After another setback for the club I think it’s worth us trying to become more strategic. In essence the club needs to define its long term performance targets and behavioural targets. It’s important to be realistic about what can be achieved and what our constraints are. By doing so the club can communicate that in advance to the fans and set expectations. My thoughts: What does the club want to achieve in 10 years’ time? In 10 years’ time Barnsley FC should be firmly established as a top 12 club in the Championship (defined as 3 consecutive seasons finishing 12th place or above). What are our constraints? Barnsley FC should be self-sufficient financially. This means that the club will be profitable when combining operating profit/loss and profit/loss from player sales over a 5-year period. The club should make a surplus of 5% during that time period. How will the club achieve the strategic objective? Barnsley FC will have two approaches to player trading: 1. Recruit players under the age of 24 to maximise their potential for future profit. 2. Recruit players who are under-valued according to their statistical output, thereby providing value in the short and medium term. These rules are general and there may be exceptions to these rules if it is felt that other players, specifically older players may be able to speed up the development of the younger players. This also means that the club will continue it’s approach to selling high-value players. However, it should be noted that the club should maximise the value of transfers with a proactive approach to contract negotiations. Barnsley FC will recruit a Head Coach who can organise the players who the club recruits: 1. The coach will play a high pressing style as this high-energy style is appreciated and expected by fans. 2. The coach will be comfortable in developing and organising young squads. 3. The coach will develop a wider group coaches throughout Barnsley FC to ensure the club has a pipeline of future Head Coaches who play the ‘Barnsley Way’. 4. The coach will commit to including homegrown players in the first team matchday squad. You'll notice that I've not added much about matchday experience at the moment. Similarly, I've not added anything about the others teams in the club (women's team, youth squads etc). What else should it say?
This is exactly the sort of thing that should have come from the club. Then you can justify any decisions made by reference to the strategy and how the action furthers it. It also removes any suspicion that those running the club have aims they don't wish to declare (although I'm sure we never suspected that, did we?)
Interestingly, when all the takeover shenanigans were going on, I suggested something similar. I realise it's me going all corporate bs, but it's what I would have done if I'd had a say, and I would have made it publicly available. Every organisation needs a strategy and a vision. And it needs sharing with all stakeholders to get them on Board. Now I suspect they probably do have something like this internally, to drive Board direction and for corporate stakeholders. But it never seems to make its way to the fans, which I think is a gap. There's a point at which you don't want to share too much publicly, as it risks impacting your IP and competitive advantage, but yeah, I think they could publish more than they do.
