Said it before a ball was kicked

Duff has the toughest job as a Barnsley manager since as long as i can remember. Best players sold replaced by freebies, clubs skint, failed to sign enough/good enough strikers.
Get on his back as much as you want but time is needed and patience imo. The fact were bringing a 16 year old striker off the bench tells you all you need to know and the fact we havent scored in 3 games.

Bottom half squad to work with. Up the duff.

 

More like up the bum. He's been shafted ever since he took the job.

 

My thoughts exactly

 

Haven't we said this about all the previous ones for years and years.
Nothing has changed by the look of things.

 

Not really not many have had their best players sold and given freebies and as soon as results go wrong people get their pitch forks out because were barnsley we should be top 6 in league one. People need to wake up be lucky to finish top half with the squad he has to work with.

 

Hoping that his managerial.prowess will shine through even though we have a bottom half squad. We need to start scoring quickly though, lose some of our timidity.

 

It's a period of transition. It was always going to be after the absolute sh¡t show of last season. It feels very similar to the 14/15 season. We'd just been relegated then and we'd trimmed the budget in order to compensate for the lack of revenue in league 1. We had games were we looked alright, and brushed some of the poorer teams aside, and games where we clearly were missing a spark, and went down to the odd goal. We had some good players, who probably were 12 months or so away from being very good players for the level. We had some distinctively average players, who were clearly there to plug gaps until we were able to better recruit in certain areas of the pitch. We ultimately lacked depth to alter games once we fell behind, and often a plan b.

We're more reliant on the loan market this time, which says to me that we clearly are struggling more financially. Although in 14/15 we did have quite a few players on short term contracts (Leroy Lita, Keith Treacy, Simeon Jackson, Jabo Ibhere etc).

I'm not saying we should write this season off, but I thoroughly expect it to peak and trough. We'll go through okay-ish patches, followed by sticky patches. I think we've got the right coach, but I think he's not quite got the tools for the job. I honestly think we need to get a bit lucky in the transfer market. Drop on an undervalued player, who turns out to be the next Conor Hourihane. But we were ahead of the curve a little in 2015-2018. Everyone's latched onto that way of thinking now though.

It's an uncertain period, and it's one we're going to have to sit out and just hope the right decisions are made at boardroom level.

 

Stop talking sense you'll get pelters on here

 

Pretty much what i was saying. The diffrence between now and 2015 is back then we had a owner who put his own money towards scouting and signing winnall scowen conor etc wilson wanted experience and lita treacy and turnbull were his signings on decent wages. Now we dont looj like we have a pot to piss in sold millions of pounds of players and re invested none of it back into the squad although i imagine were still paying the 2 Belgium players a decent amount of their wages.

 

Exactly this

 

I have to say that I didn’t fully appreciate how key both Jordan Williams and Luke Thomas were to our form until they’ve been out. Hopefully Jordan will be back for the weekend but in Luke’s case, he may never get back to where he was.
Kenny Dougall is the only Barnsley player to suffer a broken leg and come back as though nothing had happened that I can remember

 

Well in which case let's hope Luke's going to be in the Kenny Dougall category.

 

I never rated Kenny Dougall.

 

The difference is next season we probably won’t go up, so it’s going to be a good few years in League 1 if not more.

In fact I reckon Wrexham will get to the Championship before we do again.

 

Sadly the bubble burst on the back of Williams and Thomas getting injured. looks like it's league 1 for now and can't see much changing until the likes of the 2 Belgians are off the books. think Duff is the right man given the right squad. unfortunately bringing in freebies like we did in the last window
isn't working...

 

It’s not the results because like people have mentioned we are transitioning. It’s the negativity of the play, aimless long balls and not looking like scoring which is the biggest worry.

 

Keep Duff and we are league 2 material.

We have a better squad than most in this league, including players with championship and league 1 experience.

He knew exactly the situation when he took the role but unfortunately he is out of his depth at this stage of his managerial career.

Tactically inept.

 

Can't disagree with any of that Archey, it's a really fair comparison.

Our situation also took me back to our administration days under Thordarson and then Hart, before Ritchie got some consistency from players we'd had at the club a couple of years along with some really effective signings (Howard, Hayes etc). Was a long old 3 or 4 years to get there and with our current situation part of me thinks that would be a good return. But I'd like us to get out of this cycle changing managers/head coaches and let Duff have proper time with us, I don't think there is a quick fix on or off the pitch.

 

Apart from we have never looked anything like a team this season. Had our opponents not also been terrible we would have lost far more this season. Wednesday match being one example, how many gilt edge chances did they miss?

It's quite obvious we are lacking direction from the coaching staff. What they are doing in training is a mystery. Simple ball control and passing all bread and butter for any pro footballer not being displayed and Duff keeps on with the same tactics.

More time we give Duff, we will drop down the league.

 

The Icelandic bloke that took over after administration had the toughest job that I can remember a manager having, we were a proper shambles then but he still got us playing some decent stuff until Ridsdale came in and wanted to bring Hart with him, as for Duff I can't help but think that we should be looking much more organized and threating than what we are. Hopefully he is allowed to wheel and deal in January and gets to show his worth.