Barnsley
Barnsley never reached the Premier League in the nine seasons from 2009/10 to 2017/18, spending seven in the Championship and two lower down. Their best finish was 15th in the Championship, in 2016/17. They didn’t win a major trophy. Over those nine summers they paid £6.5m in transfer fees and took in £6.6m, a net profit of £107k.
Barnsley's decade was a long fight against the Championship trapdoor, and for a while they won it. Eighteenth, 17th, 21st and 21st again: four seasons of staying up by the skin of their teeth before 23rd place in 2013/14 finally sent them down. They came back after two years in League One, finished a respectable 15th in 2016/17, then dropped again in 2017/18.
The model was to find young players and move them on. Mason Holgate went to Everton and Alfie Mawson to Swansea for around £5m, the biggest fee on their books in this period. Coming the other way, nobody cost much more than £1m.
On 115.football the Oakwell budget goes from loose change to £900m. Hold on to Mawson and Holgate, add a striker worth the name, and Barnsley stop worrying about 21st and start thinking about a first top-flight season since the late 1990s.
Season by season
Biggest signings
Biggest sales
Fees are those reported at the time, some estimated, for moves in the summer window. Trophies counted: the Premier League, Champions League, Europa League, FA Cup and League Cup.