.4m
19/20 loss £2m after profit on player sales £1.4m

I thought that the allegation was that Conway did not stick to the plan and that last season was the result.

I never said that buying players was easy. Clearly, we started shopping abroad because there were fewer and fewer bargains to be had in the UK. Leaving the EU has meant changes in UK policy about who can get a visa to work here. They are now required to prove their competence with international recognition. That has restricted our ability to buy cheap in Europe, so I suspect it will be back to the UK for future purchases, but the market is difficult, and that is particularly true when you are skint. Our biggest hope, given their success last season, is via the academy.

Sadly, I cannot be precise about football matters as I am not qualified to judge. My expertise is in accounting and business management, and I tend to stick to those areas when I comment in detail.

 

if a conversation with you is like your minority report he might not have the time as he’s only in the country every few weeks

 

The track record (currently as I expect Helik and Andersen will go for profit) of signing cheap EU players and selling for profit is pretty poor.
It will be interesting to see how the summer unfolds. More misses than hits for sure.

2014-16 was unique as the majority of British lower league buys were hits.