Personally, I am happy with the "matchday experience" if the team is playing successful, attractive football. That's all I go to the match for. I have an excellent viewing position, near the halfway line in East Upper, and find toilet facilities perfectly adequate. I can exist perfectly comfortably without food or drink for a couple of hours and never buy anything in the ground, so I have no issues in that respect.
Do you not think maybe more people would come and watch the match with you if the facilities and experience was more welcoming and well, better?
Lopata O keefe Shepherd Watters Cosgrove Dallas Killip Mdg Lofthouse Roberts Mccart Mcatee Dodson Pines Earl Grant Good recruitment then pal? Plus am more bothered we are letting a young kid play football manager with his inheritance. Dictating what players we can sign, employing his mates etc etc
I suppose they might, but I am not sure what kind of facilities and experience people are looking for at a football match, other than those I mentioned - good football and decent toilets, if you need them.
Food and drink are important for a lot of people. Those with kids might want some kind of entertainment too. The fact is that BFC are no longer only competing with Wednesday, United, Leeds, Rotherham etc for your disposable income. More and more they're having to compete with Cineworld, bowling alleys, things like the Ninja Warrior experiences, retro arcades and so on. The club has to evolve to survive especially as other clubs are doing it. If we don't make the match day experience (and the game on the pitch is a part of that obviously) as enjoyable as possible it will be hard to attract and retain the next generation of fans.
But by your logic if you went to a restaurant you'd be happy with peeling wallpaper, a tatty carpet and sitting on an uncomfortable seat with one leg shorter than the other 3 and the radio playing cotton eye Joe on repeat at full volume as long as the food tasted nice and there were toilets to use. Or you'd go on holiday to stay in a 1 star hotel that has a mattress on the floor and a space to put your suitcase in the corner because all its there for is to sleep in. In reality I think you'd reject both of those places. What is wrong with wanting a fan zone with players and guests doing interviews, music played, comfortable seating, food and drink for sale? What is the bad thing about that? What is wrong with wanting entertainment at half time to make kids smile and laugh? What is so bad about someone wanting to buy food and give money to Barnsley FC? Why are people out of order for wanting a car park that isn't locked up half an hour before the match starts and doesn't take an hour to get out of? Eyup son, wanna go out and do something this Saturday? We can go to the football if you want. Get there at 2pm to make sure we get in the carpark before it's closed and then we can sit and stare at an empty pitch for an hour before the match starts. There's no food or drink available for you, and nothing to entertain you for that hour but you'll be fine sitting and looking at some grass being watered won't you? Then we can watch some football and go and sit in a carpark for an hour. Son? Son? Where are you going? Oh you're off to watch paint dry? Fair enough lad.
If max watters sees out his contract at the club and add the transfer fee to the total, it will have cost us 600k, add dallas,Shaw, lopata, Shepherd, Lofthouse and others to the list yet we can't afford to sign experienced L1 players on a free Money being chucked down the drain on gambles. Buy cheap buy twice
Not really by choice. We had issues with the van, and the core team has been hit with health and availability problems. We had planned to finish the season before the club hopefully has the new fan zone next season, but circumstances have meant we couldn't do that, unfortunately.
Shepherd will cost virtually nothing and has shown ability so 100% worth a 'punt', even if doesn't make it for us I'm certain we will atleast make a profit. I like the signings of Lopata & Lofthouse too, Lopata was good before his injury and Lofthouse has had an excellent season at Gateshead & MK Dons and I believe will take over Williams' spot when/if he leaves. Watters had a good goalscoring record before joining us in this league & league 2. I won't pretend to know what wages he will be on but I can understand why we took an interest, whether we should have bought him outright after the loan is another question. Completely agree regarding Dallas & especially Shaw, I think there was plenty of data on those 2 to show they weren't going to cut it for us.
Until the second half of the Bolton home game, we'd done ok hadn't we and were in with a shout of automatic? Quite what's happened since then is anyone's guess. It has been a painful watch at times mind, especially at home. I can't understand the point of sacking him without a plan to get that new manager bounce. It seems bizarre, to be honest. I didn't have any confidence with Collins in charge going into the Northampton game, but I'm not sure why putting Devaney in charge would give us any added edge and the reality has been more of the same. I don't think there was an issue with Collins in the dressing room. As someone said at the game last night, if the answer is Devaney, I'm not sure we are asking the right question. I think there are questions to be asked and there have been some very good points made in threads since yesterday. It's hard to argue against quite a lot of it. I still don't agree with calling for the board to leave though. This is throwing the baby out with the bath water as a past owner once suggested.
Lopata signed from Sheff Utd u23s relegated to L2 whilst on loan Shepherd signed from Pontefract colliers relegated to L2 whilst on loan. Go have a look at Max watters scoring record at a decent standard and come back and tell me he's got a good goal scoring record for this level Are you advocating the 3 examples above are really and truly the best business we could do? Seriously wow people just accepting now way below mediocrity
I would like to make clear that I have no objection whatsoever to all kinds of things being provided at Oakwell, in addition to the match. I was just saying that all the extras are not important to me. I accept that they may be to some people.