Last summer

So we are almost halfway through the season and we sit halfway up the table. I thought now would be a good time to cast our minds back to last summer and spark a debate about how we think Keith Hill has done so far compared with what we expected. So let’s take a short trip down memory lane

At the start of the season I was quite pensive, MR had thrown his dummy out the cot due to lack of disposable funds and being told he needed to reduce his loan signing in the coming season. Talk was that we would lose our beloved captain to derby; a player who I think most of you would agree, that without shacks shoring up the defense last season we would have let slip a fair few more goals and dropped points here and there, potentially changing the outcome of our season. Our other main worry was our lack of goals. We produced goals from all over the pitch but it was disquieting that none of our strikers managed to surpass Adam Hammill’s goal tally during a whole season, when our young winger managed to chip in 8 during the first half. After he left there we times when we looked a little toothless and we missed his directness and ability to run at the opposition and force an error out of them.


I was left wondering who would want to take up the challenge of keeping a team that has a habit of fighting with relegation with a reduced budget and our captain on the verge of leaving us.

*Enter Keith Hill and his backroom staff.*

KH quickly set about his task by securing Davis and Perkins, at a pace we never really saw from MR. Both signing seemed to sit well with most fan viewing Perkins as a work horse with something to prove and Davis as a proven goal scorer from the lower leagues worth taking a punt on. Another bit of quick business KH did early on was to send Liam Dickinson packing, a shrewd move which made him as popular as when MR did the same to Odd job (is there some rule somewhere that every Barnsley manager have to have a pet striker that is better at hitting row Z than the onion bag?).


Pre-season was full of promise, with us scoring 12 goals and only conceding 1 in three games, while producing some good looking, free flowing football. Granted the opposition were all lower league teams, but even so the signs were looking good. Butterfield was showing more confidence in midfield, our new signings were looking promising, Keith Hill’s talk of clean sheets and patient build up looked to have been nicely implemented and most importantly we got to sing a few rounds of “we’ll never see you again" and remind Sheffield Wednesday with a good performance why they are a third division team .


Of course we got the normal yearly copy paste articles in the press “Barnsley to be relegated" and confusion mixing us up with Burnley. But we carry on as always, quietly smiling while the rest of the division has already took 6 points off us and relegated us in their heads. Like most fans though I still had doubts. Even with the KH brand of football working well in preseason and a few fresh faces and new ideas injected into the team, a quick look at the teams around us and the amount of premiership talent and the silly sums of money being splashed around by the likes of Leicester City I honestly found it hard to think of three teams that we would finish above this season. But I worry about this every year only to be presently surprised by our ability to give some of the big boys an unexpected thump and keep our heads above the tide.