After years of struggle in the Championship, Barnsley have finally succumbed to relegation into League One with a game of the regular season left to play.

Overview

Danny Wilson says people should blame him for Barnsley 's relegation this year.

Despite only taking over for his second spell at the club midway through the season with the Reds already bottom of the league with three wins and 14 points from their first 20 games under his predecessor David Flitcroft, Wilson says the buck stops with him after a squad overhaul could only yield 24 points from his 25 matches in charge.

In January David Perkins, Scott Wiseman, Chris Dagnall and Jason Scotland were shifted on and Liam Lawrence, Emmanuel Frimpong, Jack Hunt, Ryan McLaughlin, Nick Proschwitz and Brek Shea arrived. There were some notable successes — consecutive away wins 3-1 at Reading and 4-1 at Yeovil in March — but Barnsley rarely draw, frequently lose, and were relegated after a 3-1 defeat at Middlesbrough last weekend.

Wilson's return divided opinion in South Yorkshire . He was the man who masterminded the Tykes' remarkable rise to the Premier League in 1997, but was also the one who subsequently jumped ship to the supposedly bigger club down the road at Hillsborough. Some remembered the former achievement, some remembered the latter betrayal, and others said managers and players should never go back in football regardless.

Whatever the thoughts at the time, or opinion of the job he's done since, it's hard to agree that the demise of the Tykes this season is much to do with Wilson, or indeed the players on the pitch.

Barnsley have been circling the drain pretty much ever since they returned to his level eight years ago. They will finish either twenty third or last this season and working backwards their final league positions have been twenty first (survived on the last day by a point), twenty first, seventeenth, eighteenth, twentieth, eighteenth and twentieth. Even the higher positions among that sorry tale were often only achieved with late runs of form rescuing them from months of residing in the bottom three.

The usual pattern is for a manager to leave Oakwell halfway through a season. Andy Ritchie won them promotion and was sacked midway through the following season to be replaced by Simon Davey who did at least almost make it to three years before being sacked in August 2009. Mark Robins, his replacement, resigned at the end of 2010/11 but Rochdale 's Keith Hill was sacked after 18 months in charge midway through last season and his assistant David Flitcroft lasted 12 months in the top job before being dismissed earlier this season.

The Tykes have essentially been surviving at a level where their playing budget is, Yeovil apart, easily the lowest through new manager syndrome — start badly, sack a boss, stay in the division courtesy of that little bounce of results you often get when the top man changes. It was inevitable that it would, sooner or later, catch up with them and it just so happens that Wilson was the one without a chair when the music stopped. It could easily have happened to Flitcroft, Hill, Davey or Robins before him.

Barnsley talk about having a "competitive budget" for League One next year, and are going out of this division without major financial concerns, unlike their previous demotion which brought about a spell in administration. But, without going all Yoda/Brendan Rodgers on you all here, are they not rather missing the point. Say they are competitive in League One next season, and make the play offs, and win at Wembley, and come back into the Championship for 2015/16 — what actual difference are we going to see? How is the situation going to be any different from the one Andy Ritchie faced when he promoted them back in 2005? He was a victim of his own success — sacked the following year when it didn't look like he could keep the Tykes up.

You don't have to have read Michael Lewis' Moneyball (though you really should) to realise that Barnsley are attempting to compete on a total uneven playing field using the same methods as clubs like Leicester, QPR, Reading, Nottingham Forest and others who — to varying degrees of success — are able to throw vast sums of money at transfer fees and wages. Barnsley try and stand toe to toe, rattling through managers and signings, when they're never likely to be able to compete. What they need to find is a different way. That could be concentrating all efforts and money on developing local boys in an academy. It could be, as Gerry Francis did at Loftus Road in 1999 when QPR were skint, scouting the non-league game in real depth and seeing if any Jermaine Darlingtons or Stuart Wardleys are lurking beneath the waves. It could be scouting spotting under-scouted foreign territories and pillaging them for untapped talent. It could be, as we saw John Gregory do at QPR with the likes of Michael Mancienne and Jimmy Smith from Chelsea , a link up with a Premier League club that populates the Barnsley side with half a dozen loan players of high quality.

Whatever the solution, a solution needs to be found, because they cannot simply hope to come back to this level and go about their business in the same way. The Championship is chock full of former Premier League teams, nine of whom will be receiving colossal parachute payments by the time Barnsley return — if they ever do. The Tykes will need to be shrewder than simply trying to compete with them in the transfer market under the watchful eye of a steady carousel of new managers. Repeating the same action and expecting a different result is, as we say so often on LFW, the definition of insanity.

Commiserations and best of luck next season.

Interview

For the final game of the regular season we welcome, and offer our sympathies to, Baz our resident Barnsley fan who is going to carry out something of a post mortem on his team for us…

Where did it all go wrong for Barnsley this season? Assess the campaign for us and point the finger of blame in a few directions.

I don’t think you can look at this season in isolation. We have been close to being relegated in all but one campaign in this eight year stint in the Championship, so things have been “wrong” for quite some time, but our luck has finally run out. We obviously had one of the smallest budgets in the division and that will always limit what is achievable but I believe the message from the hierarchy at the club has been that simply surviving in the second tier should be the target and no plans put in place to progress beyond that. If the aim is fourth bottom then you’re unlikely to make mid table.

Focusing on this season though, the simplest answer is that the players have not been good enough. Many fans have said the players haven’t shown bottle or fight etc but for the most part I didn’t see that. I just saw a group of players that were often out of their depth, out of ideas and up against better quality opposition and there is only so much that coaching and tactics can do in those circumstances. The irony is that at the start of this season there was a real sense of optimism following the heroics of the previous campaign. But we were battered by Wigan on the opening day and never recovered.

David Flitcroft seemed to change what was a successful formula from the previous season, using a different formation from before for no obvious reason. We again changed manager half way through the season but this time to no avail. Danny Wilson, quite reasonably, gambled on bringing in several players during the January transfer window but although many looked decent on paper they didn’t play well enough to significantly change things. I try not to pick on individual players but special mention must go to Emmanual Frimpong: sent off in his debut, and was pretty dreadful in most of his other appearances. To go from being an Arsenal player to not being able to make a Barnsley match day squad within the course of a season is an impressive fall from grace.

How has Danny Wilson done since he took over, what's the general opinion of him among Barnsley fans and would you like to see him stay for next season?

Danny Wilson will always be a Barnsley legend to most fans as he led us to the Premier League in 1997. However, the manner of his departure to Sheffield Wednesday all those years ago has tainted those memories for many people and I think opinion was split when it was announced he would be rejoining us. I don’t think there were many better candidates available at the time and was quite happy with his appointment although I am generally of the opinion that players/managers should never go back to clubs associated with past glories, as things usually end in disappointment. When he took over I think he realised that the players at his disposal were not up to it, and he attempted to bring in a few players, both on loan and bought, but many had been out of the game for a while due to injuries etc. and they did not lead to the improvement necessary to keep us up. His arrival did make us more competitive though, and we were certainly better organised but we lacked real creativity in the final third of the pitch. I would like to see him stay next season and all the messages from the club suggest he will do. The last thing we need now is yet another change of manager.

What needs to be done to the team for it to do well in League One? How do you rate your chances next season?

We need to keep hold of the players who did well this season (see below). There are a few promising youngsters who I hope will get a run of games, particularly if we are comfortably away from the relegation zone. We need to be less reliant on loan players as by definition they are usually a temporary solution to a given problem and what we need is some stability in the squad. Thankfully, Danny Wilson knows League One very well and I think that will be a major positive. A good start to the season is vital if we are to come straight back up as winning quickly becomes a habit. I think realistically we will finish mid-table as the team will see a lot of changes and it will take time for things to settle down. As a committed pessimist, I think there is as much chance of us being in the bottom six as the top six by the end of the season, particularly if we get off to a poor start.

Who have been the stand out performers and where are the weak links in the side?

As you can probably guess, only a few players can come out of this season with much credit. Luke Steele has been solid in goal and was regularly called upon to pull off some outstanding saves. Striker Chris O’Grady managed to score goals in a very poor side, although his contribution tailed off as the season progressed. Martin Cranie put in several assured performances at centre half and I would be surprised if he is with us next season. After a poor first few months of the season, winger Dale Jennings went on loan to MK Dons for a couple of months and was much improved on his return and put in a few match winning performances.

The weak links are pretty much everywhere else on the pitch. That may be a lazy answer, but that doesn’t stop it being true. Special mention however should go to Jean Yves M’voto who started the season very poorly and looked a total liability but actually played very well in the run in and was certainly our most improved player.

What's the financial situation at the club and how will relegation affect that side of things?

We are certainly in a better place financially than the last time we were relegated to the third tier, when we were forced into administration and saved only by Patrick Cryne who continues to own the club. As far as I am aware, the most recent accounts showed that we were one of the few Championship clubs who weren’t running at a loss, although this may in part explain why we have been relegated. Having said that, we would obviously rather have a club in the lower divisions than no club at all. Our chief executive Ben Mansford recently reassured us that we would have a “competitive budget” in League One. I like to think that that is probably true, particularly as relegation has been a serious threat for so long that contingency plans are likely to have been put in place to ensure that the club would be able to cope with the inevitable loss in income from TV and gate receipts etc.

Before I go, good luck in the play offs.

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TacticalR added 23:38 - May 10 Thanks for your oppo report and to Baz. In all our anxiety about our evergrowing debt we sometimes forget the perils of balancing the books. I am not that surprised to hear about Frimpong's decline - Arsenal are dumping all their superannuated Young Guns, plus he's had two ACL injuries.
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