Yes the euphoria of reaching the semis of the cup is great and no doubt win or lose we should have a great day out BUT as i have said before i have serious concerns about the way the club is run in general and this week has only added more weight to my argument. The ticket allocation for Wembley caused mass panic. Yes BFC get lots of publicity but all we get is several hours of being treated like cattle. No decent system in place (but it doesnt matter cos the fans just want to be at Wembley so wont be bothered) Yesterdays ridiculous farce of being unable to get into the ground becaue there was only one turnstile open for the West stand just makes our club look farcical again. OK maybe some people could have got to the ground a bit earlier (some may have been working late though) . In any case there are usually 2 turnstiles open (one for pay on the day) and another sor ticket holders. So in BFCs wisdom we decide we onll need the one cos its all ticket. Great! The quality of the football shirts and other merchandise again this season are cheap and nasty. OK i dont have to buy any. Correct i wont. Many will regardless but is it in the clubs best interests to sell shoddy goods to make a quick few quid. The website also cant go without criticism. Its difficult to read with info all over the place and some of the site is not up to date. As Moose pointed out even the programme was poorly put together. How can this all be happening at a second tier football club? The Academy for all we have spent on it is obviously not producing the goods. Surely we need to be looking at a restructuring process. Our results have been poor this season but more to the point we have no local lads looking like they are going to get a sniff of playing a first team game. I think some of the money we are making this season (coinciding with hopefully staying up) should be used for the areas i have discussed above if we are to start looking like a professional football club and not a corner shop. Stop cutting corners Mr Shepherd and start making Barnsley FC a more attractive product and you might just see more positive attitudes and more people watching the regular games.
agree with 90% of that but unfortunatley the ticket situation i dont think was organised that badly. People nowadays expect things brought to them. Would we have complained 10 yrs ago about the ticketing ..NO and i know people will say move with the times etc but we have to sometimes look at the level of club we are we not setup for such games and you need to realise this look at the teams in our position fighting for there lives do you think the majority of these could handle the situation in a better way??? I think not
The shirts I bought are rubbish shoddy merchandise. The club are in need of some improvement in their thinking which is still in the old 4th Division mentality
But we are a second tier club in supposedly one of the best countries for professional football. The club also should remember that if they want to treat football as a business as they all do these days they need to give the customer good service. I personally think Shepherd did a good job of reorganising the club after the problems we had but i think he should know when to spend a bit to be able to create more wealth by looking after those who keep the club going. Personally i think thats where they are going wrong. i just hope they respond to the criticism. Its not just moaning for moanings sake. Its genuinely because i care about the club long term. I think maybe those in charge need to look at where they could improve the club and take on board the criticism that they get.
the club has been trying to reduce spending for the last 2 years and i think this is why we have achieved our success and god forbid we go down would the extra expediture put us under again?? No - win situation i think and unless you can see the clubs books etc its an hard situation becasue i bet unless we had this cup run the club would have not done so wel this year because i bet most of the money put down by ST holders would have been spent and the 2500 ish paying fans per game will not go far.
like someone posted the other day a football club has one main customer based business thing to do. sell tickets. and we don't seem able to do that properly.
Agree with most of that McCarthy..........CONCLUSION......Shephard is not up to the job Good Owner in Pat Cryne Good manager in Simon Davey (although I know McCarthy still dunt rate him) Better players this season - but we have been dogged by injuries, loan senarios and players being cup tied etc etc But still a massive improvement on last season BUT THE REST OF THE CLUB IS RUN LIKE AN AMATEURISH CORNER SHOP.........and thats Shephards responsibility
Don Rowing is the general manager HE makes the day to day decisions regarding running the club, not Gordon Shepherd who is merely the chairman of the board of directors. I agree that the service isnt good enough and somebody needs to accept responsibility, that somebody should the the one making the decisions, now if Gordon Shepherd fails to act and allows mistakes to continue happening THEN and only then should he be blamed.
RE: Don Rowing is the general manager.............is it me....... It just seems so simple to get the most important things right We are a football club..........so on Saturday we will open ENOUGH turnstiles to let people get in safley We are a football club..........so we need a system in place to sell (if need be) 33,000 tickets Is it me, because I think these things should be at the top of any agenda in the running of a football club Gordon Shephard oversees the running of the club...........if fundamental operations at the club are not being correctly managed then its his responsibility to make sure they are Don Rowing is only a small cog in the machinary
I agree that it is Shepherds ultimate responsibility in the end but he shouldn't be sacked/step down after his staff have made a mistake. What he should be doing is rectifying the mistake, making sure it CANT happen again and disciplining/educating the person that has made the mistake. If the general manager is the one continually making the mistakes then it is the chairmans responsibilty to make sure that he can't continue making mistakes (how he does that is not my place to say). If that is done then the chairman has done nothing wrong, if it isn't done then the chairman is failing.
