Hi everyone! First of all, I' d like to introduce myself, as this is my first post on here in several years, and I have probably only posted a couple of posts before. Who am I (not that it particularly matters)? Norwegian Tykes supporter since the early 90s, when I was in my teens. I actually ran a Norwegian fan club for a couple of years, but this came to an end when I did my one year mandatory military service. Anyway, I am a proud supporter of BFC in a land of Liverpool and Man Utd fans. I hide behind the nick DimsiRupsi, but friends call me Jon Oh, and my (otherwise reasonable and nice) brother is a Wednesday fan... Well, as I live in Oslo I don't get to watch the team play too often, and it seems on the posts here lately that I should feel lucky that I don't. I have a feeling this is wrong. It is easy for me to say so, but if I had the opportunity to go to Oakwell and watch the team play more often, I would enjoy myself even if I was served awful football. After all, being a Barnsley fan, I am somewhat used to disappointments. It's part of the charm. We will never be a Man Utd or Chelsea, but we can send them out of the cup now and then. Such moments, like winning the odd play off final, or achieving promotion to the Premier League (only to be relegated the next season) are realistically all we can hope for IMHO. This brings me to the purpose of this post: my take on the current situation: I don't want to criticise any of you who post on this board, but I get a feeling of certain doom when I read the posts now. After three games loads of people seem to be taking it for granted that we'll be relegated by the end of the season. I haven't seen the team play so far, but even if they've been awful, there are still many games to change things around. We all knew this was going to be a very hard season. The club has taken a big decision to financially live within its means, which in the long run seems like a positive step. This means it can focus more on developing young players to ome through the ranks.It also means, unfortunately, that we are bound to struggle this season. Mark Robins was not willing to do this,he wasn't even interested in trying, if I have understood correctly. Keith Hill at least has the guts to try and manage a team that has been written off by everyone (including, it seems, its own supporters). I think he deserves some credit for that. (He probably deserves some criticism for placing our Sir Bobby on the bench when we need him the most though.) What I wanted to say to all of you is this: please get behind the team, support the players and the manager, be proud of BFC. If we go down, we can all look forward to the play off final 2012/13, and if we escape relegation, it will be a massive achievement.
