Interview/podcast with Khaled El Ahmad today

Interview/podcast with Khaled El Ahmad today (in Swedish). Listened to the whole 90 minutes thing and took the following notes re:Barnsley. Don't know what parts of it you might know from before. Feel free to post it to the BBS, I would if I could register...:

Long-term, the relegation last year might have been the best thing that could happen. When you are winning and doing well in the Championship, it is easy to ignore or overlook structural problems. When you start losing, all the problems come at once. Getting relegated meant Khaled could look at the long list of issues (mentions how the board works, season tickets, stadium, relations with the city, and the training pitches) and start working with it.

Markus Schopp was sacked because things were going badly on various levels. Poorly planned pre-season and overall just not getting anywhere based on data points. Poya Ashbagi was hired because of data: specifically, the club looked at how quickly Poyas teams used to get into pressure and win the ball back after losing it. They also wanted a manager who prefers young players. Khaled thinks Poya did a good job in difficult circumstances but in the end they decided to sack him to get a fresh restart. Also mentions that the recruitment process with Poya/other managers was six interviews long (had to talk with chairman, CEO, physios and others) and that he was close to getting the job in 2019, but the club went with Gerhard Struber.

Relegation meant £11m in lost income and the club sold five players for a total of £6m with the owners stepping in to cover the rest of the deficit. The club spent £50k on new players last summer. Not sure if these numbers were known/confirmed before but there you go.

Khaled got the job because of his experience/understanding of multi-club ownership and his broad connections (having worked for City Group previously), and someone who knew about football since the club doesn't have a DOF.

Player salary budget this season was £3.7m, which is 12th highest in League One. In the Championship, the budget was £9m, second lowest in the league (league average £20m).

Says the margins are fine and that he got three emails with apologies from PGMOL about penalties Barnsley should have had.

It was a joy to see the team perform well not least because of the vibe it creates among the fans. Says in Barnsley, people feel things are either great or ****, nothing in the middle really.
Journalist asks "What about Barnsley... I know there is a big glass company close to the station where you then go the stadium, but generally it feels like the classic Yorkshire working class former mining city. What does the football mean over there?"

Khaled replies "Take me as a supporter... I go to Sirius (the Swedish club he supports), I watch Sirius... I think it's really fun and then I go and I have other stuff to do. In Barnsley, you work for your ticket, to watch the game - and it means everything for you. Its one of the poorest towns in England, you know, after the strikes in the 1980s...

"Yeah, Margaret Thatcher tried to destroy the miners in a very rough manner."

"Yes, and you can still feel that. People who weren't even born and has no real connection to it themselves are still anti-establishment and against the state. It's an area where a lot of people voted for Brexit, more because of discontent than any other reason. So when it comes to what the football means... I'd say 'everything'. When we win, people in our shirts tell me how good we are... if we lose, I have to use the car, I can't walk through town."

"Really?"

"Yeah, the season it all went badly... it was better to stay at home."

"Were you afraid at any point?"

[very quickly] "No. I have to say they have that sort of respect. But they have no issues telling you what they think."
Said the hype before Wembley was crazy with someone laying a banner on a road saying "last out turn off the lights" and that property brokers had "We're going to Wembley" in their shop windows etc. The whole weekend was magic. We went down on Friday, had a private showing of Wembley to avoid that the players had too much of a 'wow' feeling the next day. Then we went to Luton vs Coventry to hear the noise and that part of it, and then we started planning for our game. But Olof... you asked me about the best experiences I've had in football... this one was magic. Everything except the result. "
He goes quite far to describe how disappointed he was in the refereeing and VAR in the Wembley game, particularly not for asking the ref to go have a look at the monitor himself, and says he's made sure to be part of the "referee committe" (whatever that is) next season.

"Do you think it is because Sheffield Wednesday is a bigger club or...?"

"I can't tell you that 'on the record', Olof... nah, honestly it is hard to tell. I don't think so. But it was disappointing. Of course, some of the fans speculates that there's something behind it, but it would be too obvious... I don't hope so. But the pictures are very clear: penalty, and should not have been a red card."

"So how do you reload? When do you start working for next season?"

"Well, the day after the game I received bids on three of my starting players. Not much recovery for me. Went on a holiday for four days in Greece, it was raining... misery rarely comes alone. Our coach says something I like, 'football owes you nothing'. And that is true."

Says there is no real collaboration between the clubs that the ownership is in charge of.
Billy Bean no longer involved in the club, sold his percentage to current owner. Guess you already know about that.

The owners bought the club because it already had a strong youth academy and were working with data.

The club didn't see one single game live with any of the players signed this season. Only video and data, "and it works".
"What are you looking for?"

"I would say we are very clear about what we want to be. Mini RB Leipzig/Liverpool - high pressure, we look for specific 'event data points', we don't buy players over 23 or possibly 24. We could sign someone who is perhaps older, but we want to have a squad balance with no more than one player over 30, and try to pressure down the age structure. Last year we had an average age of 23.1, this season 23.4. We were the youngest team this season in League One and last year in the Championship. The ambition is to be one of the youngest teams in Europe."

"What are the owners ambition to own this club?"

"First one would be to see if it is possible to run a club in the process oriented manner we do, if it is possible to be self-financed, which is difficult in football but something they want to achieve. When it comes to sport, we want to establish ourselves in the Championship, giving us the chance to compete for that playoff spot.. where everything can happen. But yeah, it is important to them how money is invested, there's no "here's £50m, go and buy a team" - every decision is discussed."

Journalist says "when I went to Oakwell, I felt it would have been nice with more people working in the food stands..."
Khaled laughs and says he is working on that along with a lot of other things...

Gets the question about possibly signing Swedish players (as they would fit the wage structure) and if Brexit made it difficult to sign from abroad. Khaled says yes but also talks about the rule change now happening, making it easier to sign foreigners (2 per season in League One), so they could bring in something from Sweden, Denmark, Norway (his three examples). So they are looking at the Swedish market now, which wasn't possible before. There's good players in Allsvenskan (top tier) but also in Superettan (second tier). Says the financial terms make it a good market, Barnsley players earn somewhere around £15-17k in average per month and players in Allsvenskan a bit less than that.

About the above, he also says that it would have been easier if Barnsley had reached the Championship, but that League One is also a good way to get seen by PL clubs, since there's currently PL interest in some Barnsley players.

Gets asked about how the football in League One is these days. Khaled says its mixed, with Sheffield Wednesday playing the very classic "hof the ball for 119 minutes" in the Wembley final, but that some teams like Barnsley, Exeter, Lincoln, MK Dons who are actually trying to play football.

Confirms that he and the club is giving the coach orders about a specific number of minutes (says 2000 as an example) that must be given to academy players.

Says there will less activity on the market this year but will still sign 10+ players and sell a few as well. Difficult to be a small club, lots of interest in both coach and players.

 

Thanks mate, great read

 

Thanks for that pal, an interesting read.

 

thanks for taking the time to post this. appreciated.

 

Thanks for posting. Enjoyable read

 

I don’t believe we had the 12th biggest salary budget in League 1 though.

 

Relegation meant £11m in lost income and the club sold five players for a total of £6m with the owners stepping in to cover the rest of the deficit. The club spent £50k on new players last summer. Not sure if these numbers were known/confirmed before but there you go.

Name the five players and then step back and look at the balls up we make at selling players, how can we be consistently bad at it through various owners. Owners wouldn't have to step in if they got this right.

 

Struggling to think of the 5th player, given we didn’t actually sell Styles. £5m for Woodrow, Morris, Helik and Brittain was ok, given how desperate we were and the fact that 2 of them only had one year left on the their contracts

 

Big Vic the fifth player?

Approx £2m for Morris. Vic was a freebie. Leaves an average of £1m each for the other three. Not great but given they were coming to the end of their contracts and we needed the money not terrible either.

 

Wonder which players and which clubs... more than likely mads and Connell?

 

To include Morris and Helik in that's a joke, £5m and it includes those two.

Put your begging buckets away Neerav. We've no chance this new boards put a clause in for Duff, they're worse than any previous owners we have had at selling.

 

On the financials the claim that relegation cost the club £11m is quite extreme.

Turnover for the year to May 2022 was £15m. If the cost of relegation was £11m on turnover that would leave the club looking at £4m this year. That is significantly lower than the £8m last time in league one.

Maybe the turnover loss of circa £6m plus a £5m perceived reduction in the value of the squad as a result of relegation is how he gets there.

The reference to player salaries of £9m in 2022 suggests that there was around £4m paid to other staff. Which assuming the drastic cut for this year to £3.7m for player salaries would make total staff costs circa £8m for this year. This is in line with where the club was in 2019 regarding total pay roll.

The issue starts to emerge that even with these drastic wage cuts the club will have an operating loss of around £5m (this excludes player trading profit) for 22/23. Going in to the previous season the balance sheet was in a bad place with a £5m deficit. Player sales over the summer will have brought the balance sheet back in to marginally positive. The cash injection from the owners will have covered the operating losses for 2022/23.

So after the raft of sales and £6m from the owners the club starts the 2023/4 season with minimal cash and the need to raise circa £5m in either player sales or owner cash to see it through the season.

It’s not easy trying to be competitive in league one…

 

I think the sales last summer were different. We were in dire straits and absolutely desperate to sell. That knocks money off the value. There wasn’t exactly clubs queuing up to sign Helik, and when the offer came in on deadline day, refusing it would probably have been cutting our nose to spite our face.

Think we should’ve held out for more for Morris but that is offset by the fact we somehow got over 1m for Brittain. General view on Woodrow seemed to be that we had to get him off the wage bill, his fee was probably minimal.

 

Thanks DT interesting..

 

they have no issues in telling you what they think. . . . classic

 

I thought those two straight away. As for the club? Luton of course!

 

Morris sale was daylight robbery. He was one of the best players in the Championship and if we'd kept him I think we would have gone up in the automatic spot. If Luton sold him now they'd get over £5 million for him alone. I wonder if we had any clause whereby we received a bonus if they got promoted to the PL.

 

If you think he's worth £5m now, after scoring 20 in a season, you shouldn't really have a problem with £2m after scoring 14 over a season and a half.

 

Thanks for posting @Donny.tyke . Interesting that it's been confirmed the coach/ manager gets told about how many minutes players have to play.Personally I didn't and don't see why benefit to dropping to league 1, those issues could still have been looked at in the Championship!