BARNSLEY are beginning preparations for their fifth successive season in the third tier.

The only sides in the 2026/27 League One who have been at that level for longer are Burton Albion and Wycombe Wanderers.

It is the Reds’ longest spell outside the second tier – which was their home for so much of their history – since spending almost all of the 1960s and 70s bouncing around the third and fourth divisions.

Barnsley were in the footballing doldrums in the 1970s, sometimes playing in front of crowds of less than 3,000 for league games.

Jock Steele resigned as manager at the start of the 1971/72 season after 12 years in charge and was replaced by former Hull boss John McSeveney who immediately oversaw relegation to the fourth tier.

He was sacked during the following season and, after a brief return for Steele, Jim Iley took over then led them to 13th, 15th, 12th, sixth and seventh in an underwhelming five-year spell.

They had good players in that time, plucking the likes of Mick Butler and Anton Otulakowski from non-league then selling them on, while there were prolific goal-scorers like John Peachey and Brian Joicey, who stopped playing after suffering a stroke on the pitch.

They also sold Martin Gorry to Newcastle United who, earlier in the decade, had raided Oakwell for Stewart Barrowclough then Pat Howard.

The closest Iley came to promotion was in 1977 when a famous 4-3 loss to Exeter on a Tuesday night in May at Oakwell, having been 3-0 up, scuppered their chances.

One of the low points saw them dumped out of the FA Cup by non-league Marine in 1975 which then chairman Ernest Dennis called ‘the most humiliating experience of my life’.

Iley resigned in 1978 to join higher league Blackburn Rovers and was replaced by former Leeds and England striker Allan Clarke, then 32, for whom Barnsley paid a then club record £45,000 for so he could become player/manager.

He won his first five league games in the 1978/79 campaign – the first time the Reds had done that in a season since 1922 – and eventually secured the fourth automatic promotion place with a 2-1 win over Grimsby Town at Oakwell in front of 21,261 which was biggest crowd in more than 20 years. In the next season, a more ambitious and attractive Oakwell club signed future legends Ronnie Glavin, Trevor Aylott and Derrick Parker while Clarke blooded young players like Ian Banks and Joe Joyce having inherited Mick McCarthy.

They finished 11th in the third tier, with Clarke having famously reacted to a 7-0 loss at Reading by taking the squad down one of the local mines to speak to workers who were also fans.

Barnsley started the 1980/81 season well before Clarke moved to Leeds and was replaced by Norman Hunter who would finally lead the Reds back to the second tier that campaign.

They were unbeaten in 20 games at one point including six straight wins then beat champions Rotherham to secure the second promotion place with a game to spare.

They would not return to the third tier for 21 seasons, with one of those spent in the top flight.

Their only other spells below the second tier were from 2002 to 2006 when they almost went out of business, then 2014 to 2016 and the 2018/19 campaign.

This time it is proving far harder to get out of.