'Those who spoke out in favour of chairman Assem Allam...'

I understand that in order to keep his role with the FA he needs to have a club affiliation, hence he's on our board but doesn't really do anything. We certainly don't seem to have gained by having a leading light at the FA on our board. The FA, of course, still retains some power over the Premier League. The Premier League Chairman has spoken out against FFP. Our Chairman represents clubs actively fighting FFP. FFP is crucial for the future of football, particularly at lower league level, but also at the top, as clubs like Portsmouth have proved. It's certainly crucial to the chances of a club like ours having any success ever again.

On to the name change, BT says we'd be happy changing our name for £70m of investment. Where does that fit in with FFP then? To my mind that would make us no different to Leicester and would ultimately see us having to do one of their con tricks by turning the debt to our investor into equity, because I can't see how any investor in football ever gets their money back without finding a bigger set of berks to by a club already in a cartload of debt.

So can we take it that two of our board are against FFP?

I can't see any reason for BT still being with the club and if MW's firm continues to represent whats wrong with football, and against the interest of our football club (and many more like us), he needs to step down too. It won't make me popular saying this, but it's times like this that you miss the honesty of John Dennis. Before people start single handedly blaming him for administration, it was a board decision to turn Cryne down which led into administration and Dennis wasn't the only person on the board at the time.

 

I think the basic idea seems to be that you plough a cartload of money into a club, get all the best players on high wages, hope you get to the Premier League where you get a lorryload of money. You then take out your original cartload plus a significant portion of the lorryload, get relegated, lose all your players, go into admin to avoid paying off your debts (except football debts of course) and celebrate by entering that paint trophy thingy and battling to get into the league 2 play-offs.

Fantastic business model.

 

You certainly won't lose any popularity with me for saying that. I like John Dennis. Unlike thousands of Barnsley fans before and hopefully many, many thousands still to come, I was lucky enough to be alive while John Dennis was chairman and I saw the transformation of Oakwell, the building of an academy, football that quite literally made you a bit light headed and our club in the top league in the country, something that had never happened before and we may never see again. I saw us beat Liverpool, Man Utd, Man City and Tottenham in that period and saw players like Gerry Tggart, Neil Redfearn, Ashley Ward, John Hendrie and Craig Hignett grace the shirt. We did all that without investment, without foreign owners, without a sugar daddy, just a board of directors who were Barnsley fans with a modest amount of brass and share holders who were ordinary Barnsley fans, one member one vote. We did it right and we bloody well showed 'em. 1989-2000. Absolutely sensational.

 

Yep. And now look what we've got.

 

Watkins most certainly is.

 

I think we've got about the same now as we had then. It's just the other clubs who've got more. Well, they pretend they have.

 

I was referring more to the make up of the board - local men with a bit of brass who supported the club and believed in the club. The current directors are directors in name only and have no real input or influence that I can see. It's just a job for Mansford and Watkins and a gravy train for Taylor. No real passion for the club as far as I'm concerned.

 

I know what you mean but I those days even thought they had "a bit of brass" I believe that the club was self-financing, living off gate receipts, TV money, sponsorship etc. If we tried to live like that nowadays we would be in league 1 or even 2, regardless of how committed the directors/owners were.

For me, it's sad when the only way we can compete in the Championship is to find a stupid rich bloke to pay for it, or to take on massive debt, which nobody would lend us anyway. Football is well and truly f.............

Anyway, time for a pint.

 

True. It would be interesting how that board would have dealt with the challenges of 2014. A bit more proactively I would have thought.

 

Me too. And I still see him on matchdays sat with us in the West Stand. Proper tarn, through and through. He made mistakes, no question. But he was chairman of our club during it's most celebrated era and although I risk being accused of looking back at yesteryear with rose tinted spectacles, I crave pretty much everything we had back then.


Instead, we've a voiceless owner who only from our assumptions has moved the goalposts regarding our 'strategy' and 'ambitions' at least twice in the last 4 years. A CEO with the gift of the gab and from what I've seen thus far, **** all else. Close friend of the last manager. Assurances. A chairman we never see nor hear from, who is seemingly against FFP, which we are (were) as a club, totally behind. And Barry Taylor. Who would gladly piss all over our history and change our name if it meant we were invested in heavily and a Premier League club.


The "Love Barnsley, Hate Football" tagline is a cracker. Although I'd replace 'Barnsley' with 'Tarn'. Or am I doing a Barry there? **** knows, but my love for the game has almost disappeared now and if these sort of people are supposedly representing my club then my love for that too will soon follow suit.

 

Time for change.

As a member, I'd like the Trust to raise your questions to the club.

 

I'm hoping Dyson takes the hint with the 'Love Barnsley, hate football' tagline for the next lot of WSB t-shirts. I suppose we'll have pr!cks from down the road missing the point and commenting that we must hate football if we love Barnsley, whilst opening the back doors for the next apparent sugar daddy to take them back to where they belong.

Then again, our lass reminded me yesterday that I drunkenly promised to get a t-shirt made up with 'Barnsley, the turd that won't flush' in honour of something said on a Wednesday forum if we manage to pull off great escape number 8.

 

Trouble is whitey whilst I also enjoyed that period in or history and with hindsight knowing that the club survived I'm all for reminiscing about those times.living the dream as did Leeds.
But just imagine what could so easiy have happened ,those moments and facilities could have been lost forever with the nearest proffesional football club at Hillsborough all through the decisions this man took. And left us in the perilous situation for what was really a very low sum. If the situation ever came again premier league and possible liquidation or mediocre which would you choose?

 

Chortle

 

If we become the Barnsley Tykes, Barnsley Redsox, Barnsley Dingles, Barnsley Bulldogs, whatever, then that's it for me.

I want us to be Barnsley FC, and I don't want some numpty from south-east Asia with no affiliation to Barnsley to 'invest' in us.

 

As I said, he made mistakes. But there's a lot of back story to what took us into administration and it wasn't all John's own doing. There were other board members. Funnily enough, one remains on the current board. Somehow.

We've pissed away more money under this current BFC than we ever did under that BFC.

 

That's what I'm saying mate, we spending more now and still thriving and making a profit but for a few pounds he almost closed us. I suspect there was more to it than just the chairman at the time but i Also believe there's a lot more to the story than is being spun on all sides but he led us into that situation and the further he is away from any influence on the club the better imo

 

We'll have to disagree then, pal. As for us making a profit, we did through player sales. We're going to post some scary losses next April (or whenever it is) whether we go down or not. And if we're relegated, we're ******, financially. Surely folk realise this?

 

I could think about this logically and give a considered response or just call Barry Taylor a ****. Aye I'm going with option b. ****.

 

Gally/Hicksy

Any thoughts from the Trust?