Barnsley were congratulating themselves on a 5th-place Championship finish just over five years ago.
The South Yorkshire outfit had a clear gegenpressing identity, recruited young players who could run all day and absorb ideas like a sponge, and had good strategic minds off the field to ensure continuity between coaches.
Yet, in 2021, the problems arose. Valérien Ismaël took the West Brom job, taking Alex Mowatt and Daryl Dike with him, CEO Dane Murphy left for Nottingham Forest, and the system seemed to break down, with what proved to be terrible recruitment that summer and poor choices of head coach in Markus Schopp and Poya Asbaghi.
Relegation followed, and while Michael Duff did a fantastic job in his first season, taking them to the League One play-off final in 2022/23, he then took the Swansea job, a decision that proved the wrong one for all involved.
Ten key exits (including two loans from 2022/23) in the next three windows prompted a massive rebuild, which Neill Collins, Darrell Clarke, Conor Hourihane and now Daniel Stendel, in his second spell, have all been unable to execute successfully.
So, why is that?
Clearly, the club isn’t as much of a financial big-hitter as it was in 2018, but you don’t regress in league position every season for half a decade without something being amiss.
I do think they’ve been able to identify a set of players who, individually, are good enough to be a lot higher in the table than they are now.
The likes of Patrick Kelly and Reyes Cleary represent excellent long-term investments that could make the club a lot of money: the duo have created 24 and 21 chances respectively this season, ranking joint-5th and joint-14th in League One.
From this summer’s recruits, meanwhile, Sam Gale has huge potential, while Clayton Taylor, Tyrese Noslin and Armani Richards all have international youth or senior pedigree.
What’s missing, however, is balance. Experienced heads. Leaders. Cultural architects.
Eight of the 22 goals Barnsley have shipped this season have come within 15 minutes of another: when they do concede, they tend to panic because they don’t have people to look to for guidance.
I think this is a reflection of ownership, and of a Neerav Parekh regime that seems to shift strategies too readily.
First, it was about following the data-led model that Brighton and Brentford have succeeded with, but without owning a data company like Tony Bloom’s Jamestown Analytics, or a statistical model like Matthew Benham’s.
Then, it was following Sunderland’s developmental model, but without a Technical Director like Kristjaan Speakman, with his long-standing background in youth development.
The club’s whole schtick has been following whichever team is doing well at the time, without quite having the patience to see it through, or knowing the intricacies of what made the vision successful elsewhere.
Most obviously, this pertains to the Director of Football role (or equivalent), which the club has done without since Mladen Sormaz left as Sporting Director last year.
The club’s argument has been that they can forgo a DoF and get by with a collaborative approach where everybody pitches in.
At the time, they had CEO Jon Flatman running finances, head coach Daniel Stendel and his staff expressing preferences, director James Cryne on data, and academy manager Bobby Hassell helping out with knowledge and contacts.
In other words, they felt incremental increases in workload for numerous people would have the same effect as another full-time job, saving a six-figure sum for the playing budget.
The problem, however, is that while all those contributions are valuable, there’s no one person overseeing the whole football operation.
Nobody is plotting strategy with a footballing mind, preparing for windows, calling agents, monitoring progress and looking at the forest from a bird’s-eye view – everyone’s down there hacking at the overgrown plants, hoping the path they’re carving is the right one.
So, I think two appointments are crucial: a CEO to replace Flatman, who left for Cardiff RFC last month, and a DoF.
I also think a back seat for Parekh is a must. I think he’s always had good intentions, but his unpredictable leadership style has brought a lot of instability to the club. It has left key off-field figures, Sormaz in particular and Flatman to an extent, fronting up for his flip-flopping and taking the brunt of it, entwining their professional reputations with chaotic leadership from above.
On the pitch, meanwhile, a call may have to be made on Stendel, although he retains the support of much of the fanbase, who want a change of ownership more than a change in the dugout.
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