Two massive reasons for our struggle since 2006

For me, the 2 massive reasons for our struggle from day 1 of our 8 years back in the championship are.....

1. Not paying 500k for Chopra in 2006 when he wanted to come, we knew he would be brilliant for us and would score plenty of goals. He was sold for millions when Cardiff paid that small fee!! Every year we must have wasted so much cash on crap, when the quality should have come over quantity!!

2. Not just selling Stones, but practically giving him away! We had a chance to make a stand, he was on a long contract and we could have moved away from selling our better players, a chance to move forward in the league. But to sell him for half his worth and not even get him back on loan was mental, and this was a big reason we almost went down last season! If and when we sold him it should have set us up for years, enabling us to buy 2 or 3 very good championship players. People can't surly think 3 million was decent at the time, I honestly said after seeing him 5 times this kid is amazing and WILL play in the premier league and England!! I even though he would make a great centre half...which he has now played at for Everton as well!

So really, for me, we started out as we meant to go on and have never recovered, scrambling along until we finally drop. Swansea lost that shoot-out and have since become a mid-table premiership side playing in Europe with a carling cup in the trophy cabinet!!

 

I think the message here is we've been tight (when we could have speculated to accumulate whilst at the same time getting some relative success) and snatched other clubs hands off whenever they've bid more than half a million whatever the actual value of the player is.

£3m is the figure thrown around as to what we got for John Stones - you'll find a number of sources that say the fee was closer to £1.5m (which is an absolute pisstake if true), Everton would probably turn down £20m+ if such a bid came in.

 

So you have to look at how and who is/was running the club regarding both those points

 

The main reason for our struggle was appointing Simon Davey when Ritchie got the sack. Yes he kept us up, but he wasn't the man to take us forward, and he never did and we all knew it that fateful afternoon when Sheffield Weds hammered us.

 

I'm saying from the start of being back at this level we didn't stick our neck out just that little bit extra to be considered a bigger club in the league. We have always been seen as a soft touch and little Barnsley who will sell on the cheap and won't buy that great player when he is very close to our reach! No wonder the gates have never been that great, it's been 8 years of pain and struggle!!

Buying Chopra at the beginning (for such a small fee) and selling Stones for a lot more would have made such a difference to us long term!!

 

In fairness to him though, he kept us up that season when I'm sure Ritchie wouldn't have done, and we had an amazing cup run never to be forgotten and that money has probably kept us going at this level for another few years!

 

For me since we landed back in the championship the lack of funds been offered to managers as ultimately brought us to a point where we are now staring down the barrel of a gun. Maybe PC could've done more to look at selling the club and fetching investors on board.

It pains me to see what state were in but I guarantee I'll be there next season whether were in the championship or league 1 (this is not a better fan than you post either)

From my dad taking me when I was 5 I've loved every minute of been a Barnsley fan even though at times were *****.

Next Saturday sees the club, players and fans roll up there sleeves and give this great escape a good go!!!

If we go down then so be it but they can't take my club from me........

Nar come on yer *******s!!!!!!! Let's see some passion and take it to them.......

 

The reason we are in this position is because Mark Robins left and the reason that Robins left is that the budget for buying players and paying their wages was going to have to equal the commecial turnover of the club rather than being subsidised to any degree by PC. Now we have a league 1 budget and that is where we are heading, simple really. Now, you could argue that as this day was going to come at some stage PC should have done more to increase the turnover of the club or done more to sell it to another owner willing to add funds to continue spending at the modest levels previously enjoyed. As this didn't happen, regardless of what you think of KH's signings, we didn't have much choice but to look in the lower leagues and at those no one else wanted - i.e Vaz Te. Now for every Vaz Te you are going to get a dozen Mido's and Matt Done's and TK Maxe's, and Dawson's and......so on and so forth. Now, whilst I do not think that KH or Flicker managed the small budget we have very well (better to get 4 players who are good at this level nd hope they don't get injured rather than 10 players who are not good enough), we have probably the smallest wage budget in the league along with Yeovil and so we end up where we are.