Duff linked to Swansea

I think some common sense is needed here.

1. If a football club in a higher division comes along and negotiates an acceptable compensation with Barnsley FC, why would any manager not AT LEAST find out what they have to offer? The club are telling you that they are satisfied with the fee being offered and they'd be happy for you to leave. That is not disloyal.
2. Regardless, as a football manager you should be aware that loyalty has very little place in football. Therefore if another club is willing to offer you a significantly improved contract, sometimes it's best to take the offer whilst your stock is high.
3. As a football manager you should also be aware that you can use this kind of situation to leverage a better budget for yourself at your current club. If you feel that the club you're considering joining has a greater chance of success than your current club (due to current squad, financial resources, set up etc) then you'd be crazy to not consider the move.
4. As a family man who wouldn't want to be able to live in the same house as their wife and children, instead of just the odd day off? Football managers are humans and have feelings/frustrations too.

My personal opinion is that Michael Duff has done a fantastic job for us but that he owes us nothing. I sincerely hope that he stays and I think he's sensible enough to genuinely consider whether in the long run he would be better doing another season with us...and not just thinking about the money.

Now can we please halt the meltdown for now?

 

It’s on the BBC site an hour ago that they have sorted out Martin’s move and that they expect to have Duff in place by Friday

 

If Michael does go the next appointment will be the fortieth manager I have seen in the dug out for us.

When Clarke left for Leeds, Wilson for Wednesday and Val for West Brom it felt pretty bad but we always bounce back.

What ever happens we’ll be reit

 

Agreed, but I am/was really looking forward to at least a second season with Duff in charge. I honestly fancied us for top 2 next season

 

I havn"t a clue but one thing for certain is that they do not all move on because they are being head hunted , we get rid of a lot of them because they failed & the fans want them out , there isn"t a fan who did not want both Schopp & Asbagi firing , the club were not criticised for that , its called swings & roundabouts .

 

Get Stendel back!....... Welcome home party in the Garrison

 

I understand the point about 12-month rolling contracts but it's similar to player contracts - there's only two reasons to offer longer contracts to managers/players: 1. The security of a three-year contract attracts them to the club in the first place, so we can get 'better' managers 2. It protects our asset from being poached by others without hefty compensation, which can be reinvested in the next appointment or squad.

For the reasons above I think we need to keep offering multi-year contracts. We've probably made some decent profit on managers in the past few years.

My belief is that if we want to stop the merry-go-round we eventually need to start growing our own and then trusting them with the top job. Now feels as good a time as any for some continuity (if Michael Duff leaves), and we have some very capable and very committed people who have been at the club for a long time, such as Disco, Bobby and Nicky Eaden. Why not start there?

 

I think us being such a boom-bust club for the past 10 years has helped us have so many managers. We’re either mint - manager poached - or dog**** - managed fired. If we had a mid table season we might see someone hang around a second year.

£500k is a nice little buyout, but if we go for a manager who has a job then we’ll spend a chunk of it on them.

I’d love to see Stendel back but it’d be sad to see it go badly

 

I was going to make the point about all the rhetoric. I’m not going to bother listening to an interview with a manager or reading his programme notes again. Complete waste of time. The only people at the club that has the club 100% in their heart are the fans, the volunteers and most of the backroom staff. I’m talking below board level here.

The other thing that annoys me is the ‘wanting to be nearer his family’ line, which will no doubt get rolled out.
1 He knew where Barnsley was when he took the job and we didn’t drag him here against his wishes
2 It’s nearer Cheltenham than Burnley, where he has spent a lot of his career
3 Are we therefore meant to take it that if Burnley meet his buyout clause that he won’t leave Swansea for them?
4 He isn’t the only person who has been offered a job 200 miles from his home. There are plenty of options, such as bringing the family with him or not taking the job. He was already in work and getting paid a higher than average wage, so he didn’t have the necessity that many others have had in that position.
5 Swansea to Cheltenham, whilst shorter than Barnsley to Cheltenham, is still over 4 hours round trip, on a good day. Swansea fans will therefore be praying the Bristol City job doesn’t come up. Or the Cheltenham one.

He left for 3 main reasons - a higher division, a bigger playing budget and, the most important one, a much bigger wage, the same reasons he left Cheltenham for us. The fact that it’s a bit closer to home isn’t anywhere close to those three and is an added bonus, so I hope he doesn’t insult us by using it as an excuse.

 

Disco has been settled in the Barnsley area since he signed for us and isn’t his kid at Manchester United? He’s more likely to want the Reds job

 

+1 for promoting from within. I'd like to see an internal succession plan, like so many other companies in different industries. No reason to go external at all, in my view, unless we're after a change of direction. So bringing in Duff probably made sense, but now we're more or less happy with where things are why not give somebody else currently in the hierarchy a shot (if they want it).

 

One of the first publications to ‘break’ about Duff talking to Swansea said that Barnsley & a certain Mr Barton would be a good fit for each other and someone we should seriously consider as a replacement!!!

 

If, as we believe, Disco is doing a great job in the background, then the danger would be that he loses all that stability for a shot at the top job that may come unstuck within 6 months.

My view would be give him a shot, if the club think he has the ability and the succession plan is the direction they wish to take. But on the basis that if things don't pan out and the club want to change direction, he still has a role in the background to return to rather than being shown the high road with a payout in his pocket. Otherwise, the long time invested in his progress in his current role(s) would have been wasted.

 

In response to your points @Gordon Ottershaw :

1 He knew where Barnsley was when he took the job and we didn’t drag him here against his wishes. He listened to what we had to say and decided we were the right club for him at the time. He has never publicly complained about being away from his family because he took the job with his eyes wide open.
2 It’s nearer Cheltenham than Burnley, where he has spent a lot of his career. When he was a player at Burnley he would have had a different family life (e.g. possibly no children at the time). Also aware that as a player you're more likely to have a transient career so up for moving further away for a few years at a time.
3 Are we therefore meant to take it that if Burnley meet his buyout clause that he won’t leave Swansea for them? We're not meant to infer anything from his decision to take the next step in his career. He'll be considering whether moving to Swansea will be good for his career, whether he can succeed there and whether it improves his family's situation (both financially and otherwise). He hasn't said he wants the Burnley job - others have speculated that is the case.
4 He isn’t the only person who has been offered a job 200 miles from his home. There are plenty of options, such as bringing the family with him or not taking the job. He was already in work and getting paid a higher than average wage, so he didn’t have the necessity that many others have had in that position. Boiling it down to how much he gets paid and whether it was necessary to accept the Barnsley job is simplifying in the extreme. Taking your kids out of school and uprooting your whole family for a job that may sack you after ten games isn't exactly appealing. Instead he's done the miles and not complained...and been very successful at doing so.
5 Swansea to Cheltenham, whilst shorter than Barnsley to Cheltenham, is still over 4 hours round trip, on a good day. Swansea fans will therefore be praying the Bristol City job doesn’t come up. Or the Cheltenham one. As someone who lives near Sheffield and works in Swansea I can tell you that Cheltenham to Swansea is significantly easier to commute on a daily basis, and therefore you can have a semblance of a normal family life. In my case it would lead to a significant improvement in my life, my wife's life and my children's lives - purely because I'd be able to come home every night.

To call it an 'excuse' or that he's insulting fans by improving his personal situation is ludicrous in my opinion.

 

On the bright side, appointing him would save me a bit of money next season!

 

Moore, lad at Northampton or Nathan Jones would all be decent. Not Stendal for me and certainly not Barton.