Barnsley FC chairman and majority owner Neerav Parekh spoke to the media this afternoon. Here is what he said on a range of issues:

INTEREST IN THE HEAD COACH POSITION

We have had a lot of interest from Championship managers to League One managers. There has been a lot of people who want the job. Far more than last summer. But we made the clear decision that the best options will be available until the summer.

We have talked to a number of coaches, one is a fantastic option but is being paid by his ex club until the summer. Another potential option is another fantastic coach and has personal reasons why he can’t decide until the summer. There is plenty of work going on in the background and we’re confident we will get a really good coach in.

INTERIM BOSS CONOR HOURIHANE’S CHANCES

Conor will be in the hat. We’ll assess him over the next nine games. But it would be unfair to say he’s a frontrunner. It will be open to everyone and he will absolutely be one of the candidates.

DARRELL CLARKE’S SACKING

“The table speaks for itself. I think Darrell was an excellent man, an honest guy and very hard-working.

I can only say good things about him. Unfortunately I think both the performances and results weren’t what we expected. We think the squad is a top three or top four squad at worst and that was the level of performance we expected.

We were tenth and, given it’s a results business, we had to go ahead with that (the sacking). It’s not something we wanted to do. We were hoping to have him here for at least two years or longer. But we have to move on now.”

When asked to elaborate on the claim that Barnsley have a top four squad, he said: “We have looked through the data across all the clubs and our players. I know a lot of people ignore stats. There are a lot of different reasons why players don’t perform at certain times for certain periods.

“This is a top four squad. I hang my hat on that. I would bet £100 to charity that at least five of our starting outfield players will play in the Championship or higher in the next three or four years. I believe we have quality and it’s a lazy misnomer to say the players aren’t good enough. We’re not as high as we could be but the responsibility spreads from the players to the head coach to us in the boardroom because we should be doing better.”

ON ONLY SIGNING ONE STRIKER, CLEMENT RODRIGUES, IN JANUARY

If you look at goals scored, we are level with third-placed Wrexham and ahead of fourth-placed Charlton. I don’t think scoring goals is the problem. Up until last week, I believe Davis Keillor-Dunn had the most non-penalty goals in the entire league. We believe in data very strongly and Max Watters had the highest XG of any player in League One. Adam Phillips has scored double digits for however many seasons you want to count. I don’t think there is a dearth of goal-scoring players in the squad.

If we could get a striker who we thought was affordable and good in January, which is a tough window, obviously we would have gone for him. But that didn’t materialise. Clement came in as one of the players but we know who our starting players are. Clement came in to provide competition and a body. If you were expecting him to score ten or 15 goals, I think that’s unrealistic given the other firepower we have at our disposal.

ON JANUARY IN GENERAL

"We could have got more players in. We tried and there were reasons from one of the players’ wives just having a baby and he didn’t want to move up north, to some being financially unviable, to the other club changing their mind at the last minute. In an ideal world we would have got more players who could have contributed but it’s not as easy as it looks. We did get some very good players in. I don’t think it was a failure but we could have done better if we had a little bit more luck or things had gone our way."

He also said: "There isn’t a magic money tree and we have to be realistic in what we can spend. One of our rivals spent somewhere around £5million getting in two players. One of our rivals turned down a bid of something like £6million for one of their players.

"People overspent. We have to balance the books and pay what we can afford. Unfortunately in January we didn’t find that ten or 15-goal striker that we could afford.

"Joe Gauci is extremely highly-rated and understudy to maybe the best goalkeeper in the world in Emi Martinez. He is not a downgrade to pretty much any League One goalkeeper. It’s extremely unfortunate he got injured.

"Neil Farrugia has shown what he can do and played most of the games.

"Some of the others have been brought in as squad players. It wouldn’t be fair to comment on Jon Lewis because he’s been injured for a month.

"I disagree that the squad is weaker (than before the window). We have brought in good players. Some things haven’t worked out with injuries."

SPORTING DIRECTOR MLADEN SORMAZ

He has done a good job, I know this is not what a lot of Barnsley fans think. He’s had to work under financial constraints. He’s been extremely diligent working within those parameters. I think a lot of signings will come good in the next couple of years and we need to give him credit for players like Davis Keillor-Dunn. Everyone has a good relationship with him and recognises the work he’s doing. It’s easy to pick on the sporting director when the team is not performing well but there are a lot of other factors at play.

NEXT SEASON’S BUDGET AND POSSIBLE SALES

Football in this country is broken. Clubs are losing money hand over fist. Even if we didn’t sack two managers, the loss for next season is forecast to be somewhere in the region of eight to ten million pounds. It’s completely unsustainable. For the last two or three years we’ve chosen to sell as few players as possible and give ourselves as good a chance for promotion as we could have. That will have to revert to the model where we have to sell a few players in the summer, like a lot of clubs do. But we will reinvest into the squad as we have done and the books show that.

We’re dealing with clubs who are willing to burn unlimited amounts of money. There is only so long I agree to fund millions and millions out of my own pocket.

Realism is probably something we need. We have to be pragmatic. We want to get back to the Championship but I don’t want any fan to buy as season ticket thinking we’re going to invest a crazy amount – ten million or 20 million pounds.

We will put money in. We will live within our means and push towards the Championship because we still are one of the bigger clubs in this division.