What risk is there to Barnsleys Championship survival if we constantly sell all the family silver. As a financial model we appear to be more than breaking even. But with only a matter of weeks before the season, is it reasonable to expect Hecky to continue to produce diamonds out of the rough?
The players will leave either way - it's a choice between either leaving at the end of contract giving us no money to reinvest or selling at the right time and looking to put money back into the squad. Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk
I'm sure its not through choice we are doing business the way we are and selling players left right and centre. Its just the sad state of the modern game that we have to, we are a small fish in a big pond and annoyingly money talks. We cannot compete with the financial power of other clubs so we have to sign the cheap lesser know young players and build them up. The good thing to that is it shows how amazing our scouting and coaching staff are that we are able to consistently find this type of player. The negative is that of course once they become good, the big boys with the rich owners take notice and offer huge wages that are too good for the players to turn down and that we cannot match. So unless we somehow get taken over by some multi billionaire who is wiling to offer big wages to all our players, we will unfortunately have to continue to be a selling club.
The alternative is to not sell and then lose the family silver for nowt. This will risk the club's survival full stop.During my time as a Barnsley fan I've seen Redfearn, Hignett, Ward, De Zeeuw, Stones and many more all come and go. Some of these were replaced, some were not. In 2002 I very nearly saw the club go under, that would be irreplaceable. If Robbo goes then we'll look elsewhere, and we'll look elsewhere with a substantial amount of cash to source a recruitment, rather than scraping the barrel next year when he inevitably goes.
Obviously all our new signings are unproven, but in my positively-tinted eyes we are reaping the rewards of the frustrating business of having to sell players. Two years ago we had virtually no money, hence a poor window in League One; now we can afford to sign players such as McGeehan etc. Whilst we'd all live Hourihane etc. to be here still they were always going to leave at some point so at least we have money for them Some lessons to be learned as how to maximise that income, but the plan isn't very much working as I see it
Good point and one I was mulling over myself just yesterday. It is what it is really. It would appear its something that a Club like ours must do to ensure we can both compete and survive. The model seems to have worked thus far in that as we have seen we have brought youngish players into the Club improved them and then sold them on for profit. Prime examples are of course Hourihane and Mawson plus the three we've brought through our Academy re- Bree, Holgate and Stones. It can't have gone unnoticed that of that number apart from Bree the other four have all gone on to play at full or Under 21 international level which can only augur well when some of the Premier League Clubs might be looking to loan out their young emerging talent. The only drawback to the model is that others will probably try to follow our example. Having said that the trick would appear to be in not only finding the raw talent but more importantly in having the necessary experience out on the training pitch to both nurture and maximise any initial promise shown. To my mind it is therefore absolutely essential that we do all within our powers to hang on to the likes of Martin Devaney, Jamie Clapham, Bobby Hassell and Paul Heckingbottom. In my opinion they are our real " diamonds in the rough."
It's a huge risk to our future, but our mistakes were made 1-2 years ago. We can't let so many contracts run out at the same time again, it's been a disaster for us. On the plus side, this batch of players got us up, got us established in the Championship and have left for a lot of money. If the new batch of players is as good, they'll be on longer contracts and therefore a real platform to build on Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Plus from what GG has said this morning, some of the Robbo money will be pumped back into improving the side so could be a silver lining there if we can use that to improve in key areas like up front and out wide where we are very weak currently
