Not a surprise. Saw the League 1 team get announced live and agreed with most of them. Slightly surprised with one or two. Thought Bishop from Pompey would have got up top instead of Jamie Reid and also Cameron Brannagan and the young Dembele lad at Blackpool should have been central midfielders but can see why they went with Pack and Sheehan. Mendez-Laing and Mason-Clark have been exceptional this year and have torn full backs inside out. Alfie May has been the best player in the league and the best defender in Harrison Burrows won’t be at Peterborough long.
Surely that can't be right..according to some on here we're blessed to have a team full of sought after players that would walk into any team in the league.
No surprise at all. Our defenders have been woeful, the midfield not a patch on last season and our best striker may as well have ended his season in January. Phillips might have had a chance if he’d hit form earlier in the season I suppose.
That's half the current argument (after all previous arguments were blown out of the water), the other half is that Collins coaches them to play badly. We're also seeing "this is the worst standard of teams in League 1 for years" more and more often. The evidence for this being that they repeat it a lot.
On the whole I think the league is a bit stronger than last year although hard to judge. I think next season if we are in league one will be comparatively tougher for us as we are going to lose quality which we can’t afford to replace
Surely our positive from this is that we are in 5th place despite having no player good enough to get in the L1 team. Must be down to good management and team spirit or summat.
I reckon Phillips has been better than Kane this season, despite the slow start. Kane undoubtedly has Championship quality but hasn’t pulled up any trees this year. But you’re right, we didn’t have a chance of getting in. Brannagan , Dembele and Lewis Wing have all been better than Phillips plus the lot who play for better teams than us.
Cole's scoring record in the first half of the season was impressive, but his contribution to the team in the second half has been negligible at best. Phillips scores and creates goals when on form but it took him a long time to hit that form this season. McAtee has had his moments but regularly gives the ball away in dangerous positions leaving us under pressure. Kane has played well far more consistently than any other Barnsley player but I wouldn't say team of the season well, just better than anyone else we have. We are where we are because they've all worked hard and refused to accept to defeat after going behind. They deserve credit for that, but the amount of individual errors puts them all a long way short of being some of the better players in the league.
I think that’s a fair summary. Next season we are going to lose Williams, Kane, Cole, Cadden and I think it will be a big ask to replace them with commensurate quality next season. Our model requires saleable assets to not make a loss. we have no genuine saleable assets apart from possibly Philips (maybe Connell..) Therefore it would seem reasonably likely that the budget will be fairly restricted for next season* not a foregone conclusion of course but I think we will notice a drop in quality next season, unless the recruitment team plays a blinder. *all assuming we don’t get promoted….
Kane possibly justifies that ranking at times but I'd be hard pressed to agree with Cole being top 50.
Roberts could also have made it on his early form. Now he can't catch a cold and his setting up of a wall for a free kick is something you would see in under 11s on a Sunday morning.