Can we have a reasoned discussion around ownership... Most of the views just seen to be based mainly around selling players and greed / profit. I get that ultimately it is our chances converted that is the biggest issue and more should have been done in the January transfer window to fix that, but what would we be all saying if most of the players brought in had performed brilliantly and we were sitting comfortably mid table? I don't buy into the greed comments. I wonder if someone with that view can provide a little more detail as to why they think the owners are driven by greed and profit. I say this based on the clubs income and profit, these do not suggest that the board are in it for greed, more to ensure the club can be self sustaining and hopefully hover around the break even mark. We made a loss didn't we without the directors taking money out. I would completely accept the greed argument if we're making a substantial profit and this was being taken out by the directors every year and not back into the team. They have clearly stated that transfer fees are re-invested into the team in the transfer window but also cover off players contractual wages, that sounds like a solid way of keeping the club sustainable. Same with season tickets. If they were in it for greed and profit, I suspect at minimum they would have tried to keep prices at our previous league 1 season, whereas we have had a great offer pricewise. Serious question. Those that want the board out, what is your realistic vision of what a new board/owner should do? I'd rather try and keep tweaking the current model than wake up to see sky sports news reporting that our owners have decided to walk away with the club massively debt ridden, or even worse we have gone into administration. I'm just trying to be realistic in what I think Barnsley have financially to work with each season. If Barnsley were owned by a fans consortium for instance, would the decisions on player sales be any different? Put your ownership hat on for a minute and consider the risks for a club like Barnsley who cannot rely on matchday income to cover costs and be competitive at this level. I honestly think that we would be receiving these offers for players (Pinnock / Moore etc) and having to weigh up the same scenario as our board do. It's a simple decision but I can imagine also the hardest decision. So the scenario is Barnsley sitting in say 19th in the league in the January transfer window and we are approached by a team for a player who we bought for £350k. This team are offering us £3m and would offer wages to the ambitious player we could never match. We know relegation could cost us revenue of approx £7m in TV money. Said player has 18 months on his contract at the time so we could defo make him play out his contract as an option. However remember we are a fan owned team without millions in the bank to cover that relegation revenue loss without player sales.. Do we risk turning the offer down and getting nothing for the player this season and still potentially getting relegated.. Then it's public knowledge we HAVE to sell at season end to avoid putting the club at risk. Or do we accept the £3m for the player, knowing that we have weakened the side but that £3m is more than we would get at the end of the season when clubs know we have to sell for income and offsets some of the cost of relegation. We then bring in an unproven player like the current strategy and hope we have unearthed a talent. We don't have the resources to bring in season championship players mainly due to wage demands. It's a horrible decision to make in the end so what would you do? Is it even realistic that we could try and be clever with contracts when signing, at the risk of missing out on someone? Say for instance we write a clause into the contract that if a player leaves at an agreed transfer fee, any club would have to pay 30% additional transfer fee if the player is to leave before the end of the current season? If the buying club waits until season end then they have him at the agreed initial transfer fee.. At least that gives the club plenty of time to plan a replacement, also sets the picture out to the fans that we still want to be successful but not at any cost. At the end of the day though, if we want to keep seeing Barnsley in business, I can't ever get my head around the idea of trying to spend beyond our means. Everybody is in agreement I think that the transfer policy needs to be addressed whilst keeping the general theme of youth throughout the squad to develop.
I think League experience is the key. Hourihane had over 100 games under his belt and so did Mowatt. It's not a big ask looking down at League 1 and 2 for players that have racked up experience that maybe didn't make it at the top level and being prepared to pay for them. I'd rather pay £900,000 for someone from Stevenage than from Admira Wacker. Sibbick would have been a decent signing had we played him at right back.
Quality over quantity too, as SD just said experience is key, go get players who have lots of games under their belts. I would like to see us up our transfer budget slightly to bring in slightly better players instead of lots of cheap options from other academies. The obvious example is Brentford, now I know they have a bigger wage budget etc. but they got Ollie Watkins for 1.8 million, that would have been over our price range under PC but with these new owners, if someone like that is around in the lower leagues, we should be in for them around that fee IMO. Not asking them to spend 5 million plus on a striker, but just spend more than 250k on each player. The main issue though still is not getting proper fees when we sell players. Other clubs will reject bid after bid if it doesn't match market value. We seem to cave at the first bid.
I think the owners mean well and want us to be a success. I also think they're lacking some football knowledge and nous, and that they stick too rigidly to the plan. If we had a guy who relly understood the Championship we'd have made smarter decisions on which players to let go and when - relegation is going to hurt us badly
I honestly don't get them, teams strive to get into the Championship because its the place to be. We did it and then they break down the spine of the team, bring in a CEO with zilch experience in the league, chuck some youngsters in and expect them to thrive! I know they have a plan but they follow it way too rigidly to the point of fking madness! That's not hindsight that's what the average fan has said from the outset
Yes but can you compile a league table and five page dossier on each clubs net spend to make your point?
Just as I said on a different thread; coupling young inexperienced at this level players, some who haven't played in this country before, with a manager equally inexperienced at this level who also hasn't played or managed here is hardly a recipe for success. For what its worth I don’t see the owners as greedy venture capitalists only here for a quick buck. If I’m honest I still haven't worked out why they bought us ???
Me neither. I don't get why you'd want to scratch round for a few million here and there over 18 month periods when you have billions in the bank. Unless you haven't really got billions in the bank and you're telling porkies.
I mentioned before that Forbes has a very detailed list of billionaires across the world. I think last time I looked months back there were around 2,200. The parents of Parekh are listed in that list of 2,200, but as far as is known, only the son is involved in our ownership. No other individual that is listed as being involved in our ownership (though seeing as the ultimate holding company is offshore and we can't have access to that information) is in the Forbes rankings. Its pretty evident to me they are simply chancers who came across a distressed sale that they could influence to expunge debt and leverage a very low acquisition fee, with a further possible opportunity to uncouple the ground from council ownership and add significant value for minimal outlay.
Ok but how many club owners have football knowledge? Most clubs I'd guess are not owned by former footballers but by business people who originally wouldn't have a footballing background. But the club do work with scouts with football knowledge after identifying a possible player surely etc. then in terms of the financial affairs it ishould be no different to running another business. So not sure what you can do on that front.
Completely agree on quality over quantity yes. I'm not sure I agree that with these owners that our transfer budget should be higher. Both current owners and PC want to operate under the self sufficient model. If they start increasing the transfer budget then that money has to be found from somewhere other than owner cash injection. Main issue is selling too many of the team. 1 or 2 people can live with. I'd personally like to see a transfer window where that happens and we only have to bring in a couple of players, it's much easier for focus on quality that way, whilst the rest of the squad continue to develop. Main factor as always is, we will always look to balance the books to ensure the club remains solvent.
If they opt for quality over quantity then they could still spend more on players without breaking the self sufficient model. We sold Pinnock for around 3 million ish ( according to reports) that means we could have spent 1 million on one player and 1.8 million on another and still had funds left over for example. That's all I ask for.
I think we have spent those kind of fees though if believed , Thomas was supposed to be in the region of 1 million , Thiam 900, 000 , MgHeehan several hundred thousand , Schmidt just under a million , Chaplin again several hundred thousands , Woodrow similar , so we have spent fairly chunky fees by our standards but they appear to be at this stage disappointing investments .
Not really, if you think that the wages have to be covered. So for instance Pinnock would have been on Barnsley money when we signed him from the national league (which surely is ranked below the likes of Austrian 2nd tier), if we sell him for £3m, we then have to get a replacement and take into account the wage bill. If we start shopping in the club record transfer zone so try to bring in a player at £1.8m they are gonna be in this day and age wanting no doubt 30k a week which we ain't ever gonna pay.. £30k a week is probably a fair idea of what some teams are paying on average decent championship players...That alone for 1 player stacks up at over £1.5m a year in basic wages. Interesting link here, but it isn't surprising we are limited to the development route.. Complete finger in the air guess but maybe 1 in 5 players brought in might do well for the club? It's a massive unknown.
I don't think our board are doing anything sinister or underhand, I've nothing to question their integrity in that respect. But as others have mentioned, to not appear to want to make even relatively small investments, that I accept carry some risk, to progress the club (again I accept no method guarantees anything) is strange to me. What I have an issue with them on, as owners, is that part of the requirement of being a football club is performance on the pitch. And their decision making, and to be fair much of our board level decision making for several years now, around recruitment at Championship level has been woeful. 5 out of 6 Championship seasons we've been relegated or just scraped survival, once because of Portsmouth having 10 points deducted. Points are also a key currency of football, we don't get enough of them. I hope they see the folly of allowing, in my opinion, a capable championship squad to be dismantled last summer, as was the 2015/16 squad, and expecting too many inexperienced and/or poor players to stabilise us in the Championship. If that is the zero risk approach then it has backfired, as we now effectively lose £6 million in revenue overnight with relegation, the same issue saw us sell Bradshaw and Potts to offset against this last time around. I doubt we'll get a straight answer, but I'd love to hear our board be upfront about what their expectations are from paying £20 million to own a football club but apparently do little else to strengthen us.
As others have said, I do think that they thought picking up a championship club for £6 million was too good to be true, and guess what? It was. I suspect they didn’t grasp the enormous chasm in spending between Barnsley and those teams who are just bigger then us plus the ones willing to cheat the spending rules, I think that has come as a shock to them. I don’t blame them for most of the sales, they make sense and if players aren’t even willing to discuss new contracts what can you do? Having said that saying it was our “ best transfer window ever” when we all knew we desperately needed some experience, just made them look ridiculous and is just a noose around their necks now.
Not always, a few seasons ago Brentford signed Watkins for 1.8 million, when they signed him he was in L2 at Exeter, he will have been know wages at that point. Way out of our budget wages wise now but that's the sort of signing we need to go for not unknowns from Austria like Schmidt.
If those fees are true then whoever is sanctioning those needs to be removed from post. If we paid almost 1 million for Schmidt and Thiam then we are a joke.
