It's over when it's over

The wait for Wembley continues

And that was that. The season wrapped up in ninety minutes amidst the gloom and the rain at The Hive. Many have taken a couple of days to process, some went early on Saturday evening, one or two ill-advised.

The wait for Wembley continues, will Barnet FC have a better shot than this season? Well, let’s have a look at things. Be honest, we all expected to win didn’t we, we saw enough over 46 games that we had a squad under Dean Brennan that was improved on last year and far superior to the one before.

First of all, huge credit to Solihull Moors and Andy Whing, they had our number all afternoon. I liked Whing as a player, did a solid job at Banbury and speaks very well, I wasn’t convinced they and him would do this well, fair play to them and I like being proved wrong.

There’s been a lot said, a lot of opinions flying around, healthy. Some sadly went over the line, a reflection of social media and the times we’re living in means access to vent for all to see is there.

I choose not to jump on after a game, whether it’s a win, draw or loss for us, I don’t mind channelled opinion and healthy debate but sometimes you just despair.

Anyway, let’s get down to the matter of the weekend, the aftermath and other written opinions.

Disappointment, frustration, anger, missed opportunity, shock, all those and more no doubt the feelings of the afternoon in the past few days or so. I honestly don’t think we EXPECTED to win, it wasn’t that blaise, but we felt we had a good chance, a very good chance and we didn’t take it.

Now we can level accusations here there and everywhere, Dean Brennan isn’t good enough to take us further, the players aren’t good enough to get us over the line, we can’t beat the top 7 sides etc. You know, maybe so for some of you and that’s your opinion, I’m fine with that.

I like to be balanced so here it goes. Remember where are now to where we were just two years ago, even take it back three. That’s not to say we shouldn’t aiming for the moon, good christ no but a sense of reality at times.

We’ve come up against in the last two years sides spending way in excess of money we never will, we’ve come 5^th and 2^nd in that time. That 86pts would have won you a title in other years, we won 26 games, scored 91 goals and only one other side did more on both counts, we know who that is.

When you look at the other stats, we proved we are the 2^nd best team in this division which is why Saturday evening is the more frustrating in that respect.

Much is made of the games against the other sides in the top 7, 4 wins in those 12 games doesn’t make great reading we can admit that, but does it really matter who we beat to amass the points total?

If next season was a title win with the same number of points then no one bats an eyelid do they? If two go up instead of one automatic, no one cares. Now, had we won on Saturday that stat also becomes irrelevant, see how it can look from a different perspective?

I will admit I didn’t like the selection, I did however listen to the post match interview and understood why it was that first XI. I might be good friends with Dean, I might be mates with a lot of National League managers but it doesn’t stop me putting my view across.

Should he have given some indication in the pre-match? I know it’s not his style, but you can open yourself up to criticism when supporters can only see what’s in front of their eyes.

Yes, I appreciate you don’t want to give away anything to the opposition, but listen to Andy Whing’s post-match, they saw that formation and went for the jugular.

I would have liked to have seen something different, but I’m not paid to pick the team, nor pick up the pieces to work out what went wrong. We can all sit here and say it such and such’s fault, or so and so’s fault, maybe it was, when the players step over that white line and don’t have the character to manage a game through, the buck stops with everyone.

Has Dean taken us as far as he can? It’s a question that can be asked, and there’s nothing wrong with asking that either. I don’t think so, and my reason for that is each of the last two season’s we have overachieved. And by that I mean versus those whose budget’s should have them top seven and not bottom five or sitting outside the play-offs.

There will be pressure next season, an expectation to go another one better and the question then is who will do it better? Who will understand how you work with TK to get the best out? I’m not saying DB should be here forever, if we’re working on this kind of scenario Luke Garrard should have been gone from Boreham Wood years ago, he only achieved one trip to Wembley more than DB from six play-off campaign’s.

I think what was more disappointing is no one player took the game by the balls and pulled us through. I wouldn’t be surprised to know of a few frank conversations this early part of the week because that was a little alarming and unexpected. There might be a surprise or two on the retained list, there might not, watch this space. (this is written before it’s release)

So then, it’s all over for another year just like that in a click of your fingers, we’ve had some great efforts and times this season, more than the one before, as per usual it’s never the end of the season for a blogger, so there’s plenty more to come over the summer months, will try and work on a couple of podcasts too but we’ll how we go!

I think it’s quite adapt that the title of this blog, thought up wonderfully by Howard Gunstock, is the perfect title for what we saw on the weekend, I’ll leave that lasting memory with you………

If you’ve enjoyed reading this blog or indeed any other piece this season then please feel free to ‘buy me a coffee’ or make a donation of any kind here, it’s much appreciated.