Hecky says....

And that is why I asked him to clarify. So that we had a proper indication of what exactly he is saying. If we have some clarity of view we know what the argument is. All we have at the moment is an opinion that changes with the fortunes of the team and to be honest, I would have a lot more respect from him if his view was clearly stated and we were not trying to argue against a constantly moving target.

 

His view was and is as clear as you can possibly get. We were one of the in form teams in the division and sitting just outside the playoffs were in with a shot of getting promoted to the premier league. We sold that opportunity off to the highest bidder buy dismantling the squad for a few million pounds and that success with 'the plan' is not compatible with success in the league table.

Not really sure how he could be any more clear about his view than that.

 

I support the plan. It’s clear that Paul as the person who will ultimately take the responsibility for its success or failure feels it has weaknesses and will hold us back in its current form.

 

The plan is what we've always done. For 130 years. Fans have criticised the respective boards for making us a selling club for as long as I can remember.
The only current difference is that we are working within our limitations to maximise the benefits of having to sell.
It does have limitations. To get any higher as a club currently we need a big cash injection or a large slice of luck.
When we did get promoted there was a large slice of luck involved. We bought two over the hill and underwhelming top division players, two from obscure Portuguese clubs and one utilty player from the fourth division.
If we'd done that this close season there'd be hell on. Amazingly they all gelled, Hendrie was added and we went up.
What I would say about that season, however, was that the experience of Hendrie was crucial. He was amazing. Under the current plan he wouldn't fit. I think, on occasion, an experienced player with the right attitude might help.

 

I think the first real indication of the plan working is the longer contracts being handed out now, last January there were no guarantees that we would be promoted or that if we would have offered mawson , Hourihane, winnall, scowen, Watkins Roberts big money and new contracts that they would have taken it or that we would have been successful. These players wanted either a premiership team or bigger clubs with bigger fan bases who theoretically have a better a chance than us and paid the big money. With the possible exception of Roberts and scowen it's irrelevant what we offered the others were going. You also have to think at this level if you offer big money to only a few what affect this would have on the rest of the team. Doing so well last season just came a bit by surprise and early in the plan. I know the benefits if we would have got promoted last season via the playoffs but the club didn't want to gamble and as it wasn't an odds on that we would have been promoted you can't keep holding it against the club.

 

You are telling me what his view is, but Conan is saying nothing. There is no way that I can have a discussion through a third party. It is ridiculous. Am I to assume that you hold an identical view to Conan, in which case I can have the debate that I was going to have with Conan, but have it instead with you. Or shall we put the past behind us, agree that the issue is dead, and look only to the future.

 

It's also been, in my opinion, a top priority to put the club in a strong financial position in order to make us attractive to a new investor/takeover.
Fingers crossed that part of the job has been done and we can all get what we want which is the opportunity to spend a little more money on attracting and keeping quality players.

 

Read his posts. Simple

 

The worrying thing about 'the plan' is that that wasn't happening. We weren't improving the financial position or profitability of the club and weren't using the player sales to facilitate the improvement of revenue generating resources. All w did was continue to run at a loss with the player sales (of which you have absolutely no guarantee that you are going to find the next gem to sell) to prop up the losses in the short term. Fortunately it sounds like investors have come in despite this

 

I get what you're saying but I don't see how, without player sales, we can run at anything other than a loss in this league.
I know you have views on improving income streams and to some extent I agree. I also agree that buying and selling isn't guaranteed to succeed 100%. We may well have the odd barren spell where a bunch of players don't develop.
Anyway, let's see what the next few weeks bring.

 

It's not dead though is it? The issue I have with the plan is the execution of it regardless of situation and in that I mean the selling of Marc Roberts. A player who didn't want to go and wasn't forcing a move. It's clear to me that the system used has some kind of value indicator and value projector and therefore indicates the "best" time to sell to maximise value, regardless of "soft" factors like impact of loss of players. I'd suggest the same happened with Scowen too given Hecky's comments. Perhaps the system indicates that statistical improvement has slowed or even stopped and therefore it's time to cash in.

Anyway, the big test will be no doubts round the corner with say Bradshaw.

 

SuperTyke has said what I would have said, but for completeness sake I will respond and it's up to you and if you want to take it further.

So here is the league table from 21st January 2017:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38619324

Consider that by this point we had sold Winnall and not bothered replacing him, we had not replaced Mawson from August but had yet to sell Hourihane and Bree. The team in sixth place we still had to play at home and I would have fancied our chances. Note that the team who did finish in sixth were below us in the table albeit with a game in hand.

Can I say we would have definitely made it? No one can. By the same token no one can say we wouldn't. What we can say with 100% certainty is that the plan is incompatible with on the field success as last season's decline showed.

I can also say this team is nowhere near top six of even top half quality and at the minute I'm not seeing anyone we can sell for a profit in the near future. However, if we were sixth in the table in January and Norwich came in with an offer for Lindsay that turned the owner's head, he will be off. If we get six offers they will all be off. Then the cycle begins again.

 

I'd still like to know how we lost a million quid in League One when a club with a 70% lower turnover only lost ten grand.

You'd have to question the person(s) in charge if it weren't sacrilege.

 

Your view as expressed in your explanation represents a fundamentally different interpretation of that table to mine. Your explanation that the team that eventually finished 6th were below us at the time represents a fundamental misreading of the principles of risk and reward because that team was not promoted. A summary of your view would be to put everything on the number 1 and spin the roulette wheel. That is not how the real world works. In the real world, the people who run a company cannot manage on a hope. They have to have a better basis than hope. They have to manage using principles and strategies. You might well say what has a company got to do with football. I support a football team. I do not support the company that owns it. Well the financial principles that govern the way that the football club operates are exactly the same as the financial principles that govern the company that owns it. It cannot continue indefinitely making losses because if it does so, it runs out of money, and there is just no point in saying that a company that loses £1m in a promotion season is badly run, and when it takes steps to put that right by selling players when it can.... that it is badly run. You cannot have it both ways, or at least you cannot if you are being fair.

You are fond of saying that the football club does not make the most of revenue opportunities, and yet you know nothing about how the company is run and why those decisions are taken. Your comments assume that the management and staffs of Barnsley Football Club are incompetent, and yet you know nothing about the internal workings of the club, the financial pressures, the profit margins or the cost bases. Instead of doing your job, which is to support, your comments could have the opposite effect, or at least they could if anyone listened.

My guess is that you are much young than me, and that your football supporting experience is much different to mine, and that this is why we are so far apart in our attitudes towards the club. My guess is that most of the time that you have supported the club, they have been established in the second tier of football and that because of that, you regard our club as established at that level. In fairness to that view we have spent more seasons at that level than any other club, even though for the early years there was only two divisions and there was no relegation. My own supporting experience is different to that. When I began supporting we were just starting the first of two spells in the 4th division. Indeed, in my second season, after 10 games, we were 92nd and a group of local businessmen including John Denis' father had to put in money to save the club for the first time. You will know that Patrick Cryne rescued us from Administration, but this has not made enough impression upon you in my opinion, because you would not be in such a rush to risk it all again if it had. The closeness of our brush with obscurity has left no impression at all, and the fact that we lost £9m during the tenure of Mr Cryne's ownership tends to be discounted as bad management rather than a good man bailing out the club he loves and that is competing above its natural income stream. You want the town to have a football team to be proud of, as do we all, but you do not want to wait patiently for success to come, as did the countless generations who have watched the club over its 130 years. You want success now, and you are happy to criticise those who are not prepared to share your vision of how to achieve that success. You are someone whose vision for my club I can never share, not because we do not want the same thing, simply because you have little concept of how hard it will be to achieve it, and once achieved, how hard it will be to hold on to. You have no patience and that to me is unforgivable having spent 1 year out of the last 130 in the top division.

You are fond of quoting examples of teams who you perceive to be less deserving than us who are currently doing better. Well I could list probably 30 teams that are currently playing their football below football league level, whose terraces I have stood on and watched my team lose, including 6-3 at Wrexham and 7-2 at Bradford Park Avenue. We can all play the selective comparison game, but how about the grip on reality game.

 

Patrick Cryne did not save the club from initial administration.

He bought it from Peter Doyle 12 months later.

What is your vision for "your" club?

 

Patrick Cryne DID save the club from Administration. The club was still in Administration when he bought it from Mr Doyle. It never left it after John Dennis placed it there in 2002 till Mr Cryne purchased it.

 

That's not my recollection tbh.

 

Well, it's certainly mine. I don't recall us leaving Administration then having to enter it again on a second occasion within a year. Which is why we had to get special dispensation from the Football League to bring in new players in the Summer of 2003.

 

To be honest, I am quite happy with the way that it is being managed and if PC was able to continue, I would be quite happy to support the current strategy. I always seem to finish off my contributions on here with the same word, and that word is PATIENCE. It is definitely not risk everything on the turn of a card.

 

All this illustrates why I try (but often fail) to stay out of the discussions and let the people at the club get on with it. I've no idea about the background to the decisions, and I can't avoid the impression that people on both sides of the argument use too many assumptions to fill in the gaps. The issue of Patrick Cryne "saving" the club, for example. Most of us on here agreed with the phrase "One Made Us, One Saved Us" to go on the big flag we had made. Are we now to believe that this is, after all, not true?

On the Marc Roberts issue, I too have made an assumption. I assume he left because he was offered a much higher salary than we could afford. That seems to be the usual explanation for most players, including Conor, Winnall, Bree, Scowen, Watkins etc and countless more in the preceding 50 years while I've been a fan. He certainly could not have left for football reasons, as the club he went to is in turmoil - yesterday's result confirms that, and he can't even get into their side! I'm not challenging the view that he wanted to stay with us and was forced out, but I honestly don't know where the evidence for it comes from. Perhaps someone can explain?

"The Plan" as it's called is certainly frustrating, and demoralising at times, but it's nothing new. It's been there for at least 50 years, and probably before that too. However, it's more apparent now as the salary gap has widened. In the past, only our best players were "pinched for a pittance" - Pat Howard, David Hirst, Stewart Barrowclough - you'll all have your own examples depending on your age. But these days, even mediocre (by comparison) players get "pinched". Sam Winnall for example, has proved that in football terms he'd reached his level with us. He can hardly get a game in 2 rival teams in our league this season. Yet we couldn't get close to affording him. That says more about the idiocy of the club that bought him, and about the way football and agents operate, than it does about us.