Barnsley football club

[Fileytyke]

It’s always been a business.
It’s just that it swung one way and now it looks like it’s swinging again in the other direction.

Owners.
Many on here remember a time when for decades players had to get a second job to make ends meet.
Typical example was Warnock having a stall on Barnsley Market.
What sort of profit were the owners of Barnsley Football Club making back then ???
They definitely weren’t spending it on trying to get Barnsley out of the old 4th Division.
Barnsley for many many years were nothing more than a glorified pub team.
And the owners sat back and took the money.

Then the pendulum swung the other way and players started to want more money.
Now we find ourselves with players in the Premier on disgusting amounts of money.
Owners competing against each other to try and secure the best - and hence most expensive player to ensure success for their club.
Consequently clubs and owners have become bust.
Famous clubs with £100s of millions of debt around their necks.

Then along comes Chien Lee and a consortium that takes over unfashionable Barnsley.
We read that this consortium has a total combined wealth of about £14 BILLION.
That’s wealth much greater than all the other owners in South Yorkshire and Leeds combined.

Oh … that’s great we have owners now that can out spend most other clubs and buy better players.
But these owners are cuter than that - they arn’t going to play the same game as other owners in the football league.
They arn’t going to out compete other clubs in paying players wages.
These owners come up with a simple but brilliant blueprint of how to make a football club work so they can tap into the stupid money being thrown about by other football league clubs.
As it happens the consortium drop on a club Barnsley that for years has been failing to compete with the transfer fees and wages in football and started to think differently on how to do things.

Different way of doing things has confused many football pundits as well as supporters.
Barnsley are no longer playing by the same rules of throwing money at their club.
These pundits and supporters are thinking in an old fashioned way - an old fashioned way that if implemented would put Barnsley into a mountain of debt.
For years we have never been able to compete with clubs like Wigan, Bolton, Sheffield Wednesday or Derby.
We can now.

IMO we are fortunate to have this ownership.
We know that the club when sold will be worth more than it is now and will be free of debt.
Something solid to build from.

Nudger,please read the article you wrote on 20-09-2010 indicating that the owners with a wealth of 14 billion pounds have more wealth than all the clubs in South Yorkshire AND LEEDS and can outbid most clubs.Now we will come down to reality and see how many clubs we can outbid and keep within the league rules of club income of gate receipts and transfer sales receipts.Now look at the present Championship League table,I think by staying within the league rules Barnsley will come in the bottom three with Luton and Peterborough and if Sunderland,Portsmouth and Ipswich get promoted we come even lower.Just to put you in the picture Barnsley Football Club have never been able to keep viable without the sale of players unless with luck they manage to get into the Premier League for a few seasons.Going back in time Oakwell had a capacity of just over 40,000 but very rarely managed to fill half,so we had a large stadium that cost a lot of up keep plus going back to the 1950s the clu had three men’s teams which were the 1st team,the reserves in the old Central League and the Barnsley A team that played in the old Midland League.These teams cost money to keep them going and when all seater stadiums came in the gate receipts went down.Because of the “North/South device the southern clubs are able to charge higher admission charges than clubs in the North,for example even the Manchester clubs and Liverpool can’t charge the prices that Arsenal,Spurs or Chelsea do because the Northern club’s supporters do not get the high wages and salaries than the southern “Yuppies” I have just read today that Liverpool are planning to increase capacity at Anfield to 61000 by adding another 7000 seats to try and keep up with the income of the London clubs and stay within league rules.
You know as well as I do that Barnsley because of the low wages in the area can’t charge the same prices as the other clubs in the Championship so it doesn’t matter how much money the Barnsley owners have between them will not be able to outbid many clubs and will still have to sell players to keep afloat and keep within the rules so your idea tha “We can outbid most clubs” is wrong.
Now we come to the most serious accusation you wrote about Barnsley Football Club Directors “Bleeding the club dry” This is a very serious accusation which could land you in trouble.Would you or could you name the directors who you have accused of bleeding the club dry? I started attending Oakwell over 75 years ago with my Dad and still remember how much it cost for me to get in,we always went in on the terrace entrance on Grove St.It was 6d (2.1/2p) for me and I think shilling or 9d for my Dad then it was another 3d to transfer to the wing stand.In those days there was no television and in most workers houses no electric,we had a radio that run off a very large battery called an accumulator which you had to take to the local garage to be charged up in a barrow,old Pram or a trolley because it was too heavy to carry.We lived like most workers in a two up two down house with the toilet at the bottom of the yard.The wages were low but the highlight of the week was to go to the match at Oakwell and that is why the enterance charges were low.
Now we come to the directors that you accused of bleeding the club dry.To keep the football club going local Barnsley business men were invited to join the board,these were businessmen who supported the club but they had to put so much money into the club because gate receipts were not enough.So Nudger without the directors money the club would not have survived same as the other small town clubs.
In other words the club never had any blood to bleed.During my time at Oakwell two of the directors used to attend every match the juniors played in the Northern Intermediate League including away matches,some games took us as far as Sunderland and Newcastle.I don’t suppose you will remember Gordon Pallester who played left back for Barnsley for many years after the war,he went into business I think in the soft drinks trade after his playing days and later became a director.On travelling back from these long trips Gordon would ask the bus driver to look for a chip shop,then Gordon gave me the money to get fish and chips for everyone on the bus.You can imagine the surprise on the owners face when he saw a bus full of young footballers and me ask for”Fish and chips 18 times please” The money came out of Gordon’s pocket.Although he originated in the north east he was as Barnsley as a Barnsley chop.The Barnsley directors did whatever they could to keep the club going and when they ran short they had to tell the manager to sell players although we didn’t like it at the time it was sell or the club goes under.These Barnsley directors you have accused Nudger were not millionaires but ordinary local Barnsley businessmen who tried with their money to help the club.So unless you are willing to name the directors who you accuse of bleeding the club I think you should apologise to this site and all Barnsley supporters including the relations of the directors you have accused.You have written a lot of things on this site that are untrue and if that is the way you perform I am not surprised you were banned from the other site.And before you accuse me of trying to get you banned from here I am not but you can’t carry on telling your fairy tales and making accusations against former directors it could get you in trouble.
One last thing,I am not in agreement with what the owners are doing but I do appreciate they are keeping the club and looking back over the last two years during the lockdowns I should imagine although I don’t know they will have had to put their hands in their pockets to keep the club going when there was no gate receipts and for this I thank them

[SBRed48]

Top post Filey.

On the last sentence there is no indication in the club accounts of any donations from the present owners. The club accounts show the club is solely financed from TV money, Season Tickets/ Matchday tickets, commercial/sponsorship/merchandise income and player transfer surpluses. The owners seem proud not to have contributed a penny towards the running of the club and are happy to leave that to others.
They haven't even paid for the cost of buying the club.

[Romared]

Top Posts from Mr Filey and SB ★★★★★

[pass_and_move]

Excellent post Filey Very balanced and honest.

[Fileytyke]

Top post Filey.

On the last sentence there is no indication in the club accounts of any donations from the present owners. The club accounts show the club is solely financed from TV money, Season Tickets/ Matchday tickets, commercial/sponsorship/merchandise income and player transfer surpluses. The owners seem proud not to have contributed a penny towards the running of the club and are happy to leave that to others.
They haven't even paid for the cost of buying the club.

Even I can get things wrong,but I would have thought they would pay something towards the team they own during the times when no match income was available.I hope they paid the electric bill or they could be playing in the dark without floodlights.Thank you for pointing it out.

[Barnsley Chop]

Great read Filey

[Romared]

And meanwhile ? ! Some know the price of everything and the value of nothing !! MR WILDE n HARDY , for those who know !! Well they will know for sure , fools gold ,

[SBRed48]

Even I can get things wrong,but I would have thought they would pay something towards the team they own during the times when no match income was available.I hope they paid the electric bill or they could be playing in the dark without floodlights.Thank you for pointing it out.

The owners said at the time they were amazed at the wonderful Barnsley fans buying Season Tickets in their thousands which kept the club's cash flow coming in. I doubt the thought of themselves contributing a penny ever entered their heads.

[Fileytyke]

Top Posts from Mr Filey and SB ★★★★★

Just to point another thing on how the club was run.
Before the stadium was modernised into an all seater the old main stand was the only one with seats.All the other 3 sides had terracing,the old cop had no cover and Ponti end and where the new stand is now was a cover with a notice on the top that read “the stand extensions were kindly paid for by The Barnsley Supporters Club”this was when I was a boy and you could see the difference where the extensions were fitted.This shows it wasn’t just the directors that kept the club going everyone helped because it was their club.Also we know the EFL check the accounts of the EFL clubs but did you know that each season before the present EFL two clubs were picked out at random from each division to have their accounts checked so even in the old days checks were made.

[Young_Nudger]

I started watching the club early to mid 60s when the club was anchored in the 4th Division.
Alan Clarke appointed manager many years later in 1978.

Now then - it’s been claimed on this thread …. Clarke said - in 2 years this club will be in the second division “I don’t know where the money came from but new players arrived and Alan (Clarke) got us into the second division.

….. ‘I don’t know where the money came from’ !!!

Could I suggest that the money was always there - it was a running joke at the time that the money was there but the owners weren’t going to spend owt - and it was Alan Clarke that insisted that the purse had to be opened or else he wasn’t coming to Barnsley.
Alan Clarke came to Barnsley because he knew there was money there.

In conclusion - the club run as little more than a pub team from the 1960s to 1978.
During that time IMMEASURABLE DAMAGE was done to the fan base at Barnsley Football Club.

That damage is still being felt to this day as many people I know continue to follow Leeds and the Sheffield clubs because their father or grandfather switched from supporting Barnsley and started watching one of those clubs.
Please don’t tell me this didn’t happen - because I was there.
Did anyone else count the buses leaving Hough Lane car park and going to Elland Road.

1960s to 1978 was probably the longest period of inactivity in Barnsley Football Clubs history.
A dark dark time in the history of the club.
Complaining about this consortium compared to the dark age of the club is like complaining about having an automatic washing machine when we used to have a peggy tub.
It’s beyond ridiculous.