WITH the festive period behind us, I thought this would be a good opportunity to reflect on what has been a positive few weeks for Barnsley Football Club.
On the field there is no doubt that the end of 2024 and the start of 2025 on the pitch has been encouraging, the away wins against Bolton and Peterborough were impressive but the change in fortunes at home with the wins against Wrexham and Crawley have been really important.
Darrell (Clarke, head coach) talked at length about making Oakwell a fortress in 2025 if we are to achieve our objective of pushing for promotion and it’s great to see an improvement coming in the opening two home games of the year.
I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome Neil Farrugia to Barnsley. Mladen (Sormaz, chief executive) and the recruitment team deserve credit for acting quickly and signing Neil in the opening few days of the January window when there was a lot of interest in the player from elsewhere.
There will be speculation this month regarding incomings and outgoings, but this feels like a good time to highlight the good work in the previous window with Kelechi Nwakali, Davis Keillor-Dunn, Georgie Gent and Marc Roberts all impressing in the first half of the season.
Off the field, we have also seen some progress in recent weeks. Some of you will have seen that we have launched a couple of events with week with the ‘Evening with Darrell Clarke’ and ‘Cheltenham Festival afternoon’.
We aim to put more events on at Oakwell and find other ways of enhancing revenue income at the club on non-match days.
In terms of matchday revenues, I can confirm that a planning application for a new state-of-the-art fan zone will be submitted to the council this week.
Finally, another massive congratulations to Callum Simpson. The way Callum and his family have conducted themselves in the wake of Lily-Rae’s passing has been inspirational and his performance on Saturday was a fitting tribute.
In terms of what comes next, we’ll do all we can to have Callum’s next title defence at Oakwell.
