Ambition Reaction Direction.

Looking through various threads and the word ambition, or lack of it, keeps cropping up.

Throughout the majority of my supporting life we have been an established Championship club able on limited finances to compete relatively well. Since the development of the Premiershit and the rewards for failure that the parachute payments represent this has become more and more difficult and we seem to have become increasingly marginalised and have found it harder and harder to compete at Championship level.

People talk of a lack of ambition but I'm not exactly sure what they mean. The finances of the Championship have been skewed by money and debt. To realistically compete at the top end of the Championship you have to have some ability to match other clubs in terms of wages and transfer fees. The top two this year have racked up debts of over 200 million quid between them with the third in the table QPR probably even worse off. So looking at that you adjust your targets slightly. But then you come to the mid ranking clubs like Bolton and Blackburn and find a similar story or Leeds and Boro with losses of a million a month and maybe again you say we cannot risk the stability of our club by getting into that level of debt even if we could get our hands on it. So you are left with competing against the teams that have similar finances and are unwilling to go bankrupt chasing "the dream". In our League currently you end up in a mini league with Yeovil, Charlton, Millwall, Blackpool and Donny, is thus going too conservative or is it naming a realistic appraisal of the situation and setting your targets accordingly?

Where I think we have failed is in developing a long term vision and strategy for the club. We have not invested our resources into developing our own players but instead wasted whatever money we have had on short term thinking and often inadequate loan players who add no long term value. With the constant chopping of managers it's easy to see why they are lured into short termism but we need to act more strategically. The ideas proposed when we appointed Hill seem to be the right ones. Unfortunately for both parties the fit between manager and club was a poor one and he managed to alienate a lot of our fanbase and his negativity towards the end seems to infect both fans and club to this day.

I saw someone on another thread say if we can't compete in the championship what's the point. Seems a pretty arrogant view given that half the football league competes below that level. The point is support your team and hope they can be as good as they can for hopefully playing attractive football along the way.

In Danny we have a manager with a proven record of both signing untried players and of bringing youngsters in the team as soon as possible thus stands us in good stead for the future and is where we should be concentrating our energies.

Our vision for the future a strong community based club with a great track record at developing talent who play attractive football. Whatever league we are in if we can do that I'd say that's ambitious and that's good enough for me.

We need to sweep away the negativity. We need to be realistic about our goals. We need to move forward. The past us the past. I have no doubt that there are many clubs heading for a fall when the **** hits the fan and some relatively big ones will go out of business. By the time that happens let's be ready.

Onwards and upwards.

 

Brilliant post. I would much rather we do things the honest, sustainable way than spend millions speculating and getting into serious debt, and I'm quite proud that that is the way we've done things in the last few years, even if it's been to thr detriment of our league position.

We have already seen the club's ability to produce quality players of our own, and hopefully some of the current crop can either be future Butterfields/Stones and command good fees to go back into the running of the club, or become mainstays of a successful first team.

As the OP says, it must be hoped that the big spending clubs in the Championship will have to change their ways, and that the FFP can make some difference. If so, there is definitely light at the end of the tunnel in therms of the prospect of Barnsley being a competitive Championship side.

 

I'm wi thee, but it seems that on here, accepting the reality of the situation is being 'happy' with League 1.

The waste of resources since 2006 notwithstanding in my opinion.

 

I agree with both you and Extremely Northern, mate. Good post.

 

I think him who said we might as well give up going to oakwell if we can't compete in the champ meant that if we are just going to be happy with 3rd tier football, why bother? The premier is what all fans want for their club. That's why they go they want to see their club climb the ladder, not wallo in the lower leagues because that's where the clubs directors tell us we should be. We are allowed to dream, that's what football is about. Not just turning up and paying your hard earned just for some director to tell you your club isn't good enough. Let's have a bit of ambition eh?a

 

I don't believe, for a single second, that we cannot compete in this division because of the financial situation in football. We were told we couldn't do it in 96-97 and for many years before, not by our own board, they believed we could, but by many football commentators and even fans of Barnsley FC: "They don't wanna go up!"

"But it's different now." No, it isn't. Really, it isn't.

I'd be interest to know, not in absolute terms, but in percentage terms, how much bigger the budgets of other clubs are in this division now compared to how much bigger they were back in 96. The teams in the Championship spend much more now than they did back then, but so do we. Our promotion squad cost about a million quid. Many clubs in our league had half a dozen players that cost more than that individually back then. Players at other teams were getting a wage 10 times what our lads were on.

The actual figures don't matter. They're meaningless. It makes no difference if you're talking about a budget of £2,000 or £200,000,000. It's the relation your budget has to the others. Back in 96-97 there were clubs with a budget 5 or 6 times our own. In 2013-2014 there are clubs with a budget 5 or 6 times our own. We beat them back then and we can do it again. We're competing against exactly what we were competing against before, it's just inflation has gone through the roof. For us, as well as everyone else.

 

In 96/97, I reckon there were Port Vale, Oldham, Swindon, Southend, Grimsby, Reading, Oxford, Tranmere with smaller crowds and budget than us.

At the time I'd guess that Bolton, Pompey Ipswich, Palace, Stoke, Norwich, Charlton, Bradford and Huddersfield maybe had similar/slightly better budgets.

Then there was Wolves, QPR, Sheff Utd, Man City (in decline), WBA, Birmingham with far superior budgets.

This season I reckon we're 4th bottom in terms of budget ?

Mainly guesswork on my part but I really do think the balance has shifted.

 

I think that middle lot would have had significantly larger budgets than we had.

There were a number of smaller club in the Championship back then, but I believe the bigger clubs were spending significantly more than we were.

 

I can see what you're saying but the finances in football have changed dramatically and there's no two ways about that. When we got promoted under Danny the only team throwing money around was Wolves now you gave 18 out of 24 clubs doing it. Other than the bottom 6 I think every team above that has individual players who cost more than our team. The long term effect of both the Bosman ruling and the Premiershit had not come into play by the mid 90s.

I suspect that we would not be to hold onto a player like Redfearn for more than a couple of years these days. Youngsters like Watson and Eaden would be flogged off rather than developed as money lured them as it did Stones and Butterfield.

The football world us so very different to that which existed throughout the 80s and 90s. Money talks above all now. It's no coincidence that the 6 clubs with the smallest budgets are sitting at the bottom of the table is it?

I just think you are underestimating the vastness of the difference these days. We aren't talking about clubs paying 3or 4 times what we can in terms of wages. We are talking of clubs paying a couple of players more than we can pay our whole squad.

 

I agree. Is that because of the finances in football or the resolution of those who have been in charge of our club?

Teams were coming in for our players when John Dennis was in charge. He'd weigh up the deal, with his manager, and decide if the sale was right for the club. If it wasn't, he'd say no.

 

If love us to be living n the days when fantastic men like JD could successfully run Championship clubs. Local men with a bit of brass not mega rich but comfortable. But look around the Championship at the wealth of those running the clubs and it seems they are well and truly gone. Even with his wealth Mr Cryne is still a pauper compared to most of the other chairman.

In terms of transfers it's just a different world when Blackpool went up Charlie Adam was a Redfearnesque figure for them but when Liverpool waived what is for them loose change of 10 million quid in their direction they had no option but to sell. Would JD have resisted that I think not.

In terms of the younger players. We cannot compete even vaguely on wages and one transfer can make a player for life. I'm sure we wanted to keep Butterfield but he's an ambitious lad who had the chance to secure his future in a way we could not compete with the result would have been inevitable whoever was running the club. Times have changed. Understanding how much is difficult for us all.

 

Excellent post and I agree with most of it. The one point I want to respond to is this.

I've been a regular at Oakwell since 1979, a season ticket holder since 1992, often using holiday from work in order to get to games because I worked shifts. Getting up at 1pm on a Saturday when on nights to go to the game and then to work again with only about 4 hours sleep. It was what I did because I loved going to games...I can't see that I'd do that now, too bloody old for a start!
But it's more about personal circumstances. Made redundant from a decent job over a year ago and then taking one that paid less than half what I was on. I still think my finances are better than many and the mortgage being paid off helps but trying to justify an outlay of £370 for next season. Now, I agree, follow your team through thick and thin, but if the best we can really hope for is being a yo-yo team between Championship and L1 then I'm not really sure I can justify that when I'm generally not enjoying going.
My mate informed me at the last home game that he'd already renewed and it's more about the socialising that keeps me going (there's one mate I would probably barely see if it wasn't for games) and we've half-joked before that we should just do a pub crawl every other Saturday instead.

 

As a fan of about 30 years or so, I have not really seen any of the truely bad times. My first game was 2-3 months into the first season back in Division 2 (as was). Since then, we have had years of toil against teams throwing what seems to be increasingly larger sums of money around. The debts of Leicester, Bolton, QPR, etc dwarf what the entire division owed back in the day, but these clubs seem determined to gamble their future on the prospects of promotion, which then leads to unrest when they struggle against teams gambling even bigger sums of money on the promise of Champions League riches. From the outside it seems that the majority of clubs are still chasing the dream even after what happened to Leeds and Portsmouth.

I want us to try and fit the system without taking the same gambles as other teams. Wheeling and dealing in the transfer market and bringing through youngsters. Probably the same as most of the other people on here. I also want us to be successful, but am old enough to realise that these are both potentially incompatible ambitions.

 

JD wouldn't have resisted £10 million for Charlie Adam, or Redfearn for that matter, because £10 million would have been good for our club. It's not about always saying no, it's about knowing when to say no and when to say yes.

3 clubs will go up from our league this season, just like they did in 97. You can throw all the money you like at a club, but it doesn't guarantee promotion. Teams this year will have spent £millions and will miss out. We could get in to that race of who can spend the most, or we can say, this is ridiculous, we need to find another way. There's 24 teams in this division, not of all of them are money bags, once you're in it, you can win it. You can do that by doing things right. By doing what we did between 94 and 97. By keeping the manager, by buying one player at a time and developing them, by knowing when to sell and when to replace.

Luis Suarez wanted to leave Liverpool. He was adamant he was going. His agent was adamant he was going. He could have got tons more money elsewhere. He had a clause in his contract. Arsenal met that clause. Liverpool said no. They just said no.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCLs0jv_Efk

 

Remember that whole storyline and thinking, "I'm never going to see any drugs, what they wasting their time with this nonsense for. They're talking about a problem that doesn't exist"

Within a couple of years our school was awash with drugs. Wronger than a wrong thing in wrong town.

 

But didn't Liverpool give Suarez a pay rise to £200,000 per week. That's way more than Arsenal would pay, so there would have been very little pressure from him or his agent to secure the transfer. With us it's different. Even back in the late 80s players were coming to Barnsley from Rangers and Celtic and getting paid more. These days the jump in wages from us to a mid-table side like Bolton is staggering, so it's impossible to keep players, particularly when they say they want to go (one fact everybody misses about the John Stones transfer). Look at Golbourne. He increased his wages by dropping down a division.

Even under Dennis we saw the type of player power we have nowadays when Larry May went on strike because we said no to his move to Wednesday. After a week or so it was clear it was a futile argument and we let him go. As it was, after a shaky start the Wednesday fans got on his back and he was a flop there anyway (they didn't take to him because he was ex-Barnsley, whilst creaming themselves over David Hirst, but who said Wednesday fans were consistent?). These days, with the bigger money involved its impossible for teams operating at our level to keep players who want to go. When the difference in salary is £150k per week to £200k per week, or even £20k per week to £30k per week you have a chance of keeping the player, but we're talking £2k per week to £15-20k per week if we bring players through like Stones. There's no way we'd have fought Newcastle away from Watson these days.

 

I take your point entirely. I've gone from a secure job myself to the perils of self employment which has it's ups and downs. If I had to be honest it's the social side of things that keeps me going. Seeing mates old and new and keeping in touch with people I'd probably lose touch with. At the same time supporting Barnsley has made me some great friends over the years including some who are no longer with us and some great times (some of them in Divisions 3 & 4). This period in the championship has just ground me down taken any joy I've got from the actual matches away. We need to refocus and find different and better ways of doing things. Whatever division we are in we can do that. The whole what's the point of being a football club if we aren't in the Championship just comes across about too big time Wednesday Massive for me.

 

With regard to clubs throwing money at promotion I can't remember the last club that got promoted without doing so. Nom thinking it was maybe us. Any of the clubs that go up this year will have chucked money to do so all the clubs that go down will have the lowest budgets.

Suarez as Gordon said Liverpool were able to give him 200 grand a week to keep him sweet. Not exactly an option to us look at mid table clubs like Leeds paying players 25 grand a week. It's complete insanity. The getting players and developing them idea is great we tried it with Hamill and Davies and Vaz Te and Howard. Unfortunately the reality is as soon as those players improved they were off chasing money we can never compete with so we never had the chance to improve year on year as we had to perpetually replace our best players after we improved them. Times have changed and not for the better but who can blame any player wishing to financially secure their future.

I agree there are different ways to do things. What I struggle to see is how we can channel our energies and reinvigorate our club whilst constantly firefighting relegation. We need to develop a long term plan with a good manager based around developing our own players and spotting and developing talent.

 

Blackpool managed it and came within a whisker of staying up.

I'm not worried about thrusting for the Prem season after season, but I'd like to see entertaining, attacking football. Sadly a downgrade to Alehouse League One with reduced crowds is unlikely to bring that about. Invest in the team first (even at a modest level) and I will follow.