It's never been an overnight fix, but foundations are steady

Bees close in on double opportunity

Image courtesy of Barnet FC

Eleven games to go, one cup semi-final against Gateshead. Twelve games where I don’t give a toss what the performance looks like as long as we get the result. Why? Because performances however good, indifferent or bad won’t get us a play off place nor a Trophy Final place at Wembley.

I was there on Saturday, I’ve done more games this season so far than I expected to attend, not just because I have a season ticket this time around but because I’ve wanted to be there, twelve months I’d have rather been anywhere else almost.

Reading through the Only Barnet message board on Monday afternoon made for some interesting thoughts and views. Everyone granted is entitled to their opinion, me included and none is either right or wrong, provokes debate.

Last season we didn’t enjoy it did we, bar the Middlesex Senior Cup there wasn’t anything much to shout about, the emergence of Ryan De Havilland maybe, Adam Marriott’s 16 goals, struggling a little bit after that.

Here we are now, knocking on the middle of March and 90 minutes from Wembley and a play off place in our own destiny. Now I’m not going to argue one is more important than the other as some say, winning games in any competition breeds confidence. Yes, we’ve had a fixture backlog, not all caused by the Trophy and I agree with John Erroll over the fixture planning, it’s been badly thought out this year compared to most others.

How many times do you see a club transform itself in the short space of time like our management team have overseen so far? It’s still a long way from being finished, well aware the full squad is nowhere near a consistent top five challenging outfit and that is down to the depth, not the starting XI.

It’s never been an overnight fix and while you could look at the team who ends up on the pitch most games being fixed it goes much deeper. Do we forget that? At times, absolutely. We’ve been taken from one extreme to the other, one end of the pendulum to the other in a very short space of time but in that middle we’re putting down foundations not to be in the 2021-22 position again and you have to agree we’re not operating on quicksand now.

Of course priority is getting out of the National League, but lets be sensible here, no one has competed with the top two all year, it’s almost like let them have their ball and play between them, leave the rest of us alone, luck over all 46 games takes anyone above Wrexham and Notts County.

Wembley is parked for two weeks at least, in the meantime league wins can come off Nicke Kabamba’s backside, a shinned in effort from Marvin Armstrong, a peach from Idris Kanu, I really don’t care if it’s the only shot on target, we’ve done the hard part getting ourselves into a position none of us thought possible twelve or even six months ago, kidding me and yourself if you saw it coming.

The pride is back, we’ve had a toothless club for neigh on three years, now the snarls and buzz are back with a vengeance and enticing people back to watch. Make sure they understand it’s not about being pretty for the next six weeks, it’s about being professional and seeing the job through by any means necessary, and whatever the outcome are we not proud players want to wear this shirt for us again?

I know they’ll be disappointed if they don’t achieve both targets on offer, they’re a driven bunch, they drive each other on, we drive them on as we did on Saturday, it wasn’t pretty in that second 45 but we came again and got ourselves through, but don’t despair if we fall a little short, that desire to do everything better next season won’t be going away.