Barnsley are a club on the rise right now, chasing play-off football in the Championship with a vibrant young squad that are a joy to watch.

Valerian Ismael’s side were beaten by Sheffield Wednesday over the weekend in a South Yorkshire derby, with Jordan Rhodes doing the damage for the Owls. However, there’s no taking away from the fact that Barnsley have stunned followers of the Championship by staging a promotion push.

The dream of a return to the Premier League for the first time since the late 90s is a mouth-watering prospect and, if it were to materialise, it would offer the club a chance to break some 20-year records with regard to transfer fees.

That’s the focus of this particular article, as we dive into the archives and pick out the 10 most expensive players to ever arrive at Oakwell over the years.

Click through to the following side to reveal who sits at No.10.

The wider records suggest that when Fjortoft swapped Sheffield United for Barnsley and the Premier League in 1998, he cost around £1.04m.

Fjortoft had been a reasonable success with Swindon Town and Middlesbrough earlier in his career in England, playing in the top-flight with the latter before moving to Sheffield United in 1997.

The striker’s spell at Bramall Lane was a good one and, in the end, it opened the door for him to return to English football’s top-flight with Barnsley.

He scored six times in the Premier League for the Tykes, but couldn’t help keep the club in the top-flight and he left as they settled back into life in the Football League.

Right now, Fjortoft is doing plenty of media work.

Hignett had featured for both Crewe and Middlesbrough before he moved to Aberdeen in 1998.

His short-term spell in Scotland ended and brought him to Barnsley, where he signed for an undisclosed fee, which was believed to be around the £1.08m mark.

That proved to be money well spent, with Hignett scoring 37 goals during his time at Oakwell, including 21 in the 1999/2000 season as Barnsley reached the First Division play-off final.

They would lose 4-2 to Ipswich Town that day, with Hignett moving on to Blackburn Rovers not long after for almost double what the Tykes had paid for him 18 months prior.

Hingnett is another that has plunged into media work since retiring from playing.

Barnsley swooped to sign Schmidt ahead of the 2019/20 season, with the forward linking up with Daniel Stendel at Oakwell.

Although not fee was disclosed at the time of his signing, it is believed he cost somewhere in the region of £1.08m, similar to Hignett.

Schmidt made 41 appearances for Barnsley, although 35 of those came from the bench. He also scored four goals for the club, including one in the League Cup win over Middlesbrough earlier in the 2020/21 season.

Since then, he’s joined Ried on loan and has one goal in seven appearances for the club in the Austrian league.

Thomas is another quite recent name on this list, having signed from Derby County in the same summer as Schmidt, 2019.

He’d been good for Coventry City in the season gone by, costing around £1.22m (although, again, the fee was undisclosed at the time of the transfer).

Thomas scored the only goal of the game as Barnsley beat Fulham on the opening day of the Championship season, but that was his only league goal of the season for the Tykes.

He did, however, play an important role in helping Barnsley retain their Championship status.

Since then, Thomas has linked up with Ipswich Town on loan.

O’Brien arrived at Oakwell from Motherwell back in 2010, with the transfer reportedly setting Barnsley back around £1.22m.

The midfielder made 133 appearances for the club over a four-year stint in South Yorkshire, as well as scoring eight goals for the Tykes in that time.

However, by the time the 2014 summer came around, he was cutting ties with Barnsley and joining Coventry City.

From that point in his career, O’Brien moved around quite freely but did return to Yorkshire eventually to link up with Bradford City for 2018/19.

Right now, O’Brien is on the books with Notts County in the National League.

Kane had progressed through the ranks at Liverpool, but made only a couple of senior appearances for the Premier League champions.

Loans with Doncaster Rovers and Hull City were good, which convinced Barnsley to take the plunge in the summer gone by and spend £1.25m on the midfielder.

The 22-year-old’s spell at Oakwell so far has yielded 27 appearances across all competitions, with the bulk of those coming in the Championship.

However, he has started only six times in the league this season, with 18 of his appearances coming from the bench.

He was last involved in the 3-1 victory over Wycombe Wanderers on March 17th when he stepped off the bench for the final 15 minutes at Adams Park.

Barnsley landed the service of much-travelled forward, Andy Gray, on a transfer from Charlton Athletic back in the summer of 2009.

The fee paid was reported to be undisclosed, but reading between the lines of other fees paid for players in this list, Gray will have cost between £1.2m and £1.25m.

Between 2009 and 2012, Gray scored 21 goals in 96 appearances for the Tykes in the Championship.

Then, in the summer of 2012, he headed back to Elland Road to link up with Leeds United on a free transfer, finishing his playing career in West Yorkshire with the Whites and then Bradford City.

Since retiring, Gray has done some coaching with Leeds.

Hume had been part of the Leicester City squad to suffer relegation out of the Championship in 2007/08, but Barnsley swooped to keep him at that level and paid a significant fee for the striker.

It’s reported by Sky Sports that the fee involved was around £1.2m, with Hume agreeing a three-year deal at Oakwell to secure his mid-term future.

Over the course of the two seasons that Hume stayed with Barnsley, he scored nine goals in 32 league starts, with a further 19 appearances coming from the bench.

Hume would also feature in four League Cup fixtures, but fail to add to his nine goals in those games to take his tally to double figures.

He joined Preston North End in September 2010.

Hume is another to do media work recently, whilst also taking on his coaching badges.

Ward was signed from Derby County back in the summer of 1997, making the move to Oakwell to be part of Barnsley’s venture in the top-flight of English football.

He scored eight goals in the Premier League and then a further 12 in the First Division the following season, more than justifying the £1.5m that the Tykes paid to take him to Oakwell.

However, after a great start to the season in 1998/99, Premier League, Blackburn Rovers, picked up Ward.

A transfer report from Lancashire Telegraph claims that Rovers paid a fee of £4.5m for Ward in the end, leaving Barnsley with a tidy profit on the £1.5m they had paid out to initially sign the forward from Derby.

Ward is involved in property business now and appeared on The Real Housewives of Cheshire alongside his wife.

Ranking top of this particular list is Macedonian footballer, Gjorgji Hristov.

After scoring goals regularly for Partizan, Barnsley were convinced to pay just over £1.5m for the service of the striker.

He would score only four goals in the Premier League for Barnsley, though, including one against Leeds United, which was a fixture he was also sent-off in.

In total, Hristov would make 57 appearances for Barnsley across all competitions, scoring 11 times for the Tykes before moving on in 2000 after the club had failed to win promotion back into the top-flight.

To this day, Barnsley have never broke the fee they paid for the Macedonian, who is now retired after a brief spell in coaching.