Surely it’s a combination of both? Quite a few of the team were players bought around the ‘best transfer window ever’ period. I would agree with any detractors that the mistake they made was too many too soon in that period but looking at the team now it’s difficult to say the recruitment model was unsuccessful.
How many players in our current strongest 11 were signed in that time period? Anderson and Chaplin? And even Chaplin can be argued whether he's in our best current 11.
It depends on what they do in the whole window. If we sell three regular starters to bring in 10 players who are all under 21, then we’ll know the club are more interested in building a footballer factory than a football team. My hope is the trend of the last two or three windows is followed though.
Strongest 11 is subjective, I would rather use the spectrum of regular players, which could include Sol, Collins, Styles, Halme. To turn your question on it’s head, how many of our strongest 11 are from the ‘new’ Brittain & Morris are only two I can think of that are young hungry and acclimatised to the British game and even then Morris was a reserve player. Edit Morris had played quite a bit league one and below.
Sollbauer was the first semblance of a signing that gave us hope that the owners were changing their approach to only bringing in players under the age of 23 (arbitrary number, but I'm sure they said this at some stage). We also signed James on loan - another sign that the method was being tweaked. And yes, the first 11 is subjective. We've probably got a core bunch of around 18 I would suggest. And there's not a Bahre, Ritzmaier, Schmidt or Diaby in sight. Edit - this is reading like a 'send them forriners' back post, which it absolutely isn't. I'm just trying to explain that the model that has found us Hourihane, Winnall, Pinnock, Styles, Brittain, Yiadom, Morris, Potts, Sibbick, Scowen and Chaplin, is better than the one that found us Knasmullner.
This raises two questions: 1) Do you think 'the plan' has remained unaltered since Oct/Nov 2019? 2) Do you think transfer dealings (particularly sales) have been unaffected by the state of the market during the pandemic? But it would be wrong not to acknowledge that the team has been strengthened and things are going exceptionally well (and far better than expectations) on the field. The next close season will be extremely interesting, assuming we remain in the Championship. Dike is unlikely to remain, and Mowatt will either need to be secured for longer or a like-for-like replacement identified - which will be no easy task. But if we somehow find ourselves in the Premier League all bets are off!
Think best to agree to disagree TBH. I don’t disagree with anything you have put there, in the who has been successful and not (maybe exception of Diaby but we will never know). I do believe it’s both though, there are many who we signed using the model that found Hourihane etc that failed to even get going. For what it’s worth, never read to me as anti British.
They deserved criticism back then because they’d made some amateurish mistakes. They lost Pinnock & Lindsay in one window & the back up Jackson also left. They replaced them with 3 21 year old kids who’d never played in England before (barring about 3 games for Halme). It nearly relegated us. Between August 19 & November 19 Diaby & Anderson were by far the worst pairing I’ve ever seen turn out for Barnsley at this level. Both were crying out for some experience alongside them. It didn’t help that the club were also trying to push the full backs out of the club & Davies had also moved on. Basically they allowed too much player turnover in one window. We also sold Kieffer Moore for way less than we should’ve done & replaced him with Schmidt. Why Moore was so under rated by the club & people on here is beyond me. He’d got everything you need as a championship striker. I can only think they panicked about the head injury. Since then though they’ve done a cracking job. Good signings in Jan 20 & excellent recruitment in the summer & this January gone with Morris & Dike been exactly what we needed. Dike & Morris are the exact types of forwards many of us were calling for when Moore was sold. Woodrow, Chaplin, Thiam & Schmidt as our forwards reminded me of the disaster of the first half of 2017/18 season when we were left with only Bradshaw, Ugbo & Thiam as forwards & were completely lightweight up top. They’ve clearly learned from their mistakes. Instead of a scatter gun approach & signing any talented players we can afford we now seem to sign players in positions that specifically need strengthening.
the next level was the continent. That’s now not an option unless we recruit to the criteria post brexit. Ergo, we’ve gone back to what worked better under Patrick.
