Would you rather the club be in league two but owned by supporters

Sorry, not read all the posts in the thread but in answer to the original question imho it's not a binary choice and if there isn't some change we'll be sitting here two years from today with the same owners AND at the wrong end of league 2.

The three most recent times that we've got back up out of league 1 we've had Howard and MacPhail, Brownhill and Hourihane and Mowatt and McGeehan at the helm in the heart of midfield. That ain't going to happen with Palmer and Benson!

 

Ownership in and of itself is an irrelevance to me - and there are more options than the 2 grim outlooks that you've proposed.

This parochial attitude that the owner must be just like us sits somewhat at odds with how we interact with any other individual or organisation - do we only buy from , have friends who, or in anyway interact with people who are 'just like us ' ? I'm sure that'd be perceived as a bit bigoted ...

As long as the owner is there for the right intention - ie to try and develop the football club, then I couldn't care less about their background.

In my opinion we've not had that in a very long time, and thus we are where we are. I think we've a way to drop yet before things correct themselves.

 

Fan ownership is a lovely concept until the money dries up or **** hits the fan. Imagine, after the novelty wears off and we are languishing just above the drop zone in League Two, making our way back from Carlisle on a cold, miserable winter's night in December after yet another defeat and nobody to blame... All our 'saleable assets' gone and somehow Paul Gibbs at the helm and Kevin Betsy as assistant (due to their ties to the club). Being fan-owned would be scant consolation to our lowly position and the inevitable questions would arise: should we change the manager, how will we scrape together a few hundred thousand for a promotion push; how do we avoid relegation to the conference? How did we sink so low? Etc etc. Conners would be a distant memory at that point, and no doubt the in-fighting would start, the BFC blame game. I'd prefer a local businessman/woman, or someone rich with ties to the club. Hovering between Champ and League One in that scenario would be okay for me.
Disclaimer: I do not like this board and would prefer them to be gone.

 

If we were in L1 we’d have to sell our better players anyway just to keep afloat no matter who the owners are. I have no issue with us signing young players, developing them and sell them, that has been the history of the club. The problem is having a squad of 20 youngsters, a coach who is a kid himself and a CEO with no footballing experience.
If we had a mix of talented youngsters and some experienced players, a coach with a decent track record and someone like a Bobby Hassell or Danny Wilson in the boardroom Id be happier. And communicate with the fans and tell the truth. Do all that and I’ve no issue with them selling 2 or 3 players each summer to keep us in the black

 

I genuinely couldn't think of anything worse than the club being owned by supporters. We'd be bust before christmas of the first season.

 

How so?

 

. There are 5 of us that attend from our house. We have no spare money to pay footballers. I wouldn't imagine we are that much different from many households and fans in the area. From the people I've met so far in life including everyone at oakwell over the years, I cant thinks of anyone with the clout, business acumen and skills to run a football club which is a fairly niche business.

 

The club would be run operationally by the same people it is today. Fans having a stake in the ownership doesn't mean that thousands of fans are involved in the minutiae of decision making on a day to day basis.

I'd also suspect that a fair few people run businesses within the fan base or have requisite skills to be part of an executive that oversees the running of the club. Likely moreso than the current owners who have taken £750,000 out of the working capital and have dwindled cash in the business up to May 2020 in the region of £5m.

 

That leads to the question of how much money would need to be raised each year and by how many fans, and for how long is that sustainable? I don't have the answer to that, but even with a fan-owned club I would imagine you would need at least one wealthy owner. As a fan, I would be willing to chip in a hundred quid each year, which would cover a few hundred flatbreads..

 

But why would you need to incur losses every year? At present, we're incurring operating losses every year which the owners try (and fail) to plug with selling players.

Many of the sales which derive profit are offset by players we've made a loss on or contracts that have to be paid off. And of course, we've the £750k thats been drained.

If you stripped the club right back and analysed where the costs are and what drives success, you'd likely be able to save a significant amount compared to what these owners are wasting.

There are two leagues of many teams below us that manage to survive with smaller and older facilities and with much smaller fan bases. There are a couple in this league that are the same.

So I don't subscribe to the theory that without these owners we are doomed or that the only other option is the lowest tier of professional football. A football club isn't that different to any other business. It has a product, it has people to manage. It has to communicate, market and generate sales, maximise its resources and manage its finances.

The specialist factors that are individual to football would need people with knowledge of them, but we have plenty of employees, some of which have been there a good amount of time to take care of that and pass on their insights.

 

My point was that we will still have to operate by doing what we currently do and many don't like. Sell players.

 

Good points, you know more than me on the subject I also don't subscribe to the theory that without these owners we'd be doomed (on the contrary, I also believe we are being mismanaged). Neither do I believe the only other option is the lowest tier of professional football. I suppose that's where the confusion lies, why do we think we need to be in the bottom tier in order to successfully operate as a fan-owned entity?

 

Sounds like one of Wednesday's ideas to stave off the inevitable going bust

 

I think as Barnsley fans, theres often a tendency to jump on the extremes of a spectrum. So things are never quite as good or as bad as they may be perceived.

Whether we continue with these owners or change to new owners or have fan involvement within a new ownership structure, the team on the pitch will play in the league they deserve to play at. We've no divine right to be at any level, results on the pitch will take care of all that.

 

I think it's fair to say that with the financial doping already prevalent in the Championship and League 1, a shared fan ownership would ultimately result in Barnsley being positioned in the midst of other similar clubs with similar fan bases and similar revenue streams. If you look down the leagues, in terms of size of the town/fan base and relative investment we are punching slightly above our weight even being championship contenders in League One.
If (when) we go down this season, I can see us in League One mid table obscurity for some time, regardless of who owns the club from tomorrow.

 

Completely agree.