This needs to be a massive reality check for those at the top of the club. 12 points from 15 games, a team falling like a stone and empty seats everywhere around Oakwell. If the opinion at the club is still that this is a top 4 squad and that recruitment has been good then that’s ridiculous. All evidence points to the contrary, Neerav has asked fans to be realistic with our expectations, which to a certain degree I understand, but it’s time the board took a reality check too. Until that happens we’ll continue to struggle.
If we’re going to rollover and get beat with a disappointing performance each week then the board can save a lot of money by not paying this particular bunch of players this much money to achieve f*** all.
Take your point and get the frustration as the players are letting us down as much as anyone. Maybe goes to show that good squads are as much about player character as much as anything else, and ours go under way too easily.
If you look at a) our finances b) our saleable assets c) our squad competitiveness d) our recruitment / retention track record e) the support from fans and the community…. …. there is only one direction we are heading. We need either a massive overachievement in many areas coupled with luck for several years or we need something major to change for the good. Ah well, there is always the Baller league ;-). Can we afford £400 per game per player? Baller league might be a step too far.
My belief is the current board are decent people who haven't got a clue how to run a professional football club. They have employed a team of people to run the club what I'm starting to question is how much input/interference Neerav likes to have on direct footballing matters. It's a make or break summer for all concerned let's hope they up to shorting this mess out.
The thing is it could have been a whole lot better now without the clueless recruitment, decent striker, wide men, more mobile midfielder, another central defender, would have produced quite a lot more positive result. But as long as we are stuck with a bloody computer programme ( and obvs.clueless recruitment we are screwed!) Suppose it could have been even more embarrassing if say we had actually loaned out a decent centre back to somebody instead of playing him.......oh wait a minute!!
Some people still keep thinking everything including style of play is on the head coach, so it's their fault, which head coach I'm not sure. We are now taking our time to ensure we get the right appointment like we did last time and the time before that. Just wondering when the penny will drop for some folk.
This hits the nail on the head. Until about 20 years or so ago, football clubs were run by football people. People who had been in and around the game for decades. We had John Dennis as chairman, someone who had watched his father as chairman before him. We had ex-players on the board and in senior positions, like Johnny Steele, Gordon Pallister and Charlie Williams, we had FA men like Barry Taylor, we had the former Supporters Club chairman Michael Spinks running the day to day business. Football was in their blood and they all supported BFC. This was the same up and down the country. But as football became a multi-multi-million pound business the investors came a-calling. A board like Dennis and his board wouldn’t be able to run a club even of Barnsley’s size now. They wouldn’t have the money. So we now have investment groups putting financial people in key positions in football clubs, when football clubs do not operate like a normal business, and the ‘customers’ (fans) of the football club do not behave like customers of their other businesses. I very much doubt many Reds supporters have ever walked out of a bank shaking their fist and saying they’re never coming back. The expertise in football has gone, and with it so has common sense. Just look at the balls up they have made with our kits in the past couple of years for starters, and that’s before you start scratching your heads at our player recruitment. And do you think we’d have ever got kicked out of the FA Cup in such a ridiculous way with Spinksy in charge? It would be interesting to know how many of the 92 clubs were owned by lifelong supporters of their club in 1985 and how many are now. In fact, it would be interesting to know how many current owners had even heard of the club, or the town the club was from before they took over. I very much doubt many of the people who have had a stake in our club since Cryne stepped down would have been able to stick a pin in the map to show where Barnsley was before they got involved. Clubs no longer feel like they are part of the community they reside in, and that’s because there is nobody from the town on the boards or on the pitch. The only link to their local community is the fans, the people who have the least say.
Your 100% right football turned into a rich man's play thing even at our level. It's total madness that a club our size will lose between 8&10 million pounds that's just to just to stand still in League 1. The average league 1 player's wages up 41% in two years this is total madness. It's unstable and i feel in the not too distant future some long established clubs will go to the wall. The loses of that size will surely make even the rich think twice to just own midling league 1 club.
I agree with you here, but considering their success in business elsewhere (broadly speaking) at the point of keep having to put 8-10m in a year, wouldn't you think there comes a point where they pause, think about what they are doing, realise it isn't working and get football people in? Its starting to come across as stubborness that they are right and 10k others are wrong.
Have you seen any evidence that they've had success in business elsewhere? As I see it there's a guy who's mum and dad are successful business people who have given him some of the family wealth. There is zero evidence to suggest he's ever successfully ran a business. There's a woman who's husband is a successful investor and who runs a non profit foundation. And there's a woman who's late husband ran a successful company
I did use the term broadly speaking, I get what you are saying but he's been around businesses for long enough, there are also other clubs in similar situations being ran like toys with successful people making ridiculous decisions.