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The Barnsley Takeover And Moneyball

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Asides from the departure of Marcel Franke we learned some interesting news yesterday regarding the takeover of Barnsley by a Chinese consortium.

It seems to be the sign of the times.

It’s true, money doesn’t buy Championships, nevertheless it can help you an awful lot, as we have seen this season with financially backed Wolves, Villa, Derby and Bristol City all in great form.

How much longer will Norwich City be able to survive and compete in this new league of rich owners? Only time will tell, and results of course.

There aren`t too many family owned, family run football clubs nowadays. Sustainable and debt free football clubs are almost utopia these days.

It seems to be the tendency – we will see each year more and more clubs being purchased by rich foreign investors. Money is good for entertainment and for sure the football league loves it, don’t they?

The Barnsley takeover seems a bit more interesting than most in some ways. I say this because of the presence of ‘Moneyball’ Billy Bean as one of the investors.
You may have seen the movie or not and if you haven’t I would strongly recommend you to do so, as this is the guy that changed the sport of baseball forever – some american football teams are also now using his approach.

His statistics based approach may not be such a novelty for football management these days, nevertheless what he did for modern sports is remarkable. I will let you judge yourself once see the movie, if you haven’t already.

If he is able to do something similar with Barnsley, like he did with the Oakland athletics, it will be very interesting although it might not be so different to what Paul Heckingbottom has been doing already.

Basically it means being successful on a shoestring budget – although in this case with new investors that actually might have a decent budget to back up the manager, this could be even more interesting.

The bottom line is that each year things will be more difficult for Norwich City, so hopefully the squad starts delivering on the pitch or in a few years time the club will face the inevitable: either swim with the stream or drown.

OTBC

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Editor - a forty something Canary, who has been following Norwich for 30 odd years. Family man with wife, kids, dog and a love of sport. Fan of Boxing, Vale 46, F1 and Rock.