Brian Howard calls for more support at Oakwell

RE: You just said that people want to be entertained

What like that silly shed game?

 

I didnt mean some f-.ck-ng majorettes ffs!

I meant some goals, some attractive football, a resounding win and banter with the away fans. sticking some Arctic Monkeys over the tannoy and a plasma or two on the concourse isnt going to make people think about coming, trust me.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/manchester_united/article3123786.ece

 

So are you suggesting that Championship football...

... is not sustainable in Barnsley ?</p>

Because if you are I feel you may have a point.</p>

 

You don't think that it will entice ANYBODY?

If you think that then you are wrong

 

Thats exactly what Im saying

we cannot and will not stay in the Championship on 10,000 fans a week. and we're talking about adding a couple of thousand by making it cheap to attend, that still wont keep good, ambitious players at the club. Davey will need to pull 2 or 3 rabbits out of the sub continent every transfer window to even keep us reasonably competitive. how long can that last.

 

Exactly my point. The best we have come up with is some stupid shed thing.

I remember when I first started going to games as a kid. Toby Tyke had freedom of the pitch before games, the music was decent and the half time entertainment wasn't bad. Even the announcer before the matches was funny. I knew that even if the match was boring I would be entertained for half an hour before the game (whilst eating and drinking what had been bought for me from the refreshment stand which gave extra revenue to the club) and for 15 minutes at half time and for that experience alone it was worth going.
Sadly this appears to be lacking for the young kids now.

 

If it were me

I'd demolish the West Stand and build a smaller one tier seated stand with top quality tv, catering and hospitality facilities and a nightclub/casino.

to finance it, I'd close the Academy and sell the land to a commercial house builder.

just mine that.

 

We've never kept the better players at the club.

So what's changed? Always sold, always will.

Surely the whole point of the academy and the scouting system is to find the players that will do a job for us before being sold on for a profit? If not, then we're looking at producing/buying players that no-one else wants, and that would say something in itself.

 

But this league has changed

significantly in the past few years... gone are Port Vale, Swindon, Rotherham, Crewe... and last year Luton and Southend. This League is more like Prem 2 with the bigger clubs in it who can attract significant investment. Add to this the obscene level of parachute payments that are currently on offer and we will always struggle.</p>

I honestly think that even if we went up to the prem we'd still not sell out the ground. BFC are selling but I'm affraid that the Barnsley public say 'so what?'</p>

 

okay if we accept that all those are the exact reasons (personally I don't btw)

Then what is the club doing about it?

I thinks it's fair to say that while this BBS is not a full representation of the entire supporting community, there's a large amount of fans on here that do go to watch Barnsley on a regular basis, a fair number of exciled fans and a fair number of impulse buying supporters that will pick fixtures that appeal to them. The one thing we do have in common in different levels of commitment is a sustained interest in Barnsley FC. Having said that, generally speaking this board is full of negativity and often stories (whether factual or not) of poor experiences with the club. Be it season ticket renewals, quality of service on matchdays, stewarding, not being able to contact the club on non match days, having to take aftenoons off work to buy a ticket for different fixtures, poor quality mechandise, no merchandise available, feeling like they've been treated badly and needing to vent it, poor communications, the list seems to go on indefinitely.

And while quite often you have to take what people say with a pinch of salt and probably water it down considerably before you actually find out what the actual problem is. These stories are out there and being told all the time. Has anyone really tried to get to the bottom of these things in a positive way rather then a defensive manner?

Price is a distraction, I think most people understand football enough to know there are poor games, average games, good games and great games. But every week has more then 90 minutes to it, and there are plenty of other opportunities to engage and satisfy your customers, once you've got that cracked you can bring more in.

 

What changed ?

Bosman and freedom of contract.

 

Our Academy

must feature at the top of a BBC2 Top 100 white elephants run down, has produced nothing and would be better served as a row of semis. our strategy should be to out-Wenger Wenger in Eastern Europe and have a world class dossier on the best of the foreign youth on Daveys desk every morning.

 

Agreed on every point.

Don't get me started on academies.

 

perhaps in some respects the club is still a fair representation of the community! good customer service should be a priority, I agree wholeheartedly, I think technology should play a part in that, we could quite easily be automated, efficient and leading edge at low cost. I'm always offering my services at a small fee ;-)

 

As I said, it's pretty much the final piece of the jigsaw, the club have made some exceptional decisions over the last few years, with amazing amounts of resistence from the supporters and they've stood by their decisions and often got it right. There's still plenty to be done though and the club know that.

 

RE: You just said that people want to be entertained

Agree with you there. We should be playing music that is in the charts now and not in the past. The televisions downstairs were not on at Blackpool. Why? Going to other away games you see stuff you wish you had. The Scunny programme was excellent. As for half time entertainment, even Wolves had an Elvis impersonator singing. The half time break of 15 minutes could be filed much better than with a shed game and penalty shoot out. Before the game we should have 30-45 minutes of on pitch entertainment. We have nothing.

 

RE: You're miles off there by the way SM. Miles off

How bad was the weather for that game too!