Unity is strength

If it is to be believed the the players are unsettled. If any player is unhappy then believe me so are we the Fans. It is November since we last won at home. Jose Morais was not appointed til many months after that. I think Ph jumped before he was given the push. Didn't like the idea but results made it enevitable. Then JM has to pick up the pieces. If the players want to know why we are where we are then take a good long look at themselves. Some are of championship standard and some are not or not anymore. I hope we survive in the championship but strength comes from unity. PLUS. Don't believe what you read in the papers. Good news doesn't sell papers.

 

The latest revelation or perhaps realisation is from Townsend saying he is harshly done by. Nowt against the lad but I am sorry but imo he ain't championship stand and barely league1. If he thought otherwise I am sure Ph would have brought him into the side earlier.

 

Your thread title is very apposite. While allowing for the fact that stuff in the papers can be exaggerated or sometimes simply untrue, there is an element of "no smoke without fire". And some of the vibes we are getting are certainly less than positive. In the Norwich game it appeared to me at one point that McBurnie seemed to be questioning some of the instructions he was being given, and I have seen signs of minor recrimination and disagreement amongst the players. Jose Morais was openly critical of Mallan in a quote in this week's Chronicle, where he also stated that things are not going as he expected. That Mallan was at fault is hard to argue with, but once a manager becomes openly critical of his players then the alarm bells begin to sound.

The seeds of our present troubles have been some time in the making. Parting with Winnall, Bree and Hourihane at a time when we were not cash-poor (relatively) was a bad move. They were contracted to the end of the season, and it led to a downturn in form from which we have not yet recovered. Once talented players like that leave, the club's ambitions begin to look more limited, and we were then hit by the departure of Scowen, Watkins and Roberts. That Paul Heckingbottom managed to keep us as high up as we were prior to his departure is testament to his ability, because the new recruits were brought in too late, and there remains a serious question as to whether they were good enough. It appears to me that we made the mistake of thinking that it would be easy to get in players who could be just as good. As though they came from a magic player tree. The delay in replacing Linton Brown and the late appointment of Gauthier Ganaye were also factors in the apparently sub-optimum recruitment.

Then there is the January '18 recruitment. McBurnie is a quality player for sure, but he won't be able to rescue us on his own. What was needed was a Championship equivalent of the type of move which brought Adam Hammill, Aidy White and Kevin Long (temporarily) to Oakwell. That helped shore things up and turn things around. What we got, McBurnie aside, was not of that order of assistance. The players look dispirited at the moment and increasingly, so does the head coach. His best career work has come when working with quality players and he does not presently look as suited to dealing with something less. The new owners have the financial capability to turn around this mess provided they retain their ambition and interest. But it looks like a slow process which now seems likely to commence in League One. Personally I find the current situation frustrating because our problems look largely self-inflicted.

 

The only time they've looked dispirited was against Millwall when 1 to 11 had poor games.We've competed well in all Jose's games so far.

 

You have made some good points there - although these points are clearly obvious to some of us.
The problems we have now stems from getting promoted into the Championship - and the directors/owner of that time not getting to grips with players contracts.
This resulted in the January 2017 debacle that we haven’t yet recovered from.
The people on here that said (and they know who they are) ‘we’ll be reight’ at that time must be wondering what they were thinking back then.

There then followed the issues you have highlighted including:
Late appointment of GG.
Late signing of players in the summer.
Inability to sign a full squad in the summer- especially strikers.
The inability to sign a balanced squad.
Hecky leaving.
Morais not getting the best from the team.

In saying all that - I’m still of the belief that we have the ability now to get out of this relegation scrap.
Plus - if we stay in the Championship - then with a couple of additions I could see this squad challenging near the top of the league next season.

 

A couple of additions ? Ha ha make that another 11 . This squad is nowhere near good enough and never will be , add to that the new head coach trying to get to grips with everything .

 

That was poor man management. Look at successful managers like Sir Alex or Arsene Wegner. They were/are brilliant for taking blame away from their players. Arsene is famous for saying he didn't see it, when one of his own players does bad. Morais is more of the throw them under the bus mentality that Mourinho has recently shown with guys like Pogba and Shaw. Maybe that's why he's our head coach and not seen as a manager, if he struggles to manage the guys he works with five days a week.

Malan made a terrible mistake, but if tactics wasn't to play so many square balls, he might have been more confident at passing it forward. It happened towards the halfway line and we had many chances to still stop the goal after the mistake. All he had to say was Stevie knows he made a mistake, he will learn from it, he's not played many games for us yet etc. Instead he was made the scapegoat being taken off at half time, when mistake aside he was far from our worse player in that first half and actually played far worse without him in the second half.

 

If we stay up I’d say we would need at least 8 first team players to be competitive with an equal number moving on. We are just as abject as last time we got relegated.

 

You were doing so well until the bolded bit...it would take a major influx in near enough all positions, plus a season with them playing together, to get us even remotely near the top of the Championship.

 

At present, unbelievably, we're actually worse off points-wise than last time. In 13/14 after 38 games we'd got 35 points, 2 more than now. The difference was we were 5 points from safety then - by virtue of other teams somehow being even poorer we're not in the bottom 3 this time around.

 

We're going to lose our best players - Yiadom and McBurnie - regardless of whether we stay up or go down. We're also going to lose a lot of the dead wood regardless, not good enough for the Championship and probably not good enough for a League One promotion challenge. Some may stay because we can't get better options in or will be second choice. I'd go out of my way to keep Pinnock and Thiam, maybe Isgrove too. The rest can either go or be just squad players as far as I care.

 

Can you please explain to me why you would go out of your way to keep Thiam ? I always try to see positives in a player & would never slag anyone putting on the reds shirt but I fail to see anything in Thiam that he brings to the team , I would dearly love to see him prove me wrong & wish him well but I would not be disappointed if he never played for us again

 

I think ‘going out of our way’ is very strong but if we were to be relegated to League 1, I’d like to see Thiam get a chance. He seems to me that’s he’s a confidence player that wants to be loved by fans and if he got a few early goals in a league 1 campaign, I think that could lead to him getting 25+. However, I could be talking absolute rubbish and he could end up with a similar strike rate in a league below.

I do think if we get relegated there won’t be the wholesale changes to the squad that some on here are expecting/hoping.

 

If we get relegated I think a lot of our players would be alright in league one. Punished less for defensive lapses, more chances at the other end so profligacy wouldn't be as big a deal - if we stay up then we have to spend some money improving the squad or we'll be in for another miserable season.

 

Yeah that’s what I’m thinking.

I think with a successful season in league 1 some of our players could definitely carry that into the championship like our previous star players did.

But as you say, we would need to buy some serious quality if we stay up as a few of the players aren’t even close to championship quality.

 

It's only when you see what's happened in the last 6 months do you truely realise that all positions are important but if you don't have a good Goalie you are playing with one hand tied behind you back. Biggest mistake that was made was not getting another keeper in at Christmas and is probably the biggest reasons we'll go down. And just as a general observation, we should also remember players come and players go as do managers and we should try and remember that as Barnsley fans we should try and stick together - abusing each other and getting on at each other doesn't help us.

 

Disagree with you over the goalkeeper , if we go down its because the whole team have not been good enough over the season not an individual, you get what you deserve over 46 games , the goalkeeper is the same one who was instrumental in our success over the previous two seasons , the difference this season is the quality of what is playing in front of him , there is no way if we go down that the blame can be laid at the goalkeepers feet.

 

It's the fine margins that will see us doomed, over a season clean sheets are worth more points than a goal. Just think of the points we've dropped because of poor errors from both keepers or regulation saves, like being beaten at the near post, which have cost us.

 

Trouble is, if an outfield player makes an error it always cost a goal. But the goalkeeper is the last line of defence and if he makes an it often can. Who would be a goalkeeper... Not me