Doug Sez

There was lots of interest in Cole, we could quite easily have cashed in on the lot with their contracts expiring , point is we didn't and they walked for free, these aren't the decisions of someone not supporting the club.

Really not sure what more you are expecting from the owners given our financial state, understand we don't have buckets of cash lying around the place.
Wages have had to be cut, players might be sold that we more than likely won't replace like for like, that's the stark reality, there's no point folk banging their knives and folks on the table unless they have spare cash they are willing to give the club.

 

They are the reason the financial state is so crap. If they didn't make all the crap appointments etc. we wouldn't be down in L1.

We won't get out of L1 either if they keep cutting wage bill, selling all our best assets and replacing them with bargain bin signings most of the time. We aren't here through any other means than their own terrible choices. You can blame Conway etc. But this current board were on the board then and still are now. Mostly the fault of Chien and Conway yes. But Neerav was still a shareholder etc. and let them run a mock.

I stand by what I said in a past post and will die on the hill, no other club in L1 with any ounce of ambition would sell 7.5 million worth of players in one window and spend 200k on replacing them. Simply wouldn't happen.

They and you and others can bring up the accounts, but as I say, it's their fault they are so crap. And they won't get better whilst we are stuck in L1. Not properly investing when selling our best assets is just resetting us back years every time they do it.

 

Some people on here were saying they were massively sought after players.

 

You said in another post you don't understand the accounts fully, that might be a good start point to help you understand where the losses of 17m have come from, spending seven figure sums on transfer fees is not where we are at.
You can kick and scream all you want but the reality is we have maintained a top 6 wage bill for the past 3 years.
So what's the solution then to stem the losses? you say don't cut the wage bill, then tell me how we are supposed to reverse these huge losses? For every £1 coming into the club we are spending £1.25 on wages.

 

A good start would be to not sign 756 players who are absolute dross.

Get it leaner, get it meaner and rebuild from there. As it goes, we appear to have started that this season.

Off the top of my head, we've freed up nearly 2m a year in the wages to released and loaned out players.

 

Spend clever. Not scattergun.

Wage bill is still mega high as they recruit way more than we need to cos they buy cheap and buy twice.

Kitch and Mads left for mega fees. Credit to them for getting so much. But they then signed McCart on loan, Lopata, MDG and Shep. None of them were any where near the level required, not just a bit off it. Million miles away. So they then had to go and add Earl and Pines the following window. That's 6 players signed and added to wage bill to replace 2 we lost. Plus other fees involved in bringing these in. I'm no accountant or business expert but even I know that's honking business and not exactly trimming wages etc.

Not to mention other positions they've done this in. Strikers for example. Last season we had Shaw, Cosgrove, Dallas, Watters etc. all on books that cost money and wages that are clearly miles off it. Where is the clever scouting and aim to lower budget?

If they want to get out of this league, we need to pay once for players of the right level like DKD and add a few clever loans. But no, we sell players for high and sign several cheap punts that sit on wage bill for years costing us money and that we can't get rid of.

 

Exactly this.

We can argue back and forth til the cows come home as to why we can or can't sign players.

This is why. We replace a good player with four rubbish ones who collectively earn more than the initial good player did.

It's such a stupid approach and is clear as day that that's our number one issue.

 

If that were the issue the average wage would be way lower down that graph.

Total wages were 4th place in the league. Average we’re 5th.

Transfer fees were also 5th.

In revenue we’re 8th. So the owners are theoretically investing money to push us from 8th into the playoffs. Obviously it doesn’t all come down to money though but just as a very basic point.

 

Well that's more of a worry then cos not only are we signing more than we need to fill gaps left by big sales, they also must be paying them way more than they are worth.

As I highlighted in my last post. We did sign 6 CBs to replace 2 we sold. So if we were also paying some or most of them a high wage we are even worse than I thought.

 

Kitching and Mads were both signed in the championship and both got stick in their first season with people saying why are we signing players from the Danish 2nd division and kitching from Forest Green Rovers, both were developed over a period of time and sold on for good money, that's what we do develop and sell on, some work and some don't, thingbis when you've got an extra 8m in TV money coming you can afford to buy players with better stats from higher levels reducing the risk, but still no guarantees.
We can't afford big transfer fees and we can't afford big wages, so every signing has an element of risk.
You have to understand we can not spend our way out of this league and can't match the wages any longer of Huddersfield, Luton, Plymouth, Bolton, Wycombe and probably Stockport, seems like you are struggling with the concept of where we are and how we will operate going forwards.

 

One of those players is Shepherd by the way who a bigger club than us in Bradford City would bite our hand off for, Lopata very low risk signing financially, Pines looked OK but clearly wasn't, Earl played nearly 70 games in the championship, Roberts is a very experienced pro that returned, Robbie cundy again low risk loan signing

 

They were signed and developed to a good level yeah. But my issue is that we don't then have to go way below the level they started at to replace them. A free agent from Woking was never in a million years going to be an adequate replacement for a player that was a decent championship CB. I'm not asking them to spend millions on a Bundesliga option like Birmingham did cos that's stupid and totally outside the realms of possibility. But with those fees coming in we could and should have been able to get something half decent from a bottom end L1 side or top of L2.

A lad from Pontefract colleries and a kid from Woking was never going to anywhere near the required level. One of those has now seemingly hit that level in Shep. But it's taken 2 seasons most of which he's spent away from the club developing. If they want to get us out of this league as they continue to say is the aim. Then we cannot have this major level of reset every time we sell a few players.

If we lose Luca and one or both of Phillips and Russell this summer and do similar in terms of buying more cheap punts from several levels below where we are, then we will finish even lower than the disappointment of 12th last season. It's simple as that. All of the three above would sell for over a million as they are top L1 midfielders. They would need to be replaced with people not far off that level, that we can develop over a little bit of time to get there. Not lads from semi pro leagues.

 

Shep is now good enough to get in our side after 2 years of loans.

Earl may have played all those games at a decent level but is ok at best.

Pines was horrific at anything other than winning a header. Any level of scouting would have shown that.

Roberts coming back is great and I love Robbo but again had to be done as all the other 6 or 7 they added were crap.

Cheap punt after cheap punt that cost money in the hope they come good

 

I'm never going to argue that the club is spending the money wisely, they're not.

The thing I have an issue with is people framing it as the owners not investing money to try and get promotion when they very clearly are.

 

I don't doubt they are trying to not get us promotion, but as you've just said yourself, they are spending the money we do have terribly on the most part.

I do like basically everything they have done this season so far, especially when it comes to outgoings and some of the lads we are bidding for and rumoured to be in for are back to what I want to see. Good, high potential L2 players who have been performing well there. If we get a few more of those in, plus what we have now I'll be optimistic again, but the last few seasons have been dire recruitment wise bar the obvious DKD who Stevie Wonder could have said wos be good.

 

Didn't we sign Ethan Pinnock from FGR when they were non league, Mick Mcarthy from Wosborough, John Stones from Penistone Church, Liam Kitching from FGR, Martin Bullock from Eastwood Town, Darren Sheridan from Winsford United, Matthew Appleby from Darlington ?

 

Too young to remember majority of these so I'll take your word for it. But football was also a very different landscape then.

Stones did come from there yeah, but he also wasn't expected to go right into first team, how long did it take for him to be put into team after signing from there? Wasn't first season was it? He was in our youth team for a while.

Pinnock is the one jewel we uncovered. But again wasn't amazing right away. He was criticized if I remember initially and then absolutely shone in L1 after relegation. But he's the one possible exception that's been incredible from there. But for that one major success, we could all name 6 or 7 at least that were signed from non league that were cheap gambles that were utter tripe or have had absolutely no impact on the 1st team.

FGR were also L2 at the time we got kitch I'm pretty sure.

 

Again, we can't afford oven ready players, we take players and develop them, some work and some don't.
In 46 years of watching Barnsley we've never spent money barring a few seasons between 97- 2000.
The game has changed and costs are out of control, we have an owner that wants us to be more sustainable moving forwards and less relient on 8m bail outs every year, its his money he can do as he sees fit and you have to respect that decsion.
It will mostly likely be a period of transition and might take us another 2 windows to clear out and meaning we might have to fully reset and get used to mid table, but it might not either, we've some talented young players and a positive young head coach who's hungry for success and is very much about what we have got and not what we haven't.

 

But there's a difference between oven ready which I appreciate is expensive and then players that are significantly below the level we are trying to compete at.

For example I have no issue with this Mnoga we are linked to as he has done his time in non league, stepped up to L2 and been great there so clearly is at a stage where we can bring him to L1 and improve him further to get him where we need to be and beyond.

Same with Jordan Thomas for example. But I wouldn't be particularly impressed if we went straight to national league north to bring in a RB from there that would be cheaper but most likely miles away from where we need to be.

There's a balance that needs to be struck, and over the last few seasons, for the most part that has been well off.

This summer has been an improvement and hope it continues. And if we sell a Phillips or a Connell etc. and add more top young L2 talent like Tovide and so on, I'll again praise them and say it's positive.

We've had some good managers over the last few years that have been drastically let down by this board cost cutting. Duff was one for sure. And I think Conor is a very exciting young coach who can take us places. But he can't if he's not given the right tools to work with.

 

Again. This is not what is happening.

It's not cost cutting. It's bad recruitment decisions. The manager will be involved in that too.