Leon Wobscholl

Fair enough. I stand corrected.

 

Depends on your definition. Luton. Brighton spent but now show massive profits.

 

I’m certainly glad that the business I ran had a reasonably robust business model! Imagine, you lose money, lose customers and there is no viable alternative!

 

I run a business too, albeit now as a sole trader and no longer an employer. I would never compare it with running a club. First time I had to start paying wages from my personal account, the alarm bells would ring, whereas football club owners do it up and down the country.

The top and bottom of it is football has changed and Barnsley have stayed the same, as have others less well placed than us.

 

Leon hit the nail right slap bang in the middle of its head with a lump hammer. While ever the drive is to recruit players to make a profit on and squad improvement takes a back seat Barnsley FC will never have sustained on field success and will at best stagnate in L1.

 

We are a L1 club. Next season will be our third season in L1. We've finished top 6 twice though, so it is fair to say we are a top end L1 club. That is it really. I used to watch us in the Iley era in the 4th Division (L2 for you kids),, so there is some perspective on this. Stockport back with us, which is great, but look where they have been, Wrexham, Bury, Chesterfield, Donny, Halifax.... many more. get some perspective, whilst expressing your disappointment ...

 

For what it's worth in my opinion the current board has the best interest of the club at heart but and it's a big but the mistakes need to stop. It's hard enough to run a successful football club without keep shooting yourself in the foot. They have by employing a dof in my opinion accepted mistakes were made re recruitment last season they have there own choice of ceo in place now these two now have earn there salaries. The next head coach needs to given time,Collins was there man but after succeeding as I can't believe they said top two or your gone they lost there bottle ,have a plan and stick to it even if it's not instant success.

 

If Collins' style had been right he'd have got more time. Barnsley fans can stomach defeats (look back to Stendel and Ritchie) but don't like negative play.

 

The plan I believe was to buy fairly cheap improve sell on for large profit then reinvest The best of the model to my memory was the signing of Liam Lyndsey for 250k sold on for around 2.5 million replaced by Mads for 900k etc.That was the idea but all good plans don't always come off.

 

I don't like this signing players on 4 year deals and letting them have a gap year on loan. That needs to improve. They need to be adding value at Barnsley. We aren't premium Chelsea.

 

Maybe Collins wasn't the right man but what I'm saying is they can't be a kneejerk reaction listening to outside noise even if it's from us fans. It's got to be a process we don't have the cash to buy success. We can't continue starting over again every two years theres got to be some continuity with the coaching and playing staff.

 

Absolute Bellwhiffs.









Being interviewed tomorrow apparently.

 

Yep. Took Mads a few seasons to be the player he was when he left, and it was same with Kane and Mowatt, even Hourihane. It’s just not a precise business when you’re buying players to polish, hence why I never write players off.

 

Bang on but that doesn’t happen now. We replaced Mads, Bobby Thomas and Liam Kitching with a free transfer from Pontefract, Mael and a full back who was already at the club. When that didn’t work, we brought in a loanee from Rotherham and a freebie from America. We’ve gone from reinvesting a fair amount of money to hardly spending a penny.

And let’s be honest, Collins ****** up with Pines. Hadn’t played for 100 days then played him Saturday - Tuesday - Saturday - Tuesday and expected him to be able to cope.

 

I’m confident that the strategy of buying young, improving and selling on is the right one.

We’ve identified some great players this way, got some good time out of them and sold them on for good fees. It works.

BUT, we do need to supplement these with some experienced heads who are here for the project, not looking to leave asap. We’ve all been saying it for years.

I do think we’ve improved on retaining players - originally we were getting 2-2.5 seasons out of players (the Hourihane era) and only seeing them play well for 1 season. More recently we had 4 seasons out of Woodrow, Andersen, Styles and Collins. 6 seasons out of Williams, 3.5 out of Mowatt. Our contracts are longer now and it helps get good fees too. This was a target when we were originally taken over, and I think we improved on it. We’re back to square 1 this summer though, with too many out of contract.

 

Luton I'll give you but they seem like the only outlier.

Tony Bloom has invested approx £400 million into Brighton. They have had a profit recently from outgoing transfers but as we know from BFC, player sales and continued high performance don't tend to go well together!

 

Theres nothing wrong with the example you've shown' the big difference is the current board wouldn't replace with a 900k Mads anderson' they'd replace with a cheap foreign or lower league punt that ultimately fails which means eventually it comes home to roost and you run out of saleable assets' i believe thats where we are this summer' the last of our saleable assets will be sold and the board are at a crossroads' do they keep rolling the dice with unknowns or do they invest in proven players that can get us promoted?

 

The signing from Pontefract was never signed to go straight in to the first team so he wasn't replacing anyone.The loanee from Rotherham was last minute because nobody expected Coventry to pay 5m and the freebie from America who was valued at 1.5 million but we got him out of contract (great bit of business by the way) would in my view almost guarantee we would have been playing at Wembley in the playoff final if not automatic promotion.

 

Shepherd was thrown into the first team cos our recruitment was **** and where is Pines rated £1.5 million? He was a free agent that hadn’t played in 100 days. We could have signed prime Nesta and he wouldn’t have been ok playing four games in two weeks after not playing 100 days.

See your point about Kitching