This week, the 2025/26 season will start to feel more real.

The Barnsley players are due back to start their full pre-season on Monday, having returned on four occasions throughout their time off for ‘check-in days’ – an innovation brought in by new head coach Conor Hourihane.

At Thursday lunchtime, the fixtures for the new League One season will be announced – with the Reds seeing the terrain of a campaign in which they will look to improve significantly on last time’s drab mid-table finish.

Barnsley will hope too that they will be able to announce their first signing of the summer in the coming days.

So far, the Conor Hourihane era at Barnsley has been mainly based on vibes.

He is an extremely popular former player who has said all the right things about changing the culture at the club and getting back to more exciting football.

With the players speaking very warmly about him, it feels like he has the potential to be a successful coach.

But, other than a couple of impressive wins in his ten games at the end of last season, there has been little substance to back that up so far.

He deserves, and will surely get, patience to prove himself but this could be a vital summer for the club as they need much better recruitment than the previous couple of windows.

Hourihane is clearly playing a central role in the recruitment process this summer and his aura, contacts and reputation could be key weapons in winning the tight battles to sign players wanted by a host of rival clubs.

Stephen Humphrys' rejection of a new deal for newly-promoted Bradford City is a blow as, although he had an up and down season, he is a proven performer at the level.

A big part of Barnsley’s plans for the early part of the summer was to tie down the young talents who Hourihane blooded at the end of last season to longer contracts – such as Jono Bland, Kieren Flavell and Connor Barratt.

They have achieved that and are now looking to bring in new signings, with a wait to do so which is frustrating some supporters.

It has been seven years – other than the delayed 2020 transfer window due to Covid-19 – since the Reds have waited this long into a summer to make their first signing.

The summer of 2018 was a very different scenario as the Reds had been relegated with an excellent squad for League One and had the financial resources to keep the majority of them, with only a handful of new recruits starting with Kenny Dougall in the final days of July.

That team got promoted with a club record points tally.

This time they would like to make plenty of changes to an underperforming squad but must also balance the books.

There is no need to panic.

There is more than two months remaining in the transfer window.

The free agent market, unlike the last few summers, is thought to be strong this year and the Reds feel they can make some good signings in it.

As for taking many players out of other clubs for cash, that might be more difficult unless they sell some of their star men for big money which will partly help to plug the £10million gap in finances and partly go towards funding new recruits.

The likes of Davis Keillor-Dunn, Luca Connell and Adam Phillips are all thought to be happy at the club and not pushing for moves, but the right offer from the right club will be accepted as Barnsley need to make money this summer.

They are thought to have slapped an eye-watering pricetag on Keillor-Dunn while Jon Russell could potentially attract attention with Jamaica at the CONCACAF Gold Cup.

Hourihane has hinted that he wants to move on players who are in contract but not in his plans – and the friendlies might be instructive as to who they are.

He also wants to change to 4-3-3 with ‘exciting’ wingers.

But, with Humphrys leaving and Fabio Jalo injured for the early part of the season, he may have to use Barry Cotter and Kyran Lofthouse – previously right-backs – as the wide men in the first few weeks of pre-season.

Clearly several players must arrive in that position in the coming weeks.

Up front is another area which needs strengthening, with Max Watters the only senior back-up to Keillor-Dunn – unless Andy Dallas resurrects his Reds career after four loans away.

While they are well-stocked for centre-backs and central midfielders, in terms of numbers, those are positions they are considering recruiting in.

They also need surely at least one full-back on either side, and potentially another goalkeeper to compete with Kieren Flavell and Jackson Smith.