Barnsley’s poor start to the season is nothing new, and usually leads to a change in manager. Can rookie boss David Flitcroft turn the situation around and succeed on an increasingly difficult wicket?
From a QPR point of view it’s easy to forget just how remarkable the Barnsley side of 1996/97 was. Rangers beat Danny Wilson’s team three times, scoring nine goals in the process, which meant a league double and FA Cup success. Rangers, under Stuart Houston for the majority of the season, didn’t even make the play offs but they dismantled the Tykes on three separate occasions, with Trevor Sinclair’s incredible bicycle kick the abiding memory.
But Barnsley were promoted that season in second place, taking a spot in the top flight for the first and as yet only time in their history. It was an unremarkable Barnsley team on paper — tricky winger Clint Marcelle was playing for Goole Town within three years — but it was well managed by the bright young talent of the time Danny Wilson and remarkably consistent across the season.
Buoyed by the money even a one year stay in the top flight can bring, Barnsley were one of the second tier’s big players for several seasons after the inevitable relegation that followed. They spent decent money on players like Craig Hignett, Ashley Ward and our own Mike Sheron. In 1999/00, with Dave Basset as manager, they swept aside Birmingham in the play offs only to lose to Ipswich in the last final at the old Wembley which denied them a second crack at the big time.
Since then, football has changed and rather left the Tykes behind. In 1997 it was still possible to triumph through the good old fashioned method of getting a talented manager and good group of players together at the same time — which is exactly what Barnsley did with Wilson and his side. Is that still the case now, when the most successful teams in the top two divisions tend to be the ones who happen to have been bought by a rich foreign owners rather than shown any shrewdness in the managerial or transfer markets?
If it is, Barnsley are struggling to re-discover a winning formula. They’ve had a stint in the third tier during the last decade but generally they’ve followed a very set pattern of struggling, sacking a manager, rallying for a few weeks or months under a new regime, and then reverting to type and sacking again. They’ve looked in a variety of places for those managers — Andy Ritchie and Simon Davies were internal appointments, and both enjoyed decent success with the former promoting them back to the Championship and the latter claiming notable cup scalps against Liverpool and Chelsea. Keith Hill and Steve Parkin were both from lower league Rochdale.
Ultimately though, whoever has been in charge, has only managed to stave off the inevitable for so long. Barnsley have one of the smallest average gates and wage bills in the Championship, and without a rich sugar daddy to make up the difference they struggle to attract players and build a successful team. When they do happen upon a talent it’s usually quickly snapped up by a club higher up the food chain — John Stones went to Everton for £3m in January 2013, Ricardo Vaz Te to West Ham 12 months before that, Jacob Butterfield to Norwich before that, Adam Hammill to Wolves 12 months before that, Daniel Bogdanovic to Sheff Utd six months before that and so on.
And the pattern looks like it’s being followed again. Hill, a fan of the modern brand of fancy football despite his background at Rochdale and more recently Barnsley, was sacked with the Tykes bottom of the league after 25 matches last season and replaced by his assistant David Flitcroft sparking a remarkable run of eight wins and a draw from nine matches and, ultimately safety — secured with a draw at Huddersfield on the last day following a 2-0 home win against eventually promoted Hull City.
With a run at a full season with his own players, Flitcroft has Barnsley bottom of the table again — albeit following a particularly tough run of fixtures which has seen them go to Forest, Bournemouth, Leicester and now QPR while welcoming Watford and Reading to South Yorkshire. So what to do if results don’t improve during a forthcoming stint of games against the likes of Middlesbrough, Doncaster, Millwall, Birmingham and Sheff Wed? Fire another boss and hope the new manager bounce carries them safe for another season?
You can’t help but feel there should be more to football than this, and the management fraternity clearly think so as well because it’s becoming harder and harder for the Tykes to attract any kind of name to Oakwell when they do make a change. But quite what that is or how a club of Barnsley’s current situation can go about finding it is as unclear as ever.
Back to the old format of digging out contacts from LoftforWords’ bulging address book rather than taking to message boards, and we thank resident Barnsley fan Baz for his take on the latest goings on at Oakwell.
Bit of a nightmarish start for Barnsley. Let's take things back a bit and start near the start... Was the sacking of Keith Hill justified last season? Was it the right decision in hindsight?
It was definitely the right decision, as the second half of last season proved. I think I’m in the small minority of Barnsley fans who still admires Keith Hill and the way he tried to get the team to play. However once several key players were sold he was left with trying to play "tiki-taka” with League Two quality players, which was never going to work, and it didn’t. The main problem was that he had no Plan B. On the day Hill was sacked we were bottom of the league and had taken 21 points from 25 games. We looked dead and buried. Somehow, and God only knows how, Flitcroft managed to rejuvenate the same bunch of players and turned them into a side that was winning games on a consistent basis. Something that we have not seen since promotion to the Championship in 2006.
Was Flitcroft the right replacement, short term and medium term?
Short term: we stayed up last season, so undeniably yes. In any case at the time of his appointment we did not seem able to appoint anyone else, with both Terry Butcher and Sean O’Driscoll turning us down. Medium term: Following on from last season’s heroics it’s very hard not to be patient with Flitcroft and give him a chance at moulding his own team. Clearly things have got off to a bad start this season but it’s still relatively early on in the campaign. He showed last season that at the very least he has good man management skills. He’s still inexperienced and will make mistakes but I think he is a promising young manager.
Should he now be replaced? Who are the potential alternatives?
No, I don’t think he should be replaced as things stand. Yes, we are at the bottom but it’s only early October and we have just had a dreadful run of fixtures. After we play (and inevitably lose) at Loftus Road we then have five or six games that are, on paper at least, easier than what we have recently had. If after those games we have not picked up many more points then I think the board and most fans will start to get very twitchy. Alternatives? The events after Keith Hill was sacked showed that the Barnsley job is not a particularly sought after one in managerial circles, which is another reason for sticking with Flitcroft for now.
Can Barnsley ever hope to be anything other than a team at the bottom end of the Championship with occasional spells in League One? Is this fairly steady procession of managers actually getting you anywhere?
Unless the financial situation changes then no, we are going to find it very difficult to even get to mid table in the Championship. The few times over the last few years that we have looked like a decent side, our best players have ended up being sold and we start at back at square one, but in fairness that’s the same for nearly all sides in the Football League. I don’t think changing managers frequently is good for a club, but having said that, in recent times when we have been on a real downward spiral the dismissals of Simon Davey and Keith Hill were followed by us getting out of trouble.
Having achieved good results last season to keep you up, things are not going well this term - why is that?
The same players who were performing miracles at the end of last season are now playing like they were at the beginning of last season. I don’t really know why and worryingly, I don’t think the manager does. I think some of them have been coasting as in many positions there is no real competition for places but having brought a few more players in during the loan window hopefully that mentality will change.
What transfer activity took place in the summer - who left, who came in, were you particularly glad or sorry about any of them?
There was much excitement pre-season regarding the signing of winger Dale Jennings from Bayern Munich, but he had a disastrous debut against Wigan tripping over the ball with his first touch before getting himself sent off a few minutes later. Since then he has continued to disappoint. Jean-Yves M’voto came in from Oldham and is a big, burly centre back who is great in the air but has a poor touch and doesn’t look up to Championship standard. I was very pleased with the signing of defender Lewin Nyatanga from Bristol City who has been with us previously on loan but unfortunately he hasn’t played due to injury. Importantly, we were able to buy Chris O’Grady from Sheffield Wednesday who was on loan to us during the latter part of last season and scored some vital goals. I was sad that we released defender Stephen Foster who has been a reliable player for several years. Marlon Harewood and left back Scott Golbourne also left the club, but for once we didn’t really have to sell any of our best players to a "bigger” club during the summer.
Where is the team strong, who should we look out for? Where is it weak?
Let’s start with where it’s weak, shall we? That’s much easier to answer. The defending has been atrocious. We had a lot of success with a 3-5-2 formation at the end of last season but this season we have alternated between that and 4-4-2 and we have been all over the place at times. This has been despite bringing in Peter Ramage from Palace a few weeks ago, but he hasn’t looked great although he probably isn’t used to playing in a defence this bad. We’ve tried lots of different line ups at the back but none of them seem to be working.
Lewin Nyatanga has unfortunately been injured for much of this season and I am hopeful that once he is back things will improve. The midfield has also been poor, mainly because we have been playing at least three defensive midfielders, which means we are creating very little. Up front, Chris O’Grady has been our only real star performer, although he is having to do much of the attacking by himself. Jason Scotland has scored a couple of goals recently although his ability to last a full 90 minutes is still an issue.
Norwegian striker Marcus Pederson, currently on loan from Vitesse Arnhem, looked very good in his brief appearances before he got injured, so if he is fit by the weekend he may cause a few problems. Likewise Paddy McCourt ("The Derry Pelé”) in midfield has only played a couple of games but he looks like he can actually create something for our forward line.
Tweet @loftforwords
Pictures — Action Images