2 week on Sat

Plymouth away, looks an absolutely daunting prospect at present.
In 41 days of the transfer windows we've managed 2 loans and 2 signings with 16 days to go before the season starts we have some serious work to be done to be ready.
Safe to say the milestone of making significant early progress in the transfer window has passed and that element so far can be ticked off as a failure.
We are almost at 50% of the total transfer window time gone, 45 days for Mladen to save himself, if there's been any element of truth to half the rumours then our hit rate has been appalling so far.

 

Nah..Plymouth 0 Barnsley 6. You heard it here first.

 

good job we started working on getting players in early eh?

 

A couple of years ago I made a jokey comment of ‘when we beat Port Vale 7-0 first game…’. Wish I’d stuck a quid on it, so don’t make the same mistake as me, get down to the bookie’s first thing.

 

Tbf, regardless of what team we put out, we usually lose if we’re away for the first game.

Wasn’t West Brom the last away opener we won?

 

I can hear the excuses now, 'time needed to get up to speed after no pre season'....... 'Need time to gel'.

After a poor start, the spiel then becomes 'We look ahead to January to try and save the season'

Bull$hit, fail, repeat is the new motto

 

Cant wait

 

Part of me is glad I don’t have a season ticket so don’t have to get drawn into it all yet I’m forking out cash and time to go to Harrogate on Saturday and fell for the £15 Burton Albion price.

 

Looking at where the two teams are at, Evens for Plymouth looks a very fair price.

 

Plus one of the four signings can’t even play at Plymouth so we face playing Josh Earl at left back.

 

I’m not saying we’ll pull up trees this forthcoming season , but let’s not write us off.
The squad wasn’t an absolute car crash last season and with a better drilled defensive shape could easily add another 10-20 points. fitness was our problem and hopefully this has been addressed. Let’s not possibly underestimate the power of decent/different coaching.
A big part of football management I would imagine is instilling confidence into players - under Darrell Clarke , quite a lot of players had a fair few tyre tracks on their back most weeks. By going with what we’ve got could be something CH is happy to do as he trusts what he has at his disposal.
I’m not saying other views are wrong, but let’s wait and see how we shape up after a dozen games and if we’re deficient in areas.
I’ve said it before, I want to see CH given time as this will undoubtedly result in seeing more homegrown players coming through (and if reports are to be believed), not the koromas and humphrys of the football fraternity (allegedly)

 

2 weeks and I can’t wait! Don’t think I’ll ever lose the giddiness for the start of a season.

 

I’m hoping for the best but wouldn’t be surprised to be disappointed. It’s the nature of being a Barnsley fan.

I still think there’s goals in the team provided everyone is fit and ready to play. Just remains to be seen whether the defence can improve on last year and whether that needs new personnel to make a difference.

With the club hardly rolling in money it was always going to be the case that we’d need to move players on and ideally bring in some decent fees before we could make acquisitions. Expectations should have been set accordingly rather than promise otherwise and get people’s backs up. Just hoping we don’t sell very late and leave ourselves unable to address gaps that would cause us. There comes a point when we need to have a team together that they can learn to play as one, and it’s not the last day of the window.

 

That’s the concern. DKD and/or Russell getting sold right at the end of the window would leave us scrambling around for replacements at the very last minute.
It’s a very likely scenario given Parekh is on record as saying we need to sell.

 

Im with you on this ,the loss of Humph won't be missed ,he hardly turned up.
If and it's a big If .
We can start with our current Squad ,as you say ,we were not a million miles away up until Christmas.
Conceding goals in the second half was the biggest issue.
If we can address this ,why can't we be up there challenging.
Im not too disappointed with incoming players 4 in total If we can manage to hang on to the better players.
2 weeks to go ,fingers crossed and legs and toes.

 

For you sure there will be improvements to fitness, organisation, effort and across the board coaching, but you can't coach pace in the back 4 you either have it or not, let's not kid ourselves here, as it stands we are woefully short for that first game.

 

I'd hope in the next two weeks we'll have moved on/ loaned out a couple more and maybe brought in one or two more.

I suspect the team starting the season will be markedly different to what becomes the core team picked til January.

Still plenty of time to go, but personally, I think we're nowhere near where I expected us to be at given the change in shape, the supposed change in tempo, the positioning of doing early business with a good free transfer market, Conor having a decent contact base and our public declarations of moving players on and bringing in a good amount.

It could of course still happen, but again, we'll not see a fully fit, organised team until September/October.

 

The best part about that was that there was a right meltdown on here when we struggled against a young Blackburn side in a friendly, and news trickled through about a heavy defeat to Leeds behind closed doors. But when we beat Port Vale 7-0 in the first game, everyone was saying 'it's too early to judge'.

 

It’s all one big rinse and repeat, shambles utter shambles

 

Just looking at out squad on the website (and their categorisations).

Keepers: Smith, Flavell, Cooper

Full Backs: O'Keefe, Lofthouse, Gent, Ogbeta

Centre Halves: Roberts, DeGevigney, Barratt, Earl, Lopata, Shepherd

Midfield: Russell, Phillips, Bland, Keilor-Dunn, Yoganathan, Connell, Nwakali

Wingers: Farrugia, Jalo, Cleary

Strikers: Dallas, Watters, McGoldrick

That's still 26 players. Though O'Keefe seems to be out the door. Jalo and Gent aren't fit any time soon. Nwakali is allegedly awol. We still have too many keepers and centre halves. Not enough wingers, strikers or full backs. And the players we expected to go are still here. Much to do.