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Conor Hourihane’s message to fans after Barnsley’s lowest Oakwell league crowd since 2015

Conor Hourihane’s message to fans has emerged after Barnsley’s draw with Northampton attracts the lowest Oakwell league crowd since 2015.

The game, which played out to a 2-2, attracted an attendance of 8,806 on a cold February evening, last last seen lower when they played Port Vale over 10 years ago.

Fans remain discontent with the club suffering yet another lacklustre mid-table season, sitting 14th in the League One table with 37 points from 26 games played, 11 points from the playoff places and are just 6 points from the relegation zone.

Credit – @JamesBushell8

Credit – @downes_har25583

Barnsley boss Conor Hourihane said, per Yorkshire Post: “I think the people who came here were fantastic and stuck with the team to the very, very end.

“They could have easily had moans and groans obviously because I’m well aware of people’s frustrations.

“So I’d like to thank the fans that were here because I thought they were brilliant and they’ve come out to support the team and me which is great.

“They’re going to have a group of players here now at the football club – with a group of staff with me – that show a lot of care for the club and want to do the very best for it.

“We’re going to try and win as many games as we can before the end of the season and let’s see what happens and that would be the message that I’d send to them.”

Gabriel Sutton was asked to give his take on the situation at Barnsley, he said: “I think as football fans, we’re not always very good at scaling our criticisms to the size of the issues – it’s often either none or full blast, isn’t it!

“So at Barnsley, I think Neerav Parekh, Julie Ann Quay and Jon Flatman are far from perfect, but have the best of intentions.

“Likewise Jean & James Cryne, even if those two may be doing it more to honour Patrick’s legacy than for their own intrinsic passion (it’s for them to say if that’s fair but it at least appears that way to me).

“None of them though are particularly experienced when it comes to running a football club, and sometimes that period of learning where you’re bound to make mistakes can get mistakenly conflated with character flaws.

“I don’t think the club’s been run well, necessarily, but nor do I think key figures deserve anywhere near the same kind of criticism as Paul Conway and Chien Lee.

“I gather they’ve been seeking advice on financial sustainability, and they’re trying imperfectly.

“Until an ownership group better placed to take the club forward shows interest, I believe the current lot deserve constructive feedback, and to be supported in their efforts – because for now, you’re all each other have.”

In January 2026, Barnsley chairman Neerav Parekh, spoke at a fans forum. He was joined by Jon Flat­man and Conor Houri­hane and took questions from sup­port­ers on trans­fers, off the field issues and the future of the club.

On having the 13th highest budget in League One, Parekh said, per Barnsley Chronicle: “It makes me sad to say this, but unfor­tu­nately, league pos­i­tion cor­rel­ates very closely to spend. That’s just what the game has become. And again, we need to break that cycle because oth­er­wise, what’s the point of foot­ball?

“So even the teams that you think of low budgets, it would sur­prise you to see some of the budgets in League One this sea­son. I was shocked when I got the report from the EFL in terms of how many teams had a higher budget than us. I thought we’d have a very com­pet­it­ive top six budget but we’re 13th this sea­son. I talk to a lot of League One own­ers right now and it blows my mind in terms of how much they are spend­ing.

“Even the teams that seem like they’re a fairytale, and I think the clas­sic media example which I abso­lutely des­pise is Wrex­ham. They’re not a fairytale. They’ve bought their way up to the Cham­pi­on­ship. And there’s a lot more teams like that.

“So unfor­tu­nately, that’s the real­ity of foot­ball right now. But our goal as a club, we’re Barns­ley, we need to do bet­ter than just the budget. We can’t just rely on that.

“We should be doing bet­ter in terms of smarter recruit­ment.

“We should be doing bet­ter in terms of bring­ing more money into the club from other rev­enue streams so that we can improve the product and the pitch.

“Because at the end of the day, you’re in foot­ball to win games. And we need to put as much money as we can on the pitch.

“But 23 other clubs are think­ing the same way as well.

“The way League One works right now is own­ers can put in unlim­ited amounts of money if they want to. And that can go towards play­ing budget.

“Attend­ances count towards three, four, five mil­lion pounds maybe.

“But own­ers are will­ing to put in 15, 20 mil­lion pounds. And then they have lar­ger budgets – Hud­der­sfield, Bolton, Luton with para­chute money.

“Attend­ances are part of it. They’re really import­ant for clubs like us.

“But for some other clubs, own­ers pump­ing money dwarfs all of that.

“Dif­fer­ent clubs have dif­fer­ent cost struc­tures. For example, we don’t own the ground. We pay rent. It is an older ground.

“So main­ten­ance comes to some­where north of half a mil­lion pounds every sea­son. Other clubs don’t have that.”

Parekh on mistakes made: “I think recruit­ment hasn’t been good enough over a couple of sea­sons.

“I think this sum­mer we got it spot on with some of the play­ers com­ing in.

“Reyes Cleary and Patrick Kelly prob­ably being the best examples.

“But over the last few years, I have to hold our hands up and say it didn’t work out. That said, recruit­ment’s not an exact sci­ence.

“I think it was Sir Alex Fer­guson who said if you get 50 per cent of your incom­ings right, you’re doing really well.

“We prob­ably haven’t got that num­ber over the last few years.

“So I think that’s one area we need to improve on. I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but the amount of invest­ment that other clubs are mak­ing means

On backing the manager: “I think look­ing at the league table for sack­ing a man­ager is actu­ally quite a blunt instru­ment. There’s a lot more that goes into it. When we hired Conor in the first place, it’s his first gig as a man­ager.

On that from Janu­ary onwards: “We brought in Eoghan O’Con­nell, a 30-year-old who I really feel will help us for sure.

“I think it was really import­ant to identify someone to help out the defence.

“I think, right now, to bring in another one, I do feel like someone will have to leave. We go back to the budgets and being a little bit tight with money.

“The top end of the pitch is going to be where we’re going to be focus­ing on after bring­ing Eoghan in.

“I do think to rejig the defence even more so, we’re going to have to be patient with that one until the sum­mer or someone leaves in this win­dow, poten­tially to bring in another.

“We knew there’d be incon­sist­ency, we talked about this and we said: look, you’re learn­ing, we have young play­ers, we have a young coach, so it’s not just about the res­ults, it’s a lot more than just the res­ults.

“How we’re play­ing? Do we feel like we have chances of win­ning a game?

“Foot­ball’s a high vari­ance game. You can play really well and still lose the game. But it’s about the per­form­ance because over the long term, you per­form well, you get the points. We need to build for the long-term. Chan­ging man­agers often doesn’t work.

“We’d like to build for the long term, both in terms of play­ers, man­agers and not just on the pitch, even other staff.

“Unlike a lot of pre­vi­ous man­agers, I think Conor has an extremely high ceil­ing as a coach. He’s incred­ibly hard-work­ing. He’s incred­ibly driven. So I think, like with a lot of young play­ers that Barns­ley have, they have incred­ibly high poten­tial.

“And so you put up with that because you know that they’re going to con­sist­ently get bet­ter and con­sist­ently give you a really high level. Conor’s going to be here next year even if he’s incon­sist­ent because I think he can drive this club for­ward.

“I’ll hang my hat on that.”

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