The fact is that the club have put themselves in a position where they don't have a choice. Whether people believe it or not, I guarantee you (from the horse's mouth, not to me directly but to a family member) that Brian Howard did not want to sign a new deal. It didn't matter what we offered him, he wanted to leave. The club therefore were in a position where they should have sold him in the summer, and they didn't. If we got an offer of £1m+, then I can only assume that they didn't want to lose him until the return of Anderson. The summer was the mistake. Either tie him to a deal or cash in. This situation was always going to unfold when we did neither. Does that mean that I don't rate him or I think he's a w*nker? Or that I think Diego Leon is better than him? Not at all. He's given some fantastic memories, he's not a Barnsley lad, and if he can move to a bigger club or a club where he feels he can have more success, then he owes us nothing. He HAS BEEN our best player during our time in the Championship but I think its fairly clear that the situation this season has affected his performance - its not all down to his midfield partner, he's looked sluggish, unfit and unmotivated to me. But while I think we'll miss him, this situation has been developing and it stems from a failure to make a concrete decision over what to do in the summer to the point where, as far as I can see, we don't have a choice. Bring in a striker on loan who is capable of scoring the goals to replace Howards (and maybe take a penalty reasonably well!) and try to use the money in January to strengthen, and thats all that we can do now for me. Good luck Brian.
Seems a fair assessment to me. My only hope is that he goes to a Premiership club where he can't hurt us once he re-discovers his motivation.
RE: Seems a fair assessment to me. He's not a premiership player for me. He'll go to Sheff Utd and if he re-discovers his motivation he'll be exactly what he was for us - a very good Championship footballer.
RE: Seems a fair assessment to me. He will not produce the goods often enough for the liking of Sheff U's over-expectant fans.
Whether the talk f a £2m bid from Wolves is correct or not, was there a possibility of cashing in on him during the summer? If there was, we should have sold him and brought in a player to replace him. It seems to me as if we didn't have a clue what to do.
I think the only bid we got was from Sheff UTD for 600 thousand and we told you can have him when our midfield are back playing.
Re: What else can we do with Howard...............manage the situation better, thats what To wait untill we are in a position where we have to snatch the hand off a LOCAL RIVAL for a cut down price for our most gifted outfield player................is poor poor management by all concerned at Barnsley Football Club
Re: What else can we do with Howard...............manage the situation better, thats what Taking their money is better than nowt and getting Howard out of the club. We can move on now, if Howard was still here would be going over the things until Christmas.
Nudger, I agree. Thats the point I'm trying to make. The club should either have sold him for decent value or got him to sign a new contract in the Summer. They didn't, and now the situation is forced upon them. The mistakes came in the summer.
How can you say "Howard didn't want to sign a new deal" then state "This summer was a mistake, we should have either sold him or tied him to a new deal" By your own admission you just said he wouldn't sign a new deal, also if no bugger bidded for him then how could we have sold him?
that is of course based on the supposition that clubs came in for him in the summer. According to Cryne / Davey we had no bids for him. From what I know, the only bid we had for him was on deadline day from Sheff U for £600k. We rejected it. We were asking for £1m. Howard got the monk on. Sheff U told us that the offer remained on the table until January. Howard has fallen out with Davey and so we've decided to take the £600k plus possibly a player on top. I agree with you that the situation has been badly handled, but I don't think we had any bids until Sheff U came in on deadline day. A lot of the links with Everton, Wigan etc came directly from his agent as, as you say, Howard had made up his mind that he didn't want to stay in the Summer.
Was it though? There has been a whole host of midfielders who have either joined premer clubs or other championship clubs for big money who didn't have the scoring record Howard did
RE: Seems a fair assessment to me. I agree that things have now gone too far and that BH will be gone and we must move on and get over it. The big problem is (and this is the real crime of the Club`s handling of the situation) that a ready made replacement for Howard will cost 2 or 3 times the reputed £600k we`re getting for him!
Losing Redfearn, Ward and Hignett were more of a blow than losing BH. Players come and go; he was good, but his heart hasn't been in it this season.