Low cost, high pressing: how Barnsley took the Championship by storm

“Holding your nerve is a very polite way of putting it,” says the Barnsley chief executive, Dane Murphy, breaking into laughter as he recalls this time last year when the club was propping up the Championship and seven points from safety. They stayed up on the final day courtesy of a stoppage-time winner at Brentford but the sequel to last season’s miraculous escape might yet trump that climax. With 11 games to go, sixth belongs to Barnsley, a forward-thinking, data-driven club with a low-cost, high-pressing formula.

Barnsley’s style has revolved around suffocating and sapping opponents for a few years but, nine months ago, the landscape looked markedly different. “There was not a lot of sleep,” says Murphy. “The goal scored by Clarke Oduor to keep us in the division changes the stars. That really galvanised everyone involved because it proved that yes, we took a lot of risks last season by starting the youngest team in the division and having the lowest budget, and we struggled at times, mightily. But we have been able to give them time to grow into the group you see now and this is the reward.”

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Faith in a Moneyball-like model is yielding results at Barnsley, where Billy Beane, who transformed Oakland Athletics’ trajectory with the use of statistical analysis, is a shareholder. They have won seven of their past eight matches and are unbeaten in 10 before visiting Bournemouth on Saturday. Fans have not clunked through Oakwell’s turnstiles for 12 months but might they return to the terraces supporting a Premier League club? Valérien Ismaël, who took charge of the club in October when Barnsley had three points from their first six matches, affords himself a wry smile.

“We have three games until the international break and after we will see a clear picture in the table and maybe we will see what’s going on for us, if we can push for more or if it was a nice trip,” Ismael says. “We deserve to be here, we don’t have any big pressure and must stay hungry. We want to continue to move forward to finish this great season as high as we can.”

Barnsley have a “soft cap” on signing players over the age of 24 (at 26, top scorer Cauley Woodrow was the oldest player in their starting lineup in midweek) and target undervalued players from the lower leagues and across Europe who can develop into assets. Metrics such as PPDA (passes per defensive action) detail the intensity with which a team defends and can help recruit players accustomed to Barnsley’s gegenpressing philosophy.

“If we look at a player who is extremely talented, and his goals and assists are through the roof but he is not able to sustain an element of pressing and defending high up the field for 90 minutes, that is a red flag for us,” says Murphy. “There are lots of clubs that use data and have brought in analysts to push in this direction ... but at Barnsley it’s the principle, it’s the root of what we are doing. There are clubs that say, ‘We need to bring it in as an ingredient’ but here it is the bedrock. Like Brentford in a way and Red Bull on a global scale, data is the first thing that wipes out the noise for us.”

There are perhaps more parallels between the Red Bull franchise, which owns clubs in Austria, Brazil, Germany, and the United States, and Barnsley’s royal redbrick facade and the wooden seats of the West Stand than at first glance. This week the Chinese-American billionaire Chien Lee, whose Pacific Media Group consortium bought Barnsley in 2017, added the Danish club Esbjerg to its stable of clubs, which includes Oostende, who are flying high in the Belgian First Division after finishing second-bottom last season, and Nancy, who have made strides in Ligue 2 since the takeover in January. Both are run day to day by Gauthier Ganaye, the former Barnsley chief executive.

“It is on a smaller scale than Red Bull, but the idea and the intent of the ownership group was to create this ecosystem where each club is run with this financial model and recruitment model,” Murphy says. “Red Bull as a global club, and a global brand, their approach has been unique on several fronts and to try and emulate what they are doing, on and off the field, would only make sense. Brentford have set the standard in the Championship with how they are able to, on a smaller budget and with fewer resources than some competitors, steadily climb by finding talent that is undervalued and underused, and move those pieces on and bring new ones in.”

Barnsley are at pains to avoid talk of the P-words – promotion and the Premier League – but are quick to spy potential, with Callum Styles, who joined from Bury as an 18-year-old after scouts tracked him in League Two, a prime example. Styles has flourished in midfield and at left wing-back and, on the opposite flank, Callum Brittain has shone since signing from MK Dons in October.

In January, Liam Kitching followed Ethan Pinnock, now of Brentford, in signing from Forest Green, while Conor Chaplin, a nippy striker, was identified while breaking through at Portsmouth before signing from Coventry. Not every signing is a triumph but the pathway is clear. “They have a track record of pushing young players into the first team and that appealed,” says Styles. “It was the right decision in terms of not getting lost as a youngster.”

On Wednesday, Ismaël again played his party trick: a triple change before the hour mark to replenish his attack as if a Formula One car refuelling. “Exactly,” says the Frenchman, who has made more substitutions (139) than any other team this season. “My concern is: how can I keep the intensity high throughout the 90 minutes? That is why I was very delighted that we would have five substitutes [this season] because the front three are very important to our philosophy.”

Barnsley’s use of data has been accelerated since Beane came on board but the approach was the baby of the late former owner Patrick Cryne, whose son, James, owns a minority stake and heads the club’s recruitment operation. Incredibly, in a division awash with overspend, the club’s record signing remains the £1.5m they paid for Georgi Hristov in 1997.

“We face teams week in, week out that have eight, nine, maybe sometimes 15 times the budget of what we are working with,” says Murphy. “I think that is another reason why we have to stick to our true north in the path that we are on with the data because if we go outside the lane and say: ‘OK, with this one player we are going to go beyond our means,’ then the dam breaks. We are bearing the fruit of our philosophy and, hopefully, that can continue.”