Paul Conway on why new Barnsley CEO Khaled El-Ahmad is so important to Reds

El-Ahmad will start work in his post on September 6, with his arrival in Barnsley having previously been delayed due to visa issues.

The Swede arrives from the City Football Group (CFG) and has previously worked in a number of senior football and business positions across the continent, including director of Concacaf at CFG, chief scout at Stockholm-based side Djurgårdens and analyst with Danish outfit AaB Aalborg.

Confident he will boost the club's commercial effectiveness and ability to tap in a number of new markets on the player recruitment front, Conway said: "He (El-Ahmad) is going to be fantastic and helps us in areas we need to improve as a club.

"We balance the budget here. Every £50,000 or £100,000 of new revenue we gain - or sometimes lose - has an impact here.

"He is coming from a really impressive commercial organisation and we are also continually trying to improve the academy and he comes from a background deeply involved in youth football.

"We are trying to get further improvements in that. Top of the list is recruiting because post-Brexit, we have to be more creative in our recruiting and he brings in markets where we frankly have not done a great job on in the past that we have to work within these new confines and rules of post Brexit immigration.

"Definitely North America is a big part of it and various other countries in Europe, definitely Scandinavia. We have to be more creative in finding players. With a player who has got a cap for Luexmbourg, that is much more important to Barnsley now than last year and that is an area where he has much more experience than we have in the club."