Enjoy The Ride

You Don’t Know What you’ve Got ‘till its gone.....
A recurring truism. In life and in football.
In the context of BFC, I wonder how long it will be before people realise how lucky we are to have this current management team of Hill & Flitcroft? I hope sooner rather than later.
Last summer Patrick Cryne – our owner, but more importantly, our benefactor – decided to change things and head down the road of genuine self-sufficiency as a football club

There was a slightly out-of-the blue statement on the official site about how madness is defined as doing the same thing time-and-again and expecting a different outcome, i.e. investing beyond our natural means to sign expensive rejects or loan signings (read O’Connor, Harwood, Lovre, Kozluk, Mostto etc etc) and never managing to progress beyond lower-mid table at absolute best.

Now that in itself should be an achievement for a football club of our size in the current climate, but many fans, especially those growing up in the 80s– myself included – see the Championship as ‘our level’. History backs this up as we have spent the majority of seasons playing at the second level of the English football pyramid. However, even during our lengthy stint in the then Division Two we were a ‘small club’ – in terms of crowds, income, transfer fees etc. Even in 1996-97 we had gates of a little over 6,000 for some games (Oxford midweek).

Promotion and subsequent relegation from the PL saw us become a larger club in second-level terms. ‘Chasing the dream’ and subsequent relegation to League One saw us plummet further back though, and although Andy Ritchie performed a minor miracle and got us back to the Championship, our size in comparison to other clubs in the same division is even smaller, even relative to 1996-97 (we may have higher average attendances to pre 96-97 but our increases are dwarfed by other teams in the division). And yet, despite maintaining Championship status through a succession of managers – some more competent than others (who would you rather manager a football club, Davey or Robins?) – we find ourselves following a new strategy introduced by PC in the summer.

And then came the tipping point. A lot of fans are still unrealistic in their expectations, whilst some are realistic but just want some honest, hard working and entertaining players at Oakwell after some turgid yet solid performances through Robins’ time in charge. We needed a genuinely talented manager, capable of working on a budget, motivating players to over-achieve and effectively get the club to ‘run to stand still’. We could have had Russell Slade and be now sitting in the bottom 3, but instead – thank goodness– we ended up with ‘Hillcroft’.

We have the hard working players, we have the over achievement (not only in maintaining results on a lower budget, but actually improving them – we have never been better off after 26 games in the last 5 seasons as we are at the moment). But - and this should be the real bonus - we have quality, exciting, attacking football. All with players recruited from lower leagues or free-agents (Vaz Te). We have strikers who score, we have players with potential fulfilled (Butterfield) and yes, we have a slightly wobbly defence having lost our best defender for many years (Shackell).

We are very lucky to have Hillcroft; Hill himself is arrogant, extroverted, confident, but most importantly hugely talented – and its brilliant to have him. Flitcroft is obviously a fantastic coach and the two work miracles together really. Yet some people remain unconvinced and whilst criticism may be valid in many cases – i.e. we do make a lot mistakes defensively – they are used as a stick to beat Hill with. Listen to Hills after-match interview on the BBC site and its clear he is unhappy at some of the questioning from the (BBC Sheffield) media which is shaped from the views of certain BFC fans. I’m sure Hillcroft will go on to manage in the PL, we should appreciate what we have. We will maintain Championship status this year and progress onto Year 2 of the strategy of self sufficiency. So not only will we potentially have a genuinely well run football club, but one which plays an exciting, committed brand of football that is consolidated in the upper half of the Championship. Then who knows?
But without Cryne and Hillcroft, we would not be in this position. We should enjoy the ride, get behind the team, the management team, the owner and directors and maybe, just maybe, as Financial Fair Play takes its toll on others, we can really prosper. I believe PC has developed a great strategy that is being implemented by the best possible management team in Hillcroft. We are lucky to have them

But I sense that we won’t know what we’ve got in Hillcroft until they’ve gone. Ask any Rochdale fan.