It's late, but here's my blogged thoughts..

Re: Love in eh?

Did someone mention self indulgent ****? Jesus.

 

Great read that matey - and i hope Ben Mansford doesn't choke on his coco pops when he reads that in the morning.

I know we've been dire, i know lots of players haven't come off - but i bet the contracts offered to those players werent that expensive! A lot were unknowns. And the other that have come off are starting to form a team... I heard Evans going on about it at rotherham - it takes 3 or 4 transfer windows to get a side together. Wilsons had 2 and had 80% of the squad to replace - not 4 or 5 match day players - the squad!

For me there should have been an almighty ****ing bust up to clear the air and hopefully get things back on track and Wilson should have been read the riot act. Who knows maybe this happened a few weeks ago though?

However, i still think he should have been given the season. Knee jerk reaction. Although i do have to admit i wondered about next season... I have a little un coming in June and maybe id rather do something with him/her next seasons saturdays...... Something id enjoy a lot more than been bored seeing the same crap week in week out. Who knows...?!

In a nutshell the board ought to put their own jobs on the line and state if they fail us this time it their jobs that go first this time. Maybe they will think twice then.

Gutted Dannys gone - i wanted him to be year for years to come and finish his career here. Thats all gone tits up now.

On the manger front i think Adkins or Rosler are good shouts.

 

Excellent read. Thanks.

 

I'm sorry I have a different opinion

and manner.

Still, eggs is eggs, spades a spade, self indulgent **** and all that etc.

 

Re: Love in eh?

I'm really not offended, mate. I like talking about the club I have loved and followed all my life. I use the medium of blogging when I know I've a lot to say on a topic, rather than posting a great big chunky thing on here. I was advised to do that three years ago, by Jay as it goes. Great advice that I took on board.

But I really don't go looking for slaps on the back. Anyone who knows me will know I'm very self confident in terms of my opinions. I don't need or look for praise. And, as I grow older I take no offence if someone says something I've written/said/created is ****. I've no doubt someone told Alexander Graham Bell that his telephone idea was ****..


I'd like though to know why you thought it was ****, maybe even give me some advice?


Cheers.

 

You have to ask, is hiring and firing managers at the rate we do successful or a failure? To be honest i think it is something we are quite good at and seems to be quite successful. Last season we were in the championship and financially ok. Not bad for a few years of hiring and firing. I see our place in football is bottom half championship top half 1st div. When we get below this and the alarm bells ring the worst thing to do is "nothing" so i wasn't surprised to see the trap door open, its what we do and its what's kept us a decent football club.

 

But have we really ever achieved anything in the last ten years? To me,it's dangerous to panic so much every time we hit a bad spell, as we're forever trying to start again rather than actually going anywhere.

It's as though we're a poor swimmer in choppy waters. Each time the waves get up, we jettison our armbands hoping that the new ones we put on will be the answer to our prayers and see us swim to safety. Yet in the time we spend faffin about getting rid of the old ones, we sink and then have to struggle fitting the new ones on, only to rise back to where we were in the first place. In that time, we could have been treading water and rode it out, slowly becoming a stronger swimmer and beginning, bit by bit, to get somewhere.

Wow, thats absolute gibberish but its been a long day of worrying about my club!!

 

Sithi

I appreciate you taking time to write about he club, which is dear to my heart, I certainly can no longer have any enthusiasm to be bothered to spend so much time (typing this is challenging my enthusiasm)

I have a bottle of glennfiddich rapidly diminishing and am in a deliberately inflammatory mode.

Nevertheless I cant get too animated about this or any other managerial decision. A good run via attacking entertaining play will erase recent the memory of recent debacles regardless of helmsman.

Keep up the good work even if I think its self indulgent **** (mostly)

 

Whilst I do not agree with all you write in your blog, I appreciate the sentiments that you express. Your words have given those of us who believed in Danny Wilson, his ideals and the principles something warm around which we can gather. I salute you for your wisdom.

I have deliberately not commented today. I suppose I feel betrayed by the club. I supported Danny Wilson because I felt that he represented our best chance of getting away from the sacking culture, a culture that I believe is at the root of our decline. Along with Danny Wilson came a belief in youth and a commitment to build over the long term. The long term plans, and as far as I can see from Ben Mansford's statement, everything else have failed to stand against the first shock, never mind stand the test of time. I have lost faith in the club, I have lost faith in the club's management and I do not believe any more that the club has any principles or a policy to go with it. I have spent many hours recently arguing otherwise on this forum, and tonight I feel foolish.

Do not get me wrong. I do not intend to forsake my club. I have been a paying supporter for 50 years, and I will continue to be so for the foreseeable future, but today our relationship changed. The innocence has disappeared, and I fear that it has gone for ever. I will find it hard to write the stuff on here that has been my trademark. In the emotional words of your blog, I see a similar sort of reaction, and I am sure that other will too.

 

I've been watching Barnsley 37 years. In the first 20 years we went through 6 managers, experienced 3 promotions, rising from the basement division to the Premier League, saw players we can now only dream of and, at various times, played football like you wouldn't believe possible.

In the latter 17 years we've had 13 managers and, a season under Bassett aside, have had to endure a landfill of ****. We even sacked the one guy who got us promoted in that time.

You might call that success. I don't.

 

I like your analagy monkey but we only get back to where we started if we don't drown. Last ten years? FA cup runs? Wembley?

As you say a long day and we are still all reds fans.

 

So I take it that you are in the Danny was a failure camp.

 

Good blog Andy but sorry I cant comment further because I am so pi55ed off with the club and what they have done today.

 

Don't always agree with you, but that's a top post. More or less sums up how I feel, although I'm not as sure as you that I'm going to continue making the long trip up to Oakwell, at least for the rest of this season.

Good blog too, Whitey.

 

He hasn't had enough time to be a success or a failure. We're midtable in his first full season in charge, equidistant from the play-offs and relegation. None of us know, or will now ever know, how this season would have panned out under his stewardship. Or the two seasons after this one that we should be giving to managers before we can judge their tenure. He's just another manager we've sacked to add to the list.

 

Well done YT. That post is the closest thas ever come to my opinions and thoughts.

 

Good blog and good read

 

Great read.

I've now remember why I come on here.

 

Red Rain: I echo what Sestren says above - that's a good post. We had our differences recently, although I never doubted the sincerity of your views. I had some unease that the 'long term plan' had no substance, and wasn't truly subscribed to by the owner/hierarchy. It now looks like it was just an excuse for unacceptable performance on the field in the short term. I think I said in another thread recently: 'this club has no soul'. It's probably impertinent of me to say it, but I don't think the culture, atmosphere and fortunes of this club will change until there is a change of ownership. That of course is unlikely whilever 50% of the assets of the club are in local authority control and cannot be passed over to a prospective buyer.

Whitey: Great (and heartfelt) blog. I have very divided opinions about what has happened. Danny is, and always will be, our greatest ever club legend. As such, it's extremely sad to see him treated with such little dignity. But what is being served up on the field (and what has been served up for substantial parts of the last 7 years) is unacceptable to many supporters - particularly those who have what the economists would call high 'elasticity of demand' (I call them the floating voters). As your blog rightly implies, the club Board/hierarchy have been the constants amid all this chaos. That offers little hope of any pending upturn in our fortunes, choose who the club now appoint as manager.

In the end, what has cost Danny in my view is that his coach/assistant wasn't able to perform to the level that Eric Winstanley did in the 90's, and the scouting and recruitment function has been an utter shambles. To have had any prospect of success, both of these areas needed to have been closer to the models used during Danny's first period. I really don't know where we go from here, because there is a long way to go to reassure those who were so disenchanted after the latest debacle on Tuesday.

If I were to throw in one radical idea, it is that the club needs to do a whole lot more to engage with ALL of it's fanbase ('stakeholders' is the fashionable business term). A comprehensive survey to all ST holders and those on the club's mailing list (and made publicly available to anyone else expressing an interest) could tap into the various ideas folk have about where the club has gone wrong, what it has done right, how we should move forward, and what is deemed acceptable in order to secure our longer term support. Okay, that would be a hell of an exercise, and would require a lot of hard work to unravel the various conflicting views. But it would be worth it. And at the end of the day, the club could at least say 'we listened to you'.

 

Cracking blog as usual mate, you've summed my feelings up perfectly