Ashley Barnes playing in the Premier League

[Bozza]

Given that our front line currently consists of one dev squad striker who's barely played Championship football, another who's just come back from a career threatening injury and another who's played a handful of competitive matches then yes. He probably would make the team.

Which one of those is Chris O'Grady?

 

[chaileyjem]

Which one of those is Chris O'Grady?

Ha! Of course. I meant to say COG has played a handful of "competitive matches for ...*edit* us".
I think he'll do ok this season but he's a very different type of player to AB.

 

[Monkey Man]

Barnes is a player a lot of fans can relate to - someone whose effort and workrate makes up for the odd technical deficiency. His shots and passes were sometimes wayward and his temper boiled over too often, but when things went wrong for him it just seemed to spur him on even more. He never hid and very often it was his drive and positivity that made things happen. He was also capable of some sublime touches, on his day.

Players like that seem to get more abuse than those who aimlessly play the ball backwards or sideways, or who avoid tackles, or shirk responsibility when they could have a shot.

 

[Simster]

Barnes had made it clear he would not sign a new contract when his deal ran out that Summer, leaving the Albion with two choices:

1. Keep him at the club until the Summer and watch him walk away.
2. Cash in during January if a decent enough offer came in.

Burnley offered a sum that the club believed was acceptable so he departed in January. I'm not sure Barnes would have made the difference between 6th and 2nd place, so I think it was probably the right thing to do. Barber squeezes everything out of these sales, so I imagine Burnley's promotion would have been worth a few quid to us too.

This is probably a fair assessment, as disappointing as it was. Barnes was brought in for £200k, we probably sold him for around £1m with add-ons, and in between we had a player who delivered a league title and 2.5 very good seasons at this level.

With hindsight, I should imagine the club wishes it hadn't done the deal, but that is with hindsight. Were they expected to guess that Ulloa would go after receiving such a large offer? In the mean time, they probably wanted a Barnes replacement to lead the line while the next Leo was found. That man was COG, and he hasn't been good yet (plenty of time though).

 

[somerset]

Yep, clueless and frankly obsessed

Which of us us obsessed?....who is commenting about him?....long after he left!...... I haven't mentioned him since the day he left, seems to me its a kettle black scenario with all of you lot still bleating on about him after a minor cameo against Chelsea, with his notable contribution being a 10m pass to the lino.

Note: even in this thread, my comment was about Poyet.

 

[Acker79]

Barnes had made it clear he would not sign a new contract when his deal ran out that Summer, leaving the Albion with two choices:

1. Keep him at the club until the Summer and watch him walk away.
2. Cash in during January if a decent enough offer came in.

Burnley offered a sum that the club believed was acceptable so he departed in January. I'm not sure Barnes would have made the difference between 6th and 2nd place, so I think it was probably the right thing to do. Barber squeezes everything out of these sales, so I imagine Burnley's promotion would have been worth a few quid to us too.

Sounds very much like the clubs view of events.

In the argus interview, Barnes talks about the club refusing to negotiate on his contract, that he wasn't refusing to sign A contract, but refusing to sign the one and only contract they were willing to offer, suggesting he was open to staying had the club shown they wanted him and improved their offer.

But then that is his view of the truth.

Maybe he wanted too much, maybe the club wanted to ship out another of 'poyet's men', I don't imagine either side would openly admit to either. Personally, given how this season has started and the barrenness of our attacking options, I'm still not sure whether it was right or wrong to let him go instead of negotiating a better offer that both sides found acceptable.

 

[BrianWade4]

He did a lot of spitting on the touchline before running on

 

[Billy the Fish]

Some quick and simple ways of telling if a Brighton fan is a empty headed buffoon:

They think Barnes is/was crap.
They think Hammond is anonymous and crap.

We must have some of the thickest fans around, or do they all just congregate on here?

Got to agree wholeheartedly with this. A lot of our fans are classic ball watchers and can't see if players are doing a job for the good of the team.

Unless you are scoring, making last ditch tackles or killer passes you must be crap - get rid. Then we get rid (for a fee, or a bigger contract of course) and we really miss them. How much could we do with Ashley Barnes now, he wasn't even asking for magabucks, all we had to do was offer him a 3 year contract and probably a modest pay increase. A bit like Murray

 

[Billy the Fish]

Barnes had made it clear he would not sign a new contract when his deal ran out that Summer, leaving the Albion with two choices:

1. Keep him at the club until the Summer and watch him walk away.
2. Cash in during January if a decent enough offer came in.

That's one way of looking at it, but it's not what was reported at the time. The general consensus on here was that Albion offered a two year contract and wouldn't budge, Barnes knew he could do better elsewhere so he did. Exactly the same as Murray.

Now you could say well done to the club, you've stuck to your guns and wouldn't be held to ransom by players wage demands. But with hindsight is it fair to say the club got it wrong on both occasions and would've saved money in the long run by making a bit of extra effort to keep those players bearing in mind how much the eventual replacements cost? IMHO it is.

 

[keaton]

You obviously dreamt that one up..... I don't recall any of those calls until after he shat on us.

People were complaining about us playing boring football under Poyet weeks before we won the league 1 title and during the championship play-off push

 

[hart's shirt]

It's been said that footballers reach their peak between 27-29 years.

Barnes is 24.

He's not the finished product yet, but he has his best years ahead of him. I'm sure he'll score a few this season too.

His sale was inevitable rather than letting him go for nothing as he said that he wouldn't be signing another contract. Purely in financial terms of buying and selling prices, it was a good piece of business. However his work-rate and goals haven't been replaced.

There's been so much talk about whether or not he was good enough to play for Brighton.

Is it more the case that Brighton wasn't good enough for him?

 

[keaton]

Barnes had made it clear he would not sign a new contract when his deal ran out that Summer, leaving the Albion with two choices:

1. Keep him at the club until the Summer and watch him walk away.
2. Cash in during January if a decent enough offer came in.

Burnley offered a sum that the club believed was acceptable so he departed in January. I'm not sure Barnes would have made the difference between 6th and 2nd place, so I think it was probably the right thing to do. Barber squeezes everything out of these sales, so I imagine Burnley's promotion would have been worth a few quid to us too.

Why did he not want to sign a contract though? It could very well be that he didn't think Oscar would give him a chance when Ulloa got fit (he had started some unfit/awful players over him previously). If we'd have kept him Burnley would want him in the summer as they were building for promotion and with Oscar gone he would have signed a new contract.

I can see the argument for taking the money and we did (just) make the play-offs without him but I think we would have been a much better team in the run-in and had more chance against Derby with him in the team. We'd also need to balance how much we got for him against Lingaards/Rodgriguez's wages/loan and signing fees


It goes back to why he wasn't on a longer contract to start with though

 

[chaileyjem]

He's not the finished product yet, but he has his best years ahead of him.

For now though that will be on the bench. He's been there since January and has so far started one match...

 

[Gwylan]

But with hindsight is it fair to say the club got it wrong on both occasions and would've saved money in the long run by making a bit of extra effort to keep those players bearing in mind how much the eventual replacements cost? IMHO it is.

It most lines of business, it's much cheaper to hold on to your staff than recruiting new ones. However, in my experience, common sense goes out of the window when it comes to staff demands. I've seen bosses quibble over an extra thousand quid for an employee, only to pay out a lot more than that to get someone in. Football seems to be no exception ... but it's a bonkers attitude

 

[Return of the Rev]

I know it features in the game thread but great to see AB getting 20 mins tonight. They may not have the strongest squad but good luck to him to this season, especially after all the cr*P he got when playing for us.

The first time i saw Ashley Barnes he was coming on as sub for Eastbourne boro at the dripping pan,good luck to the lad!

 

[Mowgli37]

I'm delighted for him. Gutted when he left so I hope he does well for Burnley.

 

[keaton]

For now though that will be on the bench. He's been there since January and has so far started one match...

Or 11 starts as FACTS say

 

[chaileyjem]

Or 11 starts as FACTS say

True he's made 11 appearances or 12 if you include last night. All from the bench for c10-20minutes and he's scored 3 goals.
But just 1 start...so far.

 

[Acker79]

I just went on soccerbase. They list him as starting in the last eleven games of last season

http://www.soccerbase.com/players/player.sd?player_id=46576&season_id=143

 

[somerset]

Er, no I didn't.

You must feel a bit silly with Ashley Barnes strutting his stuff in the Premier League eh? I assume you still think he isn't good enough for us?

I was talking about Poyet you dullard.....can you read?