Daryl Dike at West Bromwich Albion

Probably a pendulum swinging one way towards that model, but it will swing back when teams start to learn how to defend that system better with three at the back and more mobile defenders. Once that happens a big burly tall striker will stomp all over the smaller more agile defenders.

 

The championship can, often rightly, be called a lot of things, but easy is never one of them. It's a brutal league under immense pressure built by owners who just about always spend more than the club earns each season, and often spent two or three times their revenue. Pretty much every club is going broke chasing Prem gold, and it lends a frantic, desperate nature to a lot of the football. Now, there is some really lovely football played in the league, but I was a childhood Reading fan, and remain an adult version of that, and we are painful this year, but also successful.

 

No. Modern football, rather than simply 'big clubs', has moved away from the fairly immobile big men, the sort that struggle in modern pressing schemes. That's a likely reason Giroud, despite his 10 goals in 14 starts, has been seeing so much bench time at Chelsea. Of course, in a bit of nice counter-programming, playing pragmatically, France used him to excellent effect in their WC-winning campaign.

And high pressing is a statistical strength of Dike's.

 

This made me laugh.

https://t.co/JqKsLphZ3C pic.twitter.com/e0LW2XTGsp

— Barnsley FC (@BarnsleyFC) April 8, 2021

 

I like this reply.

1380151760044621825 is not a valid tweet id

Barnsley fans have to feel kind of weird about the guy...they want him to carry them to the Prem, but not be so dominant that a richer club will buy him.

I don’t think that’s a threadable needle.

 

The general feeling from Barnsley fans seems to be they found a gem that could potentially will them to promotion and love him for that... but are also so upset cause they realize they'll never actually get to see Dike in a Barnsley uniform in person

 

Is the "just announce it" bit fatalism or excitment? It could work if the belief is that they've signed him on a permanent and the fans want to know for certain. It would also apply if they are expecting the announcement that he's soon leaving. Orlando are now saying the price is $20 m, which would make him about 7x as expensive as their record signing and 10x as expensive as anyone else on their current roster.
Even if they're going up into the land of gold, that's a lot of money for a club this size.

 

I've been enjoying their message board. Mostly because I'm a weirdo. However, I think scanning this thread is informative.

http://barnsleyfc.org.uk/threads/invest-in-dike.303333/

 

Agreed, mostly because it will be so unusual for a team like Barnsley to get promoted, that for them to have gotten there, it must be due to some remarkable difference in their squad, which richer teams will want to pluck. The problem is that if they do get promoted and Dike is not retained, I'm not sure they are going to have much of a chance to remain in the Prem. It will, however, be a nice test of the moneyball theory in high level football.

 

If they somehow to wiggle their way into the Prem they have no chance to remain with or without Dike. Barnsley is poor club even by Championship standards is my understanding. I don’t think even their fans believe they can build a squad that would survive a season in the EPL.

 

Would take a Huddersfield-sized miracle for them to stay in the Prem. The other 4 teams in the playoff chase, you can see a world in which they stay up, but it's really tough to envision that world for Barnsley.

 

Even for a Championship side Barnsley is rather poor. Their wage bill is about 8M pounds. I think I've read the lowest EPL team's wage bill is over 60M pounds, so they're 1/8th of that. There's no way they can compete sustainably on a budget so small and hope to stay up. Their best strategy is a yo-yo one, where they go up, collect the 200M pounds in EPL money and parachute payments, go back down, with a strengthened squad and bounce back up, and do it all over again; all the while, slowly upgrading their facilities and overall squad. It'll be a test of their approach if they can do it.

Can they afford buying Dike? Sure, they can afford it if they go up, but is it the wisest use of their money? That's the $20M question.

 

In that Athletic article, there was another graphic of the age of their squad. They're REALLY young.

Given that, and their moneyball philosophy, if they manage to win the promotion playoffs, I fully expect them to have a 3 year plan.

1. In 21-22, figure out which of their young guys can play at the Prem level, and which ones can't. Get relegated.
2. In 22-23, invest in retaining the guys who can play, and in replacing those who can't. Get promoted.
3. In 23-24, stay in the Prem.

 

would also say they were smart enough to identify dike in the first place, which leads one to believe they are finding some hidden gems and with a bit more money might find even more.

 

Well of course they are smart; they put an American in charge.

But seriously, the analytics revolution started in the US, and the teams most into it tend to have American roots. If you're an underfunded team and not diving into finding a way to identify undervalued assets, you're not doing it right.

 

Found the original story:
https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/ne...-storm-now-growing-pains-threaten-its-future/

I always like to give the hits to the original author, as opposed to the aggregators.

One thing that always puzzles me is that, all the articles I've seen have the buyout at $20M, while all the Brits have converted that to 17M pounds. When I convert $20M, I get 14.5M pounds. Are they using 20M Euros in their conversion to pounds?

 

Gotta like how he's got them dreaming of bing promoted. He's been there 3 months and seemingly walking on water with a goal every other game.

 

Correct me if I am wrong but the 20M is not his market value, just the amount that Orlando is contractually obligated to accept from Barnsley if Barnsley chooses to active the buy clause of the contract. If Barnsley knows they can sell him for more it would be fullish to not buy him, regardless of their past history. It could be like a sign and trade deal done here all the time. They buy him from Orlando, agree to terms on a contract, then sell him the next day to someone else.

 

But you also have to include the 20% selling-on fee, so if Barnsley were to buy him for $20M, they'd have to get at least $25M in order to breakeven.

Having said that, the player has to come to terms as well. If Barnsley were to want to activate the option to buy, they'd still have to negotiate wages with Dike's agent. If they don't come to an agreement, then no deal, right?

 

I think the $20 million purchase option was debunked. I don't know why everyone acts like its gospel.

 

Love this detail from the CBS article:

Called up to Gregg Berhalter's squad just before his 21st birthday, if Dike took to the field in a friendly against Trinidad and Tobago he would earn 16 points on the English Football Association's guidelines, just one more than the minimum required, and with it the Tykes could be assured he would get the green light to join them for the second half of the season.

"I'd kept it very close to the vest for a long time because I knew there was interest outside of the MLS market in Daryl and I didn't want to sort of tip my hand as to it becoming a possibility because it was a last second move," says Murphy. "I don't think anyone else knew that when he stepped on the field he met the criteria. I knew if it got out, we would be outbid or something would happen.

"We got in contact [with Orlando and Dike's representatives], we drew everything up. We stayed up until the middle of the night to see Daryl enter the field in the second half and as soon as that happened, we filed all our paperwork. The next morning he was on a plane."​

For all I know, I read this somewhere else a month ago and already posted it. But here it is again because you and I both have better things to do with our time than read my old BigSoccer posts.

 

My question is, did Murphy speak to Berhalter and tell him he needed to play Dike to get those points for the possible transfer? Obviously from Dike's standpoint, the kid is quality and he was going to get a move overseas at some point as well as a callup to the national team, but was that cap manufactured given the need to get those points from the England FA? I think the whole qualification for a work permit thing is total BS in this day and age. If a team believes that a player is worthy of a significant transfer fee and that player is better than a local British equivalent, said player should be eligible to transfer and have a work permit. Manufacturing a national team appearance is ridiculous.

There should be some league specific transfer fee eligibility, say if a League 1 team is willing to go over 1M for a player, that player should just qualify for a work permit. Isn't there something similar in a Scandinavian country?

 

I don't know why you're acting like Barnsley's CEO's vague statement is gospel. It's counteracted by a myriad of credible reporters, at home and abroad, who corroborated it's indeed a 20 million dollar purchase option w/ a 20% sell on. Which is more in line with them setting their asking price at around 12 and getting a near 10 million dollar (8 Euro) offer from Brugge even before being put in the shop window. All the while Orlando have been steadfast they aren't letting him go easily and could bring him back if they're not blown away.