A Dose Of Reality

I agree entirely, my point was more you ignored the fact that we did bring in experienced players that (on paper) should've allowed us to compete better this season. It hasn't happened for various reasons but to say the plan was to be where we are now I think is wrong.

 

You beat my time served by 3 years, RR. Grandfathertyke would be in front of us both though! I take your point about PC's investment, but has it been adequate or realistic though? You'll know from business that you have to invest sufficiently - you can't say "give me your cash and you can have the product in 3/4/5 years' time!" I'd argue we've been waiting for 7 years now for progress (I.e. since the last promotion). Since then it's been steady (and to a fair extent, self-inflicted) decline. The selling off of Shackell and allowing Robins to depart were typical of our inability to truly invest for the future.

As for the " getting to know you" point, what on earth are the coaching staff doing? And whose responsibility is it to try and ensure a settled side? I know we've had injuries, but part of it is down to chopping and changing the starting eleven as well. It's often looked as though Danny hasn't known his best team himself. What is salient here is that the current coaching staff are not in the same league as Eric Winstanley was. And our scouting operation (whoever is involved in that) appears to be based on a scattergun approach, in contrast with Danny's first reign.

It's true that all of us on here must care about the club's future to bother. But it's far from certain we'll all continue to tip our cash up when the rewards (in terms of entertainment) seem as distant as ever.

 

I don't think the plan was ever to struggle like we have, but then again I don't think the plan was ever to have the injuries that we have. Good luck and bad luck will always affect things one way or another, but I do think that the plan was to increasingly rely upon younger players with lower pay expectations.

 

The absence of funding is the biggest limiting factor for most businesses. As another poster pointed out recently, the best way to become a millionaire investing in football is to start off with 10 million. Ultimately, the biggest limiting factor for football clubs is its fans. How many of them are there, how much are they prepared to spend on their hobby and how patient are they. Our chances of finding a better owner than Patrick Cryne are slim to none. Oil rich billionaires are just not interested in quiet backwaters like Barnsley.

The last time Danny was at the club, he started as player/coach to Viv Anderson's Player/Manager. Their first season was truly abysmal and there was absolutely no sign of the quick pass and move style that Danny adopted later. It takes time, it takes a settled team and therefore, if you go along with the arguments that I have advanced through this thread, we a still quite a way from achieving it. I am sure though, that good football remains Danny's ultimate aim, but at the moment he is having to settle for a more pragmatic style.

 

I totally respect your view, Red Rain. But I believe that the promotion squad of 96-97 was assembled for less than £1M. Okay, I'm not saying it's easy to do that, but it's surely inescapable that Mr Cryne's money has not been well spent. When we did look like building by securing the solid centre half we've lacked before and since, we cashed in Jason Shackell - thereby hacking off Mark Robins. Shackell is of course currently playing Premiership football. If the short-term strategy is, as you say, consolidation, then even that is not looking a secure prospect at the moment.

As for the playing style, it's true that Anderson and Wislon together didn't set the world alight. VA was arguably waiting for the chance to join his mate at Boro. But from the first game of the first full season Danny was in charge (2-1 win against Derby at home, if I'm not mistaken) it seemed something better was on offer in terms of playing style. That has not been replicated this time around, even though the playing personnel have been almost 100% replaced. In truth, I don't know what style we are trying to play. Although we've got/have had wingers we play with no width and no longer get behind defences. The passing style referred to before is absent. And we don't have the strength or physicality to force the play through the middle. No wonder we're not winning games regularly.

I'm not pitching for Danny to be out in all this. But I'm very sadly coming to the conclusion that he has not retained his former mojo. For me, there is a failure of clear strategy at the club, and a lack of coaching and scouting support which would assist Danny to build a team which is competent at this level, let alone competitive.

 

No-one could claim that we are easy to watch at the moment. No-one could claim that the path forward from the point we are at is an easy one. No-one could claim that they can see an end to the suffering that we have to put up with every other Saturday. I am not preaching any of that. We are deep in the brown stuff and it is difficult to be positive.

The thing is, if we are to get out of this mess, the last thing that we need is panic, and the last thing that we should do is repeat the mistakes of the past, and sacking manager after manager has gotten us nowhere. It is not case of trying a new guy every 12 months until we find a lucky one as some on here claim. I do not believe in luck. I believe in good business practice. I believe that the club has found a credible strategy and should see that strategy through to its conclusion, in spite of pressure to change direction by people who do not like the short term consequences of that strategy. It requires a belief that the strategy is the right one and it needs determination to see it through. Neither of these qualities have been much in evidence during Don Rowing's term of office, and it is my hope that Ben Mansford proves himself less susceptible to changing in the direction of the wind than did Don. We have had perfectly decent managers over the last 8 years, though I suspect that we would disagree on their names. The fact is that success on the field is driven more by a manager's spending power, than it is by the manager's other qualities. Of course there are exceptions, Spackman in particular, but with a few exceptions, this is the generally accepted rule. And yet, in spite of the evidence to the contrary, fans continue to believe otherwise.

The management of the football club do not have the faith and confidence in the fans to tell them the truth. They think that if they tell them the truth the fans will make something else up anyway, so why bother. It is part of the love/hate relationship that a football club has with its fan base. So they tell them nothing, and we are all left to concoct an explanation up from the evidence we see and hear. My explanation of the events is based upon my interpretation of what I have witnessed and from the annual accounts, which I have training and experience in interpreting. But I am just a fan at heart, like every other contributor to this forum. Unlike many though, my training and experience has taught me to control my heart. I am one who's head is firmly in control of his emotions, and my head tells me to stick with the strategy, and stick with Danny Wilson, even though my heart tells me that what I am seeing on the field at the moment is truly awful.

I think that the management team at Oakwell is potentially a good one, and Mr Cryne seems to agree because he continues to support that team financially. Whilst Mr Cryne is putting his own money into the club, I believe he deserves the financial support of the fans, in spite of what is undoubtedly the dire fare that we are being served on the field.

 

It's all very well waving the word "strategy" about. In any event, Ben made no secret of the fact that we needed to cut our costs when he spoke at the start of the season ("We have gone from being a £10M business to being a £5M business"). The strategy obviously can not just equal cost-cutting. If that were the case then the answer would be to fold the club and sell off (the share in) the land for development. The 'strategy' has to be related to either stabilising in this division or progressing via promotion - and hence increasing revenue. Many businessmen would say that standing still really equates to going backwards in a competitive environment. In any event, 'stabilisation' looks by no means certain at present in any event. Good business practice certainly doesn't normally lead to your business operating in a lesser marketplace and losing 25-30% of it's customer base - as has happened in recent seasons.

I too don't believe that yet another managerial change is the answer. But I've come to the conclusion that Wilson needs supporting properly on the coaching side and in terms of recruitment, which has been dire since Robins left. That - lest we forget - began with the last round of cost-cutting. We know how well that ended.

We also, in my humble opinion, need some proper leadership at the helm of the club. Mr Cryne needs at least a partner in his 'stewardship' if we are to get this club going somewhere.

 

What you are advancing is the old "speculate to accumulate" argument. The fact is that you need a source of cash before you can speculate in the first place, and currently our only source of cash is Partick Cryne. The club has no assets that it could use in order to secure a loan and that is deliberate, because the last time that it pledged its assets to secure a loan, it led to administration, and but for the intervention of Patrick Cryne, no football club.

With lower income, there is little practical alternative to cost cutting. A business is no different in that respect to any individual. If your household income falls because you lose your job, you start looking for a new one, but in the mean time, you try to reduce your outgoings. To suggest that a football club operates on different principals to every other business or individual in the economy is simply wrong, although the hobby investment of billionaires can lead people to that conclusion. Barnsley Football Club is never likely to become the plaything of a billionaire. The only possible candidate would rather chuck his cash at UKIP.

Your statement that Mr Cryne needs a partner is built upon the belief that the club has one investor who you believe is not investing enough in the club, but two millionaires equals double the investment and happy days. I'm sorry, but up until now your argument has contained some credibility, but at this point it has gone into lala land. Not only does the club need to find a second millionaire supporter with no ambition to develop the land for his own gain and who is prepared to wave goodbye to his fortune. He also has to be the kind of man who does not want sole control over what happens to the money that he puts into the club. Because of the way FFP works, this new millionaire must fund the club through donations and not through loans or share capital in order to affect the investment in players. If that were not hard enough, we then have to persuade Mr Cryne to relinquish 100% control, and tell him that he must consult on policies and strategies with a second millionaire, who will have equally strong views and opinions on matters BFC. There is a reason that almost all successful football clubs are controlled by just one millionaire/billionaire.

 

Shackell requested a transfer.

Context.

 

But does that mean it's impossible to offer him improved terms and to try and persuade him that we, as a club, had ambition to match that of Burnley? I'd have thought that was Robins' preference (acknowledging that you probably have more direct insight on these matters)?

 

I'm not arguing for huge amounts of money being thrown at the club - more for a businessman with a better understanding of football clubs and how to take them forwards. That could either be in some sort of partnership with Mr Cryne, or by means of a takeover. I did think that that was the point of Maurice Watkins becoming involved (not financially, of course), but he seems to have been co-opted purely as some sort of figurehead.

I'm not looking for credibility, by the way - simply stating a view!

 

He put a transfer request in around the same time Mark was at odds with the board over the budget. I'm not debating who is right or who was to blame etc, I doubt we'll ever truly know on that score. It's clear though that the board wanted to reduce the wage budget and at that time, Cryne had withdrawn his funding. Jason was our highest earner at that point and off he went to Derby.

Do I believe he'd have stayed if we'd offered him similar wages to what Derby were offering? I dunno. He'd only been here a year with two years left to run on a lucrative deal. He soon jumped ship from there to join Burnley too. He's made a fortune in signing on fees. And he's a Premier League player now. I doubt he regrets leaving us. Do I wish we'd have shown ambition and spent money we didn't have over the years so we could have had an XI like this........?



Steele

Trippier Stones McShane Shackell Golbourne

Hammill Butterfield Drinkwater

Vaz Te O'Grady



No.

 

Great post.

I only tend to read your posts these days on here. The rest aren't worth bothering with.