The thing that frustrates most

Bit confused, I was referring to the poor recruitment at centre back before we went & got Pines & Earl. We’ve ended up with too many centre backs on the books from getting it wrong initially.

Pines is everything we’ve been desperate for all season.

I like Earl too.

De Gevigney is an excellent passer & will be a good player for us if he’s the ball playing centre back alongside a couple of big lads.

 

And in recent times all have been in worse positions than us. I picked those 3 because especially in Lutons case they've taken advantage of our recruitment and retention policies to better their position and we have absolutely failed to do the same. Their boards showed ambition and took advantage of our success in the transfer market while our board failed to build on the success. We all laughed and called them Barnsley's B team when they were signing fringe players from our squad, the joke was on us though when they then came in for our main players because our board failed to show ambition and show vision and build on success.

 

That's fair enough, agreed there then. I actually liked Lopata as well and not sure why we sent him out on loan so he may be another that could come good

 

Careful of confirmation bias. Picking out three outlier clubs from a pool of 92 league clubs plus clubs that have disappeared out of the league entirely and comparing Barnsley to those three is never going to look favourable.

 

Ipswich were top flight for many years, won trophies & did Okay in Europe too

 

The way we play under Collins and the injuries we get, I can see us being a squad with six centre halves in. De Gevigney, Earl and Pines will be identified the first choice. I’m sure Collins will want a replacement for McCart which wouldn’t surprise me being Shepherd. Shepherd by all accounts has shown he can compete at this level whilst at Cheltenham. I’m not sure McCarthy, Cundy or Lopata will be happy being in reserve therefore can see them all leaving.

 

Cundy is out of contract I believe so will definitely leave.

 

Yeh, shame really as I think he would have got plenty of football but he’s been replaced. He’ll get a good club and hopefully plenty of footie.

 

When Bobby Robson was a young upcoming manager and we'd just signed Allan Clarke. It's not about where a team was 40/50;years ago it's about the last 5 years or so and my contention is that we've wasted opportunities and they've capitalised on our boards failure to build on successful seasons and recruitment and improved their lot.

 

so if it's not what the team was 40/50 years ago, then why do many teams fans bang on about it? Wendies are especially good at that

 

Unfortunately I think it’s going to be a while before fans settle down.
Theres a lot of unease and distrust after years of mismanagement , we have had the obsession with a team of totally young players, flying in the face of the common sense of having a blend of experience of youth.
Watching good teams get ripped apart year after year .
The current seemingly senseless scattergun recruitment programme that seems to be based on some kind of stats based format rather than again common sense and football nous. This has resulted in us having a team of clones, some good players, some not so good but no variety of style or pace to give us a real chance of changing things round.
I really hope we manage to change it over at the top and let a ‘proper’ football brain run things!

 

Ah ‘ambition’ rears its head again. Let’s not get too excited about Luton’s ‘ambition’. They have a good chance of coming straight back down this season and being just another championship club with parachute money, and the smallest gates in the division. They could easily go back the other way.

If Ipswich and Coventry are such good role models, how did they end up in league one in the first place? Can’t just compare their upwards trajectory.

Reading and Wigan were ambitious, look where it got them. Bournemouth and Brentford only an ownership change away from struggling. Championship full of clubs losing money.

Are we really that shallow that we still think gambling to get the premier purse is the be and end all of football ownership? I read on here that Huddersfield were ‘sorted for decades’ when they got to the premier league. Look at the state Wednesday and Derby got themselves in being ambitious.

Ambition isn’t a magic button you press to go up a league or two. It can be a gamble that goes very wrong, and often does because everyone else is looking to do the same.

 

You should look down the back of the sofa Hope you're able to get back to Oakwell soon.

 

I haven't seen enough of Pines to make a proper assessment. Earl looked to be an outstanding signing in his first couple of appearances, classy, unruffled , very comfortable on the ball. However, his form has dipped massively in recent games. De Gevigney obviously has some qualities, but he is not a dominant, commanding centre-half, which is what we are badly in need of.

 

I think we’ll need to be bringing someone in with presence no matter the league we’re in. Josh Knight at Peterborough is a prime example of what dominance gets you, plenty of headers from corners attacking and defending. If we stay down, hopefully we go for someone like Piergianni from Stevenage who has been exceptional this season and has a decent amount of EFL experience.

 

Isnt that just like, yer know, football? Every club below us for five years from 96 to 2001 saying exactly the same about us.

It's just how it is.

 

And aren't we liable to be in exactly the same perilous position if we fail to get promoted this season where is this seasons Anderson Morris Kitching etc etc to balance the books. You can be ambitious without bankrupting the business you know just because some clubs have been stupid doesn't mean it can't be done sensibly.

 

Good post and echos a lot of my thoughts. You can add to that Swansea city who’s wage bill was rumoured to be astronomical the season they bet us to get to the playoff final and look at them now. My guess is Stoke city are the next club to have the book thrown at them. Too many clubs in that league over spending on journey men happy to pick up big bucks and stroll around the field not really pushing too hard coming up against the likes of us and Rotherham that can only dream of paying those wages.

It’s a tough one to call because to compete in the championship you need players of similar calibre but that comes with a price and when we finally have players with those attributes, we unfortunately have them Cherry picked from us.

I dare say they’ll come a time when we won’t ever compete consistently in the champ until we start to invest more money in the playing squad and backing the head coach on a longer term deal

 

How do you know the club aren’t ambitious? Let’s face it, you and me know nothing about what’s in the minds and conversations of the owners, or any owners for that matter.

There is no ‘Uber’ or ‘moderate’ ambition when it comes to debt and risk. Debt is debt and taking n debt carries no guarantees.

One thing I can guarantee you though is every one on the board is individually more ambitious than you or me, unless you can prove otherwise.

 

A lot is made of our long stay in the second tier, and there’s not enough recognition that football has changed so much.

Spending so much time there was never a mark of the club being better run or more ambitious. It was just our level and it was one that we shared with Man City, Wolves & West Brom, but also Grimsby, Swindon and Oldham. You could also buy a decent, proven player in latter years of their career without breaking the bank.

The very notion that we now have to ‘show ambition’ to climb back up to what was ‘easy street’ tells its own story of how the landscape has changed.