The realistic limit of our ambitions

You're not wrong . The top and bottom of it is that every club needs to be run sensibly for the long term good of the club , and that at the end of the day is the 9 or 10,000 of us who turn up week in week out and year in..etc . You are where you are , and I would agree there must be areas for improving income , I doubt there are many if any , areas that would give us significant extra financial muscle .
We will be looked at by many clubs in the same way we are looking at others now , they , if run properly , accept they cannot pay the wages Barnsley pay .
Unless you have an incredibly rich Owner prepared to risk losing his own money , or a board structure that is prepared to risk the future of the club by taking massive debt...just to repeat myself , we are where we are .
At the moment it's solvent and reasonably successful...long may that continue .

 

Exactly

 

Statistical studies of football show that about 91% of all success is achieved by those paying the most in wages in any one season paying the most in wages will get success 83% of the time. Of course there are statistical anomalies but success isn't created by paying the most in transfer fees it's by paying wages. It's why Newcastle are more likely to get promoted than Rotherham. I can recommend Soccernomics to anyone interested.