Ranked: The top 10 best players Barnsley have produced from their academy – Do you agree? | OneFootball

It’s been a highly impressive season so far for Barnsley.

Sitting sixth in the Championship table, eight points adrift of the automatic promotion places, Valerien Ismael’s side look well set to challenge for a place in the Premier League next season.

Regardless of what happens in that pursuit of a place in the top-flight of English football, this has already been a hugely impressive achievement from the Tykes, considering they only avoided relegation to League One on the final day of last season.

Another impressive aspect of Barnsley is their academy, with a number of players who developed in the Tykes youth ranks going on to make impressive progress in their careers, either this season or over the course of the past few years.

Here, we’ve taken a closer look at some of those to have come through the academy at Oakwell, by running through ten of the best players to have graduated from Barnsley’s youth ranks.

We start this list with a player who is still currently at Barnsley, in the shape of goalkeeper Jack Walton.

The 22-year-old has made 43 appearances in all competitions for the Tykes at senior level to date, with this season in particular seeing Walton establish himself as a more regular feature in Barnsley’s matchday squad, and starting lineup.

At a relatively early stage of his career, and having only signed a new three-year deal at Oakwell at the start of the current campaign, it does seem as though there may still be plenty to come from Walton between the posts for the Yorkshire club.

Another player to have come through the youth ranks at Barnsley who is still only just making his way in senior football with the Tykes, is midfielder Romal Palmer.

Having previously been part of both Barnsley’s Under 18s and Under 23s squad, before spending time out on loan with non-league Darlington last season, Palmer made the step up to the Tykes’ senior side for the 2020/21 campaign.

The 22-year-old has old made 30 appearances in all competitions for the club, seemingly impressing those behind the scenes at Oakwell given the way he has established himself in the side, with the midfielder scoring his first senior goal in the 2-1 defeat at Blackburn late last November.

Next up on this list is James Bree, who became the club’s second youngest player ever when he came on as a 73rd minute substitute for the Tykes against QPR in the final game of the 2013/14 season, at the age of 16 years and 143 days.

The right-back would go on to make a total of 61 appearances in all competitions for the Tykes, before leaving the club for Aston Villa in the 2017 January transfer window for what was said to be a substantial fee.

Bree’s time at Villa Park didn’t quite see him get the game time he would have hoped for though, and he is now back playing in the Championship with Luton, having made a loan move from Villa to the Hatters permanent last summer.

Having graduated from Barnsley’s academy to make his senior debut for the club in 1999, before his 18th birthday, Fallon would go on to score 11 goals in 52 league appearances for the Tykes.

The striker would then leave Oakwell in 2004, spending much of the rest of his career moving about the football league, appearing for the likes of Swindon, Swansea, Ipswich, and perhaps most notably Plymouth.

Fallon also had spells in Scotland for Aberdeen and St Johnstone, while amassing 24 senior caps for New Zealand, featuring in all of his country’s games in the group stages of the 2010 World Cup, where they were eliminated with three draws from three games.

Butterfield was another player to make his Barnsley debut before the age of 18, coming off the bench in a League Cup defeat to Newcastle as a 17-year-old in August 2007.

That would prove to be the first of exactly 100 Barnsley appearances for Butterfield, who left the club in the summer of 2012 to join then Premier League side Norwich, although he never made an appearance for the Canaries before dropping back down to the Championship, turning out for the likes of Bolton, Derby, Middlesbrough and Sheffield Wednesday.

In total, Butterfield would make just over 300 appearances in English football’s second-tier, before heading down under to join Australian top-tier side Melbourne Victory last summer.

Having come through the academy at boyhood club Barnsley, Parkin would make just a handful of appearances for the Tykes at senior level during a four-year spell with the Oakwell first-team between 1998 and 2002.

Never the less, Parkin would go on to enjoy a respectable career up and down the various levels of English football, representing the likes of Stoke, Preston and Cardiff, and eventually scoring over 200 goals in more than 650 appearances.

Indeed, with his physicality and personality, the striker also became something of a cult hero within English football, and would later go on to recount stories of some of his antics on various media platforms.

After graduating through the club’s academy, Morgan would make his debut for Barnsley in January 1998, when the club were last playing in the Premier League.

Although Morgan could not prevent relegation that season, the defender would go on to make over 200 appearances for the club, winning their Player of the Year Award for the 1999/00 campaign.

Morgan would eventually leave Oakwell in 2003 when he made the move across Yorkshire to Sheffield United, where he would spend the next nine seasons, including the Blades’ 2006/07 Premier League campaign, making a total of 279 appearances in all competitions, before retiring from playing in July 2012 as a result of a long-running injury problem.

Having joined Barnsley at the age of nine, Holgate would go on to make his debut for Barnsley at the age of 18 in a 1-1 draw with Doncaster in December 2014.

Ultimately though, Holgate would leave Oakwell the following summer when he completed a move to Everton for a reported £2million, having made 22 appearances in total for the Tykes.

After something of a slow start to life at Goodison Park, which even saw him loaned out to West Brom to aid their Championship promotion push in 2018/19, recent seasons have seen Holgate establish himself as a regular feature for the Toffees, proving his capabilities at top-flight level.

There aren’t many clubs who can claim to have had the World’s most expensive defender on their books as a youth player, but Barnsley are one who can, thanks to Harry Maguire.

The current Manchester United captain did originally spend time with Barnsley, before making the move to Sheffield United – who would become his first professional club – at a young age.

As a result, the centre back never actually made a senior first-team appearances for the Tykes, though they can still claim to have played a role in the development of a key member of England’s 2018 World Cup semi-final squad, and the first £80million defender on the planet.

Although he may not be quite as expensive as Maguire, we’ve gone for Stones to top this list because of both his greater experience with Barnsley, and the success he has enjoyed in terms of trophies.

Having come through the Tykes’ academy, Stones, as the aforementioned Holgate would later do, joined Everton in 2013 after making 28 first-team appearances for Barnsley.

The centre back would then go on to join Manchester City three years later, where he has since won two Premier Leagues, two League Cups and an FA Cup, establishing himself as an England international, and he now looks to be playing a key role in City’s march back to the Premier League title this season.