I HOPE this column finds you well, Reds.
At the start of the week I had the opportunity to meet a number of you who attended a breakfast event at Oakwell as the 24/25 season fixtures were revealed.
I think it’s important that - as a community club - we are open and communicative with our supporters. We’re all on this journey together at the end of the day.
Speaking of journeys, finally seeing the schedule for the new season gets the juices flowing.
It was fitting too, on a personal level, to see Mansfield Town as our opening day opponents. I’m a Mansfield lad and had the pleasure of starting my football career with the Stags so it’s a tasty looking clash to begin with.
I’ve already had enough requests for tickets to fill Oakwell twice over! I’ve been in the job just over a month now and a lot of that time has been spent with the staff around the club. Building relationships is key for me, and it’s pleasing that everyone is on the same page here. From top to bottom, everyone is hard at it.
That includes the players, with many of them volunteering to return early over the last couple of weeks to take part in fitness sessions put on by our performance staff.
That’s a positive sign ahead of next week when the hard work of pre-season training begins.
I’m looking forward to that, getting to know the players, my coaching staff and making sure we’re up and at them, ready to go come August.
We’ll be adding to the group of course. And I’m aware of the desire from supporters to be active in the market.
But we’re working away on our top targets and there’s so much involved behind-the-scenes.
We need to remain patient but also steadfast. We know what we require and we know who we want.
There’s plenty of quality already in this squad and with the right additions I’m confident I can put a Barnsley team out there every week who’ll make you all proud. In the meantime, I hope you all have an enjoyable weekend.
There’s a huge game for England on Sunday evening against Slovakia at the Euros.
It’s not been perfect for Gareth Southgate and the players so far, but they’re into the knockout stages now. This is when it matters.
I’m a proud Englishman and like most, we just want to see them win something don’t we?
Hopefully this is our year. Then we can focus on the proper football, down at Oakwell& You Reds.
