Season after season of asset stripping and a managed decline have brought us to this. BFC is dying

Wonder which page of his pre scripted answers will Clarke dig out of his excuse book tonight. You can’t blame him though he’s out of his depth and he was employed by these people who run our club and they are utterly clueless.

Every week Clarke takes a wage home is a bonus to him and good on him. We’ve been stupid enough to hire him. We should pay him up now and get a manager who’s managed at championship level and bring him in. But wait our marquee signing Connor is already in the wings. Aka cheap option. If Clarke messes up then you’re in Connor that’ll get the fans onside, after all these idiots swallowed the Connor is a player story and that got another 800 season tickets in. When in reality Connor or set piece coach shows Luca Connell every single week how to NOT beat a man at the front post on every corner he takes.

The recruitment team, media, match day experience, crumbling breeze block stadium, behind the scenes, catering, car park fiasco, club shop, admin errors, lack of communication, pricing policies for home tickets, food and drink costs, no fanzone, nothing to do around oakwell on match day, Connor is our new player (quick we need to get these idiots to buy season tickets so tell them he’s our marquee midfielder signing bull sh*t story) etc etc (what have I missed?) the list of utter amateurism, no ambition and not being in touch with the fans by these people who supposedly run us just goes on and on. Let’s hold a q and a session that will shut the natives up. What did we get ? Politicians answers and a load of flannel. No grasping of the nettle admitting that the club is on its arse and dying before their eyes. Maybe JAQ will set on another member of her family at Oakwell. Hasn’t she got a cousin in Arkansas ? We could make that cousin a coach of our team of coaches. Coach our coaches how to coach and the cousin could choose the colour of our new kits next season without consulting the fans. Yeeeeeee haaaaaaaaa or maybe our head of recruitment will sign his 77th 78th and 79th midfielders in January plus another coach to coach the coach driver and his co coach driver on the team bus.

Trouble is the assets have been stripped in a managed decline season after season manager after manger. No ambition at BFC and it’s nothing more than a trading platform for players and managers. Sell, reset, sell, reset, sell, reset each season constantly sees us going one way and that is in a downward spiral. The owners have no ambition and it has finally caught up with them. We have more coaches than national express and a manager who was what 4th or 5th choice who is far out of his depth with team choices and tactics. He’s league two at best and he shows it every week. This league is dire apart from a handful of teams and we look like a lower mid table team. Our recruitment team could not have got it more wrong, an absolute car crash and the lot of them should not be here another day at oakwell.

Empty stands each week and you can taste it in the air at the stadium and out in town. Fans en masse have had enough of these idiots p*ssing up our backs and the empty seats and apathy have properly kicked in, they are voting with their feet. Thousands of season ticket holders being lost, dwindling gates and lots of hard core supporters are now turning their back on the club. Do the owners not realise that their walking pound signs (aka us fans) are saying to them the game is up.

What sh*te coloured diamonds are left for them to flog ? Jalo ? Phillips ? They have sold everything they possibly could and now the cupboard is bare.

An older head director of football is needed, somebody who’s played and been in the game and a massive clear out of players and some of the staff behind the scenes. New manager needs bringing in now Clarke needs paying up and sending back to the national league or league two because that’s his level.

Are the owners listening ? Or will they only listen to the turnstiles stopping turning when the natives say sod that you’ve had enough of taking the mick out of me, I’ll watch it on the dodgy stick old ****.

So BFC board, congratulations, you reap what you sow and season after season of your managed decline, sweating assets and having the fans for idiots have brought us to this. A 12th placed bang average team in league one who will be sleepwalking around in this pub league for many years to come unless something drastically changes. You are so out of touch with your fan base it’s scary.

Very dark times ahead with some of these jokers who run us. The fans can see it but they can’t.

MY TEAM MY CLUB MY ARSE

 

So true. 24 years a season ticket holder and I decided enough was enough, constant poor decision making by this and the Cryne regime, attempting to run the club on a shoe string and taking the fans for a ride. Best thing we can hope for is this lot to depart as we’re not going anywhere with them. Clean slate needed, including the removal of the Cryne’s. Convinced Conway and Lee still involved and JAQ is their foil. The club have lost thousands of season ticket holders and will struggle to get them back because when the habit of going to Oakwell is broken, apathy quickly sets in and your money is better spent elsewhere.

 

A bit emotional and reactionary, over the top in part - but plenty of truth all the same.

I begin to wonder if losing fans is part of the long term plan tbh.

It’s an easier legal argument to remove a legal covenant that says a place has to be a sporting venue and not houses or a supermarket if nobody is interested in the sport…

I’ve also often wondered if they could whack a tarmaced multisport area where the actual stadium is as a central play hub for example - and have houses all round the training complex, car parks, even the brewery land - to meet the terms of the covenant.

I’ll caveat, I probably don’t think this really - but you have to wonder how successful business folk can continue to make such poor operational decisions if they really want to succeed as a football club. Currently it’s a car crash financially and competitively.

 

Spot on skywalker, under these owners the club is sleepwalking into an uninteresting year after year league one mid table mediocre side. The conveyor belt of crap will continue.

Clarke needs to go, he bottled it tonight with his tactics and team choices but none of it will be his fault. He’ll have his interview script well rehearsed for the media. He’s pinching a living each week he’s here and so the head of recruitment.

 

No idea why people keep persisting in describing them as successful business folk when what they are is successful beneficiaries of inheritances.

 

Evening Troff just speaking the real truth mate about what is happening at our beloved club. It’s such a shame that a lot our fan base can’t see what’s in front of their eyes with these owners and the player trading business model of the club. Success to the owners is on a profit excel spreadsheet and not on the grass ? Apathy is now rife and it’s such a dangerous thing for BFC. Surely the owners are not that far detached to notice the empty seats and ever increasing criticism?

I have thought similar to you. Something behind the scenes not quite right and somebody somewhere will have a financial angle that they can benefit from. If you were pumping a few million quid a year into your business why would you hire en masse people out of their depths, alienate your fan base, watch the club slowly die on its backside each week and dodge questions ?

Going to Oakwell, it’s surroundings, the match day experience, pricing, car park chaos, food and drink que + pricing, etc apathy set in and so on doesn’t entice anybody to come. Lots of season ticket holders can’t be bothered to go to Oakwell even though they have a season ticket so good knows how bad it will be next season.

Can’t put my finger on it but there is a smell about something going off behind the scenes at BFC that us mere mortals (fans) won’t know about till it’s too late ? Whatever that is it won’t be a good thing I think ?

Let’s pray the hero of the day will win the euromillions and ride into tarn on his white Honda 90 and save the club !! Whatever it is something needs to drastically change very quickly to stop the downward slide.

 

All of them? Really?

Maybe true of Neerav Parekh- though even as a nepo baby you’d think he’d have learnt something.

JAQ built a hugely successful enterprise from scratch though and might be many things but is clearly not daft. I’m not sure where inheritance comes in it for her. Other ‘owners’ have less sway - if any - but the decision making hasn’t improved an iota.

We were told at the last meet and greet that work on the stadium and fan experience etc was put on hold / sacrificed to maximise spend on the squad. Really? Where? To what gain?

We signed an expensive (for us) player in a position we certainly didn’t need and who flatters to deceive at best - and what else? A last second free transfer of a striker who actually isn’t really a striker; a central midfield player on loan from Spurs who is essentially a version of several players we already have and as such a waste of a wage and squad number, as promising as he might be. A sentimental signing of a ‘player coach’ who doesn’t play, and an ancient by our standards local boy centre back who I dont believe was signed to be a regular who has turned out to arguably be our most consistent performer. Let’s not even get started on the two keepers signed.

We have a bloated but lopsided squad, with only one inexperienced kid as a left sided wing back yet three for the other side, a glut of central midfield players but no wingers and barely a striker in the club.

None of the wingbacks could be trusted at full back in a four - at least according to the actions of the manager - so when we want to switch to a back four we end up with four centre backs on the field whilst chasing a game.

These things are the result of decisions made by these people or the people they’ve employed to make them like Flatman and Sormaz. Again, people who have proven to have more than half an idea how to operate in this or similar industries.

So you start to wonder whether some of the self inflicted wounds are by design.

£750k and the wage DKD takes, plus the wages of say Craig, Benson, one of the right wingbacks, McCarthy, Slonina - could have got us a more than sufficient couple of centre forwards and a left wingback without spending a copper coin more.

Potentially even less.

 

What do you think JAQ has built? Do you understand what VFiles is? Can you explain how running a charity - which is what Vfiles is, a not-for-profit - enables her to have the funds to buy a football club?

Her husband is a highly successful hedge fund manager.

 

Two Hollywood actors are making a much better job of running a football club than our supposed successful business people are.

 

When Jon Flatman said it costs £17m to keep the club running at the last forum and £11m of that for the footballing side.
Well our wage bill is £5.3m I'm still scratching my head as to where we're spending the other £5.8m on football with any plan to make us self sufficient and deliver a winning team.

 

I've put £10 million in to this, I want us to do worse. I want to ensure that I make less money.

Genuinely dumb.

 

Absolutely spot on

 

The only issue is if they're here specifically for profit, they're losing millions upon millions? I honestly don't understand why people who have no connection to clubs buy them. Unless its a mega club obviously. I've recently seen Derbys finances and in league one they had a loss of 22 million iirc. How do we compete ?

 

Agreed. It cant be by intent surely. So it must be their lack of competence or capability as a board. It can still be a managed decline even by trying ‘their best’.

 

Absolutely. They don't sit down at their Xmas do and congratulate themselves on another 8 million down the shitter.

I don't think it's deliberate, they're just wnk at this football malarkey.

 

They are definitely just **** at running a football club.

 

There are plenty of issues at the club and various sentiments I agree with.

What I would contest though is this notion that we are a club set up to sell 'talent' after we've developed them. If we were, we wouldn't have let all of Williams, Kane, Cole and Cadden walk out of the door for nothing.

Our financial issues are being exacerbated by an unsaid ego driven by a desire to prove we aren't a selling club any more.

It's stupid, because we are. But it has to be done in a way that doesn't hurt us and to an extreme of sell loads one year, sell nobody for two years after.

I think Parekhs heart is in the right place. I think Quay wants the club to succeed, while also gaining other contacts and opportunities. I think the Crynes really, have probably just had enough. I think Sormaz isn't the right fit for what he's been asked to do. Flatman... I don't believe the sums he cited, though the losses in the accounts do lean that way but he has spoken pretty openly, which I do at least respect.

But the sum of the collective parts is just a bit of an incoherent mess.

I've said before. Get a layer of experienced ex or current local business people as non exec directors in. I fancy you could get 5 to 6 in who would do it for the love of the club and just have expenses paid and offer a much enhanced level of decision making and guidance than we currently have.

 

Agree with this, would also add what I don’t see from the club is a clear and strategic plan of how to build the club in terms of both stability and growth, not saying it’s not there you would hope it is but all it seems is one fire fight after another.

 

Completely agree. I've said the same multiple times. There is no evidence of a strategy or operating consistently. And frankly, even if there was a strategic plan, it would be difficult to achieve given the lack of talent in our executive group and the constant state of flux.