Uncomfortably numb

It's not a professional football club anymore it's a badly run livestock fattening farm but instead of buying young cows sheep and pigs to fatten up and sell on in the hope of a profit it's young footballers we trade in. We stopped buying players to improve the squad first and foremost when the new owners came in and removed the head coach from the equation, now we just sign players at random when the recruitment team find one they think the club will make money on after a couple of seasons, whether those players fit in with the alleged playing style / squad requirements or not.

 

I think that declaring the season where we got to the Chmapionship play-offs a failure, because nobody tried to sign any of our players, can be taken as proof that building up players to sell is our main objective.

 

The Norwood situation really annoyed me. Although nobody’s come out and said it, there seems to have been some sort of clash about extending his contract. Many think that his reason for joining Oldham was that they were prepared to give him a 2 year contract, where as we weren’t, due to his age and, presumably, because his age will dramatically reduce his value on the transfer market.

Once he got fit last season he was a crucial player for us. He led the press, defended from the front, chipped in with some goals and was the physicality, with a bit of nous, that we otherwise lacked up front. In pre-season he was our top scorer and looked certain to be a first team regular. And then a day or two before the season started he joined a non-league club. Baffling.

Our reluctance to give him an extra year on his contract is presumably because we’d rather have younger players we can develop and sell for a profit. Many at the time said that by replacing him with younger, permanent signings like Cosgrove, Watters and Dallas we now have a better frontline anyway. Well, that claim soon proved to be misguided optimism. I reckon we would be further up the table now if Norwood was still at the club, and the new strikers could have learned a thing or two from having him in the dressing room. And regarding having younger players we can develop into money making assets for the club, how much do you think we’ll get offered for Cosgrove, Watters or Dallas this January? I’d imagine less than we got from Oldham for Norwood.

 

I think there are two crucial points.

The plan itself creates quick turnover of players so we find it hard to identify with ‘our team’. I think this is true of a lot of lower league teams these days and longevity is definitely on the out but our model accentuates this. When we had a central core of Barnsley people - Patrick, Hecky and Roberts it was easy to bypass this and feel the connection in a different way. Now it’s hard to feel any connection to the team the owners or the ground as it falls into managerd decline.

Secondly as Paul touches on above we almost never make decisions that are entirely sporting decisions. We will make a financial decision wherever we can rather than one that would improve us as a team.

I think it’s a mess but I don’t have any easy answers. All I know is I get less engaged every season. The vast majority of my mates have ditched it completely.

 

The lamb fattening farm was a thought that went through my head the other day.

 

Bang on….