The owners have a big rebuilding job to do at Barnsley.

There is no point.
It’s only those that are inflicted by hard of thinking that use the term - it’s a wind up.

 

I must admit that im fully expecting to lose Davies, cavare, pinnock, lyndsay, jackson, hedges, mcgheehan, mowatt, moore and possibly Thiam in the summer and definitely January if they have a decent half season in the champioship. Im also expecting we will bring in replacements who are not championship ready. The owners have definitely got a job on rebuilding my mind set on how BFC is run.

We stayed strong in not selling last January other than Potts as financially and player value wise it was so important to go up.

 

Then why did you use "teams like Barnsley" as the driving point of your opening post? Everyone else is well aware that that is how other teams' fans refer to us, not our own.
Either you deliberately misused it or you can't understand what you read.

 

Nudger is fundamentally right. Keith Hill and Cryne were incredibly successful at damping down people’s expectations. We laugh at Sunderland for thinking they’re a big club, but all they’re doing is recognising their place historically. We’ve spent 30 of the last 35 years at second tier or above. More years in the second tier than any other football club in England. We’re right to have a minimum expectation of the Championship. It’s only the Cryne regime that stopped that expectation. Well **** that keeping the people down and ‘know your place’ ********. It’s happily in the past, thank Christ. We’re Barnsley FC. Know your place in history. Expect to retain it. Hope to improve on it. We’ve finally got owners that can do the history of this magnificent and famous football club justice. Get behind them.

 

Really? Wow. We'll revisit this in August.

 

You do know Patrick’s not still in charge, right?

 

Took the words right out of my mouth. I think there's a BBS time machine, its stuck in 2012.

 

I don't think any Reds fan with an ounce of sense had their perception of the club altered by Keith Hill or anyone else.
As has been laid out in another we are regularly facing 7 to 10 clubs every season in the Championship who have parachute payments that alone dwarf our budget.
It's harder to compete than it was when we first came back into the second tier in the eighties. That much is blindingly obvious and not the result of some propaganda effort by the club.
That doesn't mean any of us have given up hope, however. It's even sweeter when we succeed and equally annoying to see the artificial slope on the playing field we're competing on.

 

I’ll give it to Patrick and Keith, they did a f.ucking amazing job of the ‘little Barnsley, know your place and keep quiet’ schtick. Almost like they were big Tories...

 

Good, im glad we think alike. I don’t think that’s the message that’s come from the club in the last ten years though.

 

Well we'll have to agree to differ TM. It is harder to compete in the second tier. We may have more years under our belt than any other club but the cold hard stats show that there have been very few serious promotion bids in that time. In all those seasons our stars aligned just once. And that happened not because we spent loads of money but because we just dropped on the right blend of players at the right time.
I'd make two points.
There has always been the "they dunt want ter goo up" brigade. They've been around since I started going in the sixties and will always blame our position on a lack of ambition by the board rather than realities on and off the field. And that predates Cryne and Hill by decades.
Secondly, there's a generation of fans who started going in the late 90s and saw us go up to the Premier League and have come to see being in the Championship as a bare minimum and failure to challenge at the top end as just that...failure.
I hope that the new owners can change our stars. Previous owners without exception couldn't.
I know the usual suspects will see this as defeatist. It isnt. It's reality and all the hard evidence of our history backs up the reality.
Without money or a very successful strategy to grow the club we will remain a bottom third Championship club who occasionally drop into the third tier. And very occasionally have a successful season where we challenge.
I'm hoping we grow the club and am more optimistic than I've ever been as a reds fan. Whether that optimism is justified time will tell.

 

No wonder people coin the phrase ‘teams like Barnsley’ when even a lot of people on here clearly believe in it.
Unbelievable the amount of people who accuse the owners with ‘pocketing profit’ ‘taking money out the club’ ‘replacing with not ready players for profit’ etc. Yet there is currently no evidence of them doing this yet.

Yes they have said the club has to be self sustainable, but they have also said they will work to increase the income with off field activity, so they can invest more, they have also said they are willing to put money towards a challenge but not stupidity.
In the two transfer windows they have presided over they have shown no sign of wholesale sales, in fact actually they held firm generally and have made significant financial commitment with extended contracts etc.

I am under no illusion that they are not here for the love of Barnsley, just saying give them a chance before judging them.
They have decided to throw their lot in with us, we are stuck with them so let’s get behind them(unless they prove otherwise).

Rant over..

 

We may have spent more time in the Second Tier than any other club, but that Second Tier has financially changed so much- particularly in the last ten years or so.

 

Yep- you only have to look down the premier league table of bankrolled teams to see that other teams such as ours are going to get pushed down the pecking order. Then scarily, you have teams coming up from the conference with money behind them, displacing traditional teams. Not saying those will threaten Barnsley in the short term, but they could well do in 5-10 years. We will do well to remain in the second tier IMO.

 

No, but he’s discovered the . key

 

'Real' football started to disappear in 1992. Before then, there was no major gap between 1st Div to 2nd, 2nd to 3r and 3rd to 4th.
I posted this once before, but over time the Prem has turned into more of a fantasy / exhibition type League that is composed of a few elite Harlem Globetrotters type teams. It is FAR removed from the pre-92 game that my generation remember - it is football and business of another planet. 'Real' football, that we all love and remember is composed of the three EFL leagues. The first of those is mostly composed of parachute clubs who are themselves far distanced from those in League One. So I ask again, that being the case, is our 'rightful place' in the 2nd tier actually a place in League One? And if so, are we actually punching above our weight this time around and playing with the nouveau-big-boys?

For the record, I would love BFC to compete next year, really go for it and have a season to remember. But deep down, do I want to go up to the Prem? Not sure without massive changes to the game, mostly of a financial nature.

 

My goodness you're a bundle of joy this morning.

 

Yep - other fans referring to us as ‘teams like Barnsley’.
Which of course is clearly underpinning what I’m saying here.
But I’ll spell it out anyway ......... they wouldn’t be saying that if Barnsley hasn’t slipped down the pecking order would they ?

 

They've always said that. Unless im missing a time in postwar history when we were a big club.