Excellent news piece worth it's long read.

loved that thanks for sharinrg

 

Can't read it. Shame as I used to enjoy Daniel Storey's stuff.

 

Copy the link. Open up an incognito tab. Paste the link.

Not sure why this works but was the only way I got round the paywall on my phone

 

What a brilliant read that is. Sums things up perfectly....

 

How true that is. Sums us up perfectly.

 

Great piece and quite sobering really

 

Brilliant read.
Accurate
Articulate
Honest
And that's probably the reason we still go.
Once a Red Always a Red
COYR

 

great read, Daniel Storey is on that podcast with James Rivhardson from Football Italia channel 4, usually very good on that too

 

Oakwell Stadium is one of the most evocative grounds in the country. It is also now half-empty most weeks. This is the brutal reality facing many football clubs.

We’re starting at a toilet block and I will make no apologies for it. At the back of Oakwell Stadium’s West Stand is one of the great relics of English football. I remember them from football grounds of my childhood, but this is the first time I’ve encountered one on this season-long tour.

Against the outside wall of the stadium environs, another internal wall runs. Walk through the door and you enter a room made entirely of concrete with a low ceiling. Around the room’s circumference is a shallow gutter. You simply stand next to each other and piss onto the internal wall. Some people will wince at the thought. I love it. I’m not a weirdo, promise.

Oakwell’s West Stand is a collection of these glorious anachronisms. On top of an outside wall that is painted in Barnsley red, the usual barbed wire is replaced by large shards of thick, bottle-green glass that glints in the sunshine to offer a warning for anyone hoping to shimmy up. The turnstile huts look like the outhouses you find jutted against the back of Victorian terraced housing. The passage is narrow enough to reflect a bygone era of food shortages.

Because the area underneath the West Stand is no longer used for its original purpose – the dressing rooms and tunnels have long ago been moved – it creates an eerie sense of abandonment. There are a set of steps, covered with metal railing to prevent access, that would lead to a gaping black hole as if allowing access to the earth’s interior itself.
The public-facing elements are no less alluring. This stand was built in 1910, two years before Barnsley won their only major trophy. Much of it is still as was: wooden seats, corrugated iron roof. In most stands, it is the nostalgic touches that are the most conspicuous. Here it’s the sale of southern-fried chicken strips that grab your attention because it jars against everything else.
In March 2021, when Barnsley were fifth in the Championship under Valerien Ismael and likely to finish in the play-offs, the Premier League safety officers came to Oakwell for their preliminary visit, just in case. The short answer, as Luton Town discovered only too well, was that an awful lot of work would need to be done.

The visit was unnecessary; Barnsley would lose 2-1 in the play-off semi-finals to Swansea City, who would in turn lose to Brentford at Wembley. But seven months later, Barnsley announced the temporary closure of the West Stand due to significant safety concerns. For three months, 1,000 season ticket-holders were moved while emergency work was completed.

Oakwell is almost unique in that it has three distinctly modern, all-seater stands and one Main Stand built 115 years ago. As a first-time visitor, you have two choices: sit in the West Stand and experience a football museum, or sit in any of the other three and admire it from afar. Both are great.

But more than all that, Oakwell is a reflection of the Barnsley experience. In the 1990s, when the club was expanding and reached the top flight for the first time in its history, Oakwell underwent a staggered transformation project. In 1993, a two-tiered East Stand was constructed. In 1995, the end now named after Norman Rimmington opened. In 1999, the large North Stand was finished, a single-tier Kop with a capacity of almost 6,300.

The West Stand? Well that was next, the final piece of this jigsaw. Then Barnsley lost seven of their last nine games in the Premier League and were relegated by five points. In 2000, Barnsley took the lead in the Division One play-off final against Ipswich Town but eventually lost 4-2 at Wembley. The dream died that day and the nightmare came next.
By 2002, Barnsley had been relegated to the third tier and were entering administration, just another club whose financial outlook was crippled by the collapse of ITV Digital. This was a relatively well-managed club to whom everything had happened at the wrong time: promotion before the lucrative era, a bad run in the spring, the downturn in performance coinciding with broadcasting revenue decimation.

As part of the deal to save Barnsley, Oakwell played its part. Part of the ground and area around it were sold to the town’s council. In 2023, Barnsley Council took 100 per cent ownership of the stadium after buying out the family of former owner Patrick Cryne. Barnsley now have a 30-year lease on their home.
Financial implosion doesn’t only cause short-term impact. In those towns where potential billionaire benevolent owners are in short supply, economic misery has a drip-down effect that leaves future seasons with water damage. Little did they know it then, but that 2000 play-off final would be Barnsley’s last top-half Championship finish for more than two decades.

A rot set in, sustained not by terrible decision-making nor controversy that rocked the town, but simply a grim reality of their cemented place within football’s food chain. Barnsley were promoted back into the second tier in 2006 and then endured seven straight seasons of finishing between 17th and 21st. When they left the division the next year, relegation felt to some like a blessed escape from tedious purgatory.

The most galling aspect of this existence? Even the good times come with caveats. When Barnsley overachieved in 2020-21 (according to their budgets at least), it was through the inspirational Ismael and a collection of young players recruited smartly. Within 18 months, Ismael had left for West Bromwich Albion and taken Alex Mowatt with him, Cauley Woodrow and Carlton Morris had gone to Luton Town (Mads Andersen would soon follow them) and Michal Helik had been sold to Huddersfield Town.

To clubs of Barnsley’s size, success tends to exist as a snapshot in time rather than as a process to be enjoyed. Do badly and everybody outside the region tends to forget you exist. Do well and the same people plot how their clubs might take your key assets. That’s not much fun.

And so Oakwell has become symbolic once again. Average attendances that had crept up to 14,000 when Barnsley were in the Championship have now fallen to around 12,300, but for the game against Cambridge United that I attend, 10,790 are present. This is a magnificently evocative stadium, but nowhere feels as special as it should when it’s half-empty.

The apathy is understandable. Disposable income is less available to most and thus the demand for football to offer escapism grows. Barnsley have won six of their last 30 matches at Oakwell. In the last two seasons, they have lost a play-off final in the last seconds of extra-time against a local rival and lost a semi-final 5-4 on aggregate. Now they are mid-table in League One and that just doesn’t feel worth it for some.

Those who are present against Cambridge United are grumpy, unimpressed by a laboured 1-1 draw against a team doomed to be relegated that requires a last-gasp home equaliser. Barnsley’s principal attacking strategy seems to be overhitting or underhitting a series of crosses until Cambridge are softened up for the one that finally finds its target. Rain pours over Oakwell during the second half. Another season is slipping away.

Apathy and anger are interchangeable. The cliched consensus is that one usually follows the other, but instead they dance in tandem across the psyche of loyal supporters. You persuade yourself that you don’t care because it makes you angry, but you never quite check out. You search for silver linings and that turns the mood black too.

As such, Barnsley’s owners come in for some stick. That is always the way, and again I get it. Everybody needs someone to blame and it’s always tempting to shift it up the food chain. During a season of difficult recruitment and a manager sacked, there is some reason to criticise the approach of Neerav Parekh, the chairman and majority shareholder. Some fans have accused Parekh of greed.
In the midweek that follows the Cambridge draw, the chairman was interviewed by The Barnsley Chronicle and addressed the growing unease.

“Fans are entitled to their opinion, but the ones who say we’re greedy wouldn’t be able to read a balance sheet if it smacked them in the face,” Parekh said. “We haven’t taken a penny out of the club and we’ve put in somewhere close to £15m over the last three years.

“It’s pretty evident all the money has gone in and losing money is not a problem unique to Barnsley. I think 89 of the 92 EFL clubs lost money and the only three who didn’t were Premier League. It’s a symptom of a broken system.

(1/2)

 

(2/2)

“A lot of fans have genuine concerns that we could have done better and we could have done in certain instances… I hope the fans can give us a little bit more patience.”

And that’s the thing: Parekh is right, too. He estimates that Barnsley will lose between £8m and £10m this season and insists that he will put in more this summer. He wants to prioritise youth development and player trading to fuel greater sustainability, but then promotion from this league is mighty difficult when clubs above you are buying players for millions of pounds. As before, there are not many benevolent billionaires prepared to throw many more millions at Barnsley just because they can.

Barnsley will persevere. There will be good times again, even if they come only as a result of diminished expectations. If success does arrive with caveats, we can all find joy in the moments otherwise we wouldn’t bother. On my way out of Oakwell I see an elderly couple, arms linked, the gentleman carrying the bag as his wife walks with a stick. She has on a red overcoat that camouflages her against the outside wall of the West Stand. It seems to me so quintessentially Barnsley that I can’t help but smile.

Oakwell will persevere too, in its current state and with further improvements. There are sore points for some, obviously: the empty side of the West Stand, the vast gaps in a North Stand that is given to away supporters in full. I understand that.

But selfishly, I love Oakwell for what it symbolises, the way it tells the history and present of its football club. With three modern stands and a relic, it exists as a statue to hope and ambition that promised much but was ultimately unrequited. It is a reminder that progress rarely comes easily and, without it, apathy can grow. One day they will sing here again. It wouldn’t be worth waiting for if it was easy.

 

A great read.Its a pity it takes an "outsider" to state the reality of football in general and not try to scapegoat anyone personally.

 

Thanks for the link, very astute, true and sobering read.

 

West stand bogs should have listed status.

 

Very thoughtful piece so much so it is quite difficult to read. It sums up our plight and that of many clubs very accurately. Our quest for success and the hope that brings and how it is easy to it is be apathetic when we fall short . Who would be a supporter let alone an owner of a football club. But each matchday the buzz starts again as this is the one time when it all comes together and the Reds win …… as someone as said before it’s the hope that kills you ⚽️

 

“Those who are present against Cambridge United are grumpy, unimpressed by a laboured 1-1 draw against a team doomed to be relegated that requires a last-gasp home equaliser. “

Sums up the current Oakwell vibe perfectly.