BARNSLEY chairman Neerav Parekh has backed ‘slow starter’ Darrell Clarke to have the club competing for promotion from League One this season and added: ‘from a financial perspective and football perspective we need to get up.’

The Reds are currently eighth after 12 games, having picked up four points this week following some poor performances before the international break.

Indian businessman Parekh, who is also the majority owner of the club, is in his third season as chairman after initially investing in 2017.

While attending a fans’ forum this week, he told the Chronicle: “I think our start has been mixed. We’ve had a tough start. In some games we have basically thrown away points when we should have had them. But, if you look at the underlying data, we’re doing a lot better than our league position suggests and we’ve seen improvement steadily over the season.

“Darrell did a lot of work with the players over the international break.

“It showed in the last two games and we expect that trajectory to continue.

“If you look at all Darrell’s work at other clubs, he’s a slow starter but does really well over a long time. We need to give managers time.”

Barnsley have collected 29 points from their last 24 games since February, winning just one in 12 at Oakwell in the league in that time. That has led to fears that, in their third season at League One level, the Reds are becoming just an ‘average’ side in the third tier and cannot compete for promotion.

Parekh said: “The home form needs to improve, no question. But the away form has been excellent.

“When you talk about average in League One, the average is going up significantly because clubs are spending absurd money so it gets tougher to be about average.

“You can hold me to this – we will be better than average in League One this season. We will finish top half of the table for sure. We have looked at a lot of numbers and we have a squad that is easily top six quality.”

It was revealed at the fans’ forum that Parekh and his fellow owners put up to £8million a year into the club, depending on how much money is made on player sales. Will they continue to have the enthusiasm, and funds, for that in the future? He said: “I wouldn’t be in Barnsley doing a fans’ forum if the enthusiasm wasn’t there. We would have liked to get out of the division in the first season, and we were close at Wembley. We got to the play-offs last year and we hope to be in the play-offs or even automatics this season.

“That’s the goal. There is no point sitting still in League One, you burn more money in League One. From a financial perspective and football perspective we need to get up but there will still be the same hunger from us as owners.”

Parekh became chairman in the summer of 2022 after the removal from the board of previous co-chairman Chien Lee and Paul Conway who still own part of the club but much less then they used to. Parekh said: “They have absolutely no involvement at a board level.

“It’s public knowledge that I am at 61 per cent ownership, the Cryne family is 21, Julie Anne (Quay, director) and her husband are 11, Chien Lee is five and Paul Conway is two.

“So you can draw your own conclusions about the way it is going.”

Parekh praised part-owner James Cryne who designed the data-led recruitment system the club still uses.

Parekh said: “Barnsley Football Club probably exists because of James Cryne’s model and the ability to resell players. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say the club might have folded if it wasn’t for that. James is still a share holder but he is no longer working full-time at Barnsley. He works for a different company right now.

“But the recruitment team he brought in use his model and data. He basically built the entire system.”