'Lessons have been learned and we move on:' - Barnsley FC believe strides are being made behind scenes

Barnsley, with Jon Flatman as chief exeuctive, Mladen Sormaz as sporting director and Ann Hough as head of operations and club secretary, appear to be on a firmer footing after a testing period.

Before a ball had been kicked in the 2024-25 season, the club received news that it had escaped a points sanction after being charged with multiple breaches of EFL regulations, including a failure to provide the governing body with correct and/or complete information regarding the shareholdings at the club.

Former co-chairman and directors Paul Conway and Chien Lee - who left the board in May 2022 following a shake-up with a new-look board headed by Indian entrepreneur Neerav Parekh taking over - were cited in the charges and were fined for failing to disclose the full details of the proposed ownership structure when they acquired the club in late 2017.

The charges hung over the club for just over a year and a cloud lifted when the news broke.

Flatman, speaking to The Yorkshire Post, said: “That chapter is closed. Fundamentally, remember that we opened it - and it was self-reported.

“It wasn’t pleasant because it was kind of new ground and I don’t think fans understood the rationale and background to it and I don’t quite think, internally, we realised how difficult that period would be.

"Lessons have been learned and we move on."

A high-profile mistake late last year saw the club kicked out of the FA Cup for fielding an ineligible player in a first-round replay at Horsham.

It was a regrettable episode for everyone connected with the club and heightened the need for a new structure with clear demarcation lines in terms of roles.

Flatman, who was named as permanent CEO at the start of March after initially taking over from Khaled El-Ahmad on an interim basis in December 2023, continued: “The incidents that have happened here have probably made everyone focus on ensuring that we need a structure and staffing to get it right.

“We lacked experience in the building and probably lacked a little bit of definition of roles. From January onwards, we sat down as a board and said: ‘okay, what has gone has gone, how are we going to improve this?’ The improvement of it is pretty straightforward and is not something that people would be unsurprised by. But we needed to have a new three-year strategy and one-year operational plan.

"Off the back of that, we identified where we needed to improve as an organisation and where the shareholders and ownership board wanted to take the club.

“We brought in a sporting director. The Championship (aim) is the most important and we needed to focus on football and we brought in an ‘SD’ who understood the data model, but that there’s people involved as well as data. Sormaz came in and did a review of the football business."

Sormaz was appointed at the start of February, while Hough arrived in early March, shortly after leaving her position as operations manager at Huddersfield Town - where she worked for over 30 years.

Flatman added: “We needed some support within the administration function relating to football, because that’s where we’d had issues. Ann was a really important appointment.

“Then, we looked at revamping the medical department and everything within football and ended up in a position where we got Darrell (Clarke – head coach). It didn't happen by chance, it happened because we did the review and identified the priorities."