Barnsley team of the season 2009/2010
I took over the reigns at Barnsley FC in the 2009/2010 season, inheriting a club that had a few rough diamonds and a fair amount of dead weight, I took over a very old club with quality players like Darren Moore, Stephen Foster, Martin Devaney not getting any younger.
I had long term goals in mind when I entered the club, I stressed to the board that I could get them a mid-table finish, and they were looking to do all they could to avoid relegation this season after being one of the clubs tipped to get the drop into league 1. It was a shame that despite this I could only get £300,000 worth of transfer budget and a meagre £57,000 a week wage budget.
As I write this, I'm currently playing through my second season with Barnsley - so this post really is just to give you a little bit of a recap as to what happened in the first season.
Almost immediately I knew £300,000 was not going to get me the firepower I needed to make any waves in the Championship, I looked at the club to find weakness and try to spot one or two players I could shift to try and help other parts of the team.
The first player I released was Martin Devaney, he moved to Blackpool for £300,000 and the reason for doing this was at 29 he was at his peak and considering I had Adam Hammil and Emil Hallfreðsson covering both wings, with depth provided for these roles by El Haimor and Hume if either of these players were injured.
My first two signings were Andrea Orlandi, a left-footed young attacking midfielder capable of playing on any side and Tom Aldred, a hot prospect defender.
A lot of the squad's strength this season was going to be coming from players we had on loan; Hallfreðsson, Ryan Shotton and Carl Dickinson being the standouts, and I was trying to get players in to fulfill the void these players would leave at the end of the season.
John Breckin, the Barnsley assistant manager also got the chop, in favour of bringing in Kevin Summerfield, a superior tactician, to help give us the edge against the variety of formations and tactics we would face.
Initially the season was off to a good start, we were floating around the top of the table after the first few games, we had 4 wins in a row and 5 games undefeated until we hit troubled waters and then lost 5 on the trot. We rebounded excellently against QPR knocking 3 past them, and then began to float around mid-table, the season also ended this way and although we had a pretty unremarkable season as far as competitions go, we avoided the chop and saw Newcastle, Bristol and Forest get promoted and Coventry, Blackpool and Doncaster drop.
A highlight of the season was a 5-5 clash against Middlesbrough where we made a spirited fightback from 3-0 down to end the game 5-5 setting a new Championship record.
We had very few problems with morale besides Iain Hume under constant pressure from other clubs, luckily we managed to hold on to him and had a reasonably positive time with regards to players. Hugo Colace was shocked to leave on a free transfer, we were dissapointed to see him go, but he was unable to secure a work permit so we had little choice.
We also set up Bolton as a parent club to ourselves this season, making them eligible for some of our young talent and us eligible to loan some of their players. Gavin McCann and Ricardo Vaz Tae were two of the players we borrowed from them to help our campaign, and while Ricardo Vaz Tae left much to be desired, Gavin McCann joined Barnsley on a free transfer at the end of the season.
We also managed to secure the talents of Hallfreðsson full time for a fee of 1.2M from Reginna and also signed another hot prospect youngster Frankie Jarret from Notts County for £70,000.
We had a shaky start to 2010/2011 season as after the friendlies both Adam Hammil and Jamil Adam, two key players, were pounced on by Stoke and Newcastle, both attracting over 2 million each - offers which the board overruled me on and decided to accept.
While painful, as these two players were very young, very talented, it did leave me with a much healthier transfer budget of around £5 Million, part of which was used to secure Hallfreðsson and the rest is still in the kitty while I determine what's missing from the squad.
Joey O'Brien and Rhys Bennett join Barnsley on loan from Bolton for the season, and new signings we made include Reece Jones, Omar Koroma and as I mentioned earlier Gavin McCann, all three of these on free transfers.
At the moment Barnsley sit 11th in the Championship after 7 games with a promotion target.
