Simon Davey goes from strength to strength !!! He was left with nothing to work with at the end of last season and had to get rid of a full squad - and they definitly needed outing with the exception of Anthony Kay, but he probably got kicked out for none footballing reasons. All these players went to clubs like Darlington and Bradford so for SD to keep us up that season was an exceptional acheivement So SD had a new squad to assemble this season - and the players he has brought in have mostly been FANTASTIC signings...........how many players has he had to bring in this season.......16, 17 ??? OK, we need to off load those that it hasen't worked out for, such as; Rickets Johnson Nardiello Christenson Mostto And probably others like Stan and Coulson can go, but the rest have been great At one point we looked odds on to get into the play offs, but then came the period where the loan signings had to go back. This stopped the continuity of the team, and we started losing. We then got the team back together with the backing of the board of directors only to suffer some serious injuries to key players, De Silva and Muller. This again knocked us off course. But we came through this........then the BIG distraction of the FA Cup run started, which again left us losing in the league So its been a ROLLER COASTER season and under the circumstances it could have been a bridge too far for us to stay up. I mean, which other Championship club has seen so many changes to the squad as Barnsley has had from the finish of the 06/07 season to the finish of the 07/08 season But the club managed to stay up !!! We now have got a squad of players that don't need to be totally changed for next season, all the team needs is a few additions in certain areas such as strikers and centre midfield and I am sure we will be much stronger than we were last season. And the quality that has been brought in during the season is getting me excited as to who we may be bringing in for next season. (clap) (clap) (clap) (clap) (clap) (clap)
Dragon............they used to say I was negative about the Richie squad I was always on about having to strengthen........(I of course was proved right{again}) But you have to admit that the players we have now are miles in front of the shower we had under Ritchie Remember, we are not talking about something that happened years and years back - its only 18 months ago
Boo.....Rubbish Just balance the argument up. 1. Since Davey arrived as boss i think he has made 19 permanent signings. Of which i think 9 have been good signings and 10 have been bad. So a bit like tossing a coin with those ratios. Not to mention all the poor loanees he brought in. 2.How does a cup run cause a distraction and cost us points? If it does shouldnt it be down to the manager to stop that happening and to motivate players for the not so attractive matches in our league as well as the Chelseas and Liverpools? 3.People go on about losing Muller and De Silva being the reason why we have not done as well as many predicted. So no other clubs have injuries then? He has brought a shedload of players in (more than any manager i can remember here) and we cant find an able replacement for De Silva? 4.The improvement this season has been miinimal. A few points and 2 places better doesnt mean its been a great season. Weve stayed up fair enough but are we going anywhere? We still had to wait until the end of the penultimate game to be sure again. 5. In my opinion his man management is poor. He obviously has a problem with this. The way he alienated Colgan, Johnson, Ricketts and Christensen shows this. His inability to man manage could very easily have cost us this season 6. He seems intent on getting rid of any academy talent. Dont let a couple of games by Butterfield fool you. He'd rather bring in someone he has barely watched from another country than improve the squad with youth. Whatever your beliefs on this its dissapointing not to see local talent. 7.As i said back in September he was like kid in a sweet shop who bought far too many players far too quickly. This money should have been held back till January where we could have strengthened on our earlier good start 8. He is still tactically inept. We rarely come from behind because simply he doesnt know what to do to change a game. The only reason we managed two away wins near the end was by accident. He had to change his formation due to injuries which luckily for him paid off. When he tried it at home we got shafted. Not a clue! 9. His overall record as a manager is still down there with legends like Hart and Parkin ask Paul D! 10. Im still unconvinced....
there is one thing to remember all these players that have been brought in didnt gel as quickly as sd might of thought but if we can keep majority of squad i think we will do really well just hope we get a quality striker but we"ll have to wait n see
Just to balance it up ................again in a realistic way 1. Since Davey arrived as boss i think he has made 19 permanent signings. Of which i think 9 have been good signings and 10 have been bad. So a bit like tossing a coin with those ratios. Not to mention all the poor loanees he brought in. Answer; Muller Steele Nyatanga Kosluk Sousa Foster Van Hoomet Werling ? Leon JCR De Silva Maken Odejayi ? Not so good Mostto Christensen Rickets Johnson 2.How does a cup run cause a distraction and cost us points? If it does shouldnt it be down to the manager to stop that happening and to motivate players for the not so attractive matches in our league as well as the Chelseas and Liverpools? Answer; Players said it did. 3.People go on about losing Muller and De Silva being the reason why we have not done as well as many predicted. So no other clubs have injuries then? He has brought a shedload of players in (more than any manager i can remember here) and we cant find an able replacement for De Silva? Answer; we have still got a small squad because we had to bring all these players in. Yer cant say this and then say SD was like a kid in a sweet shop buying too many players. Anyway - how many players in this league are as good as De Silva. We definitly haven't got one at Barnsley. 4.The improvement this season has been miinimal. A few points and 2 places better doesnt mean its been a great season. Weve stayed up fair enough but are we going anywhere? We still had to wait until the end of the penultimate game to be sure again. Answer; fantastic new squad and a semi final at Wembley !!! 5. In my opinion his man management is poor. He obviously has a problem with this. The way he alienated Colgan, Johnson, Ricketts and Christensen shows this. His inability to man manage could very easily have cost us this season Answer; if they can't play he is ruthless in getting shut.............this is a sign of a good manager. Very much in contrast to the pally pally carry on with Ritchie 6. He seems intent on getting rid of any academy talent. Dont let a couple of games by Butterfield fool you. He'd rather bring in someone he has barely watched from another country than improve the squad with youth. Whatever your beliefs on this its dissapointing not to see local talent. Answer; I'm not bothered where they come from as long as they do the job. And I think Davey will say the same. 7.As i said back in September he was like kid in a sweet shop who bought far too many players far too quickly. This money should have been held back till January where we could have strengthened on our earlier good start Answer; if he didn't bring players in from the start we would have started the season with players that are now playing at Port Vale, Darlington and Bradford. 8. He is still tactically inept. We rarely come from behind because simply he doesnt know what to do to change a game. The only reason we managed two away wins near the end was by accident. He had to change his formation due to injuries which luckily for him paid off. When he tried it at home we got shafted. Not a clue! Answer; he can only change tactics if he has the tools available to do this. He can only work with what he's got. More players with quality will hopefully be brought in will allow him to change things during a match e.g. Hassell as anchor midfield was a total joke but he was the only option open to SD 9. His overall record as a manager is still down there with legends like Hart and Parkin ask Paul D! Answer; they didn't get to the FA Cup semi final, AND more importantly they didn't have to change a complete squad. Neither of the above managers brought in quality players such as, Fosters for only 100K and Muller for only 250K. 10. Im still unconvinced.... Answer; I think if SD got us into the play offs next year I still don't think you would be convinced
McCarthy.. Here are my answers to your queries/comments - not looking to start an argument, just my feeling. 1. All managers, particularly in their first job, are bound to have problems in terms of the signings they make. A 50% ratio when a lot of the signings are on free transfers isn't that much of a disaster. It just so happens that the signings that seem to have backfired are the ones that have cost money. 2. A Championship club going on the sort of run that we've been on is pretty much an unprecedented area. In fact, when Millwall did it, they did get relegated, and thus he can possibly be commended slightly for keeping us up. It wasn't a good run of form coinciding with the league run, but it also coincided with the injury to Anderson de Silva immediately after the Liverpool game. It might be his job to lift them but as I said, its unprecedented to him, unprecedented to many of the players, and a situation that we are unlikely to encounter again. 3. Of course other clubs have injuries - but do other clubs suffer cruciate knee ligament injuries to arguably their two best performers up to that point of the season? That would be difficult for any club to recover from. Yes, we should have had cover for Anderson but we signed him on deadline day in January - it would have been difficult to bring in anyone other than an unproven kid from a Premiership club - and if he does that, he probably gets criticised for it. 4. The league has quite clearly been a freak league. 55 points would have seen us finish higher than we did in other seasons, and theres been an FA Cup Semi Final run to contend with which won't have assisted. You combine all the factors together (injuries to Muller and Anderson Silva, FA Cup Semi Final, freak league where everyone beats everyone) and in my opinion, its not that bad of a total. As for improvement, I think the squad is much stronger now than it was last season. In Nyatanga, Foster and Souza, we have three centre halves who, on their day, are very good. Kozluk, Hassell and Van Homoet are decent enough full backs, while Foster can also play there. Last season, we had Paul Reid who was out of his depth, Kay who was practically a registered alcoholic, Neil Austin who's now playing for Darlington, Dale Tonge who can't get in the team at Gillingham, etc. The strikers aren't any stronger aside from Macken, and thats the area we need to strongly improve on this summer. 5. We don't know the truth and that might be the problem. From the way I hear it, Colgan's behaviour alienated himself, Johnson was an alcoholic and an issue in the dressing room. No idea on the rest. Its certainly a potential issue and something that it would be nice to solve for next season. 6. Do you not think the academy talent just might not be good enough? He was the academy manager before the first team manager. While it would be nice to see local lads in, if they're not good enough, they're not good enough. 7. We barely had even part of a squad in September. He made signings to make the squad stronger and bigger which needed to be made, with loan signings to subsidise it. We then signed Nyatanga, Macken and Anderson Silva on deadline day in January. He had to make a huge number of signings at the start and considering that and the way a lot of foreign players have to gel, to get the points we did in the first half of the season was a big achievement. 8. I think if you look around the clubs, its very rare that any club comes from behind to win games - thats the nature of football. There are certainly some tactical issues in terms of a 'Plan B' but we didn't HAVE to play 3-5-2 at Preston and Watford - he chose to, and we won both games. Certain people seem unwilling to give credit where credit is due for the sake of the strength of their argument. There are certainly issues with his tactical naivety perhaps, but its his first full season in football management. 9. Paul Hart managed in League One - if his record matches up to Davey's then that just shows how poor a job Paul Hart did in League One while Davey has kept us in a very competitive Championship. 10. Being unconvinced is your prerogative, and your opinion, and you're entitled to that. I just think some of the criticism he's had is completely unjustified, and I'm entitled to that opinion too.
RE: McCarthy.. If we hadn't beaten Charlton we would have been relegated, not the kind of league performances to get you inspired for next season. Apart from the cup run our away form has been garbage, you can count on one hand decent performances at home. We rode our luck this season, next season if he dosn't bring in the right players our luck will run out.
Cant argue with any of that. The appointment of a Chairman may be crucual. Davey obviously had an excellent relationship with with Shep,as well as full backing for transfers - or so it appears anywway. We need a poacher type striker to play alongside Macken, probably two central midfield players assuming Howard goes and da Silva isnt fit for a while and a decent full back. More good times ahead.
From what I have been told this weekend that relationship was getting worse Davey going off to call Cryne, when he was told he could not have anymore money, Davey ignoring Shepherd at Oakwell etc.