Annual Barnet Pilgrimage

This will probably only be of interest to about 5 of you, 2 of whom will probably disagree with me. For the rest of you, there's a picture of a man dressed as a giant bee at the end.

A man with a walking stick held the door open for us as we entered the Red Lion pub in Barnet. “You’ll get some good southern hospitality in here,” he said, beaming proudly. I didn’t have the heart to tell him we’d only come from Camden.

I love Barnet. It’s my nearest fixture and I go every year. It’s one of the most welcoming clubs I visit, with friendly staff, proper cups of tea, and a lively if slightly trippy mascot, the inimitable, giant-eyed Super Bee Mr Bumble. We always bring an impressive crowd that regularly out-sings the home fans, and we usually leave with three points. But today was, sadly, one of my less enjoyable trips to Underhill.

Given that you're only likely to have got this far down the page if you're a City fan I'll dispense with the scoreline and say that, rather than a match report or my usual observations of vaguely humorous occurrences and oddities, I’d like to mount a bit of a defence for City here, because by the second half there was the inevitable abuse from the fans and the various social media pages were buzzing with criticisms and accusations. I’m sure many will disagree with this analysis, and I’m sure there are things I’ve missed, but still I make no apology. As is perhaps fairly obvious from the final result, City did not play at their best, but they were by no means hopeless, either, and those who were not there discredit themselves in slamming judgement so readily. Early on, my friend and I were discussing how polished we looked, passing seamlessly, gelling as a team, seizing chances and keeping possession. From the start it looked as though City would dominate – in only the second minute Hanson (inexplicably singled out for blame once again by many) made an attempt to score. It went wide, but it seemed to bode well. Sure enough, Darby, Jones and Hanson all took shots within minutes of each other. None was really in any danger of going in, but at least they were trying. Where there were inarguably mistakes and misjudged chances, and the loss of 3 points is of course a real blow, the stats themselves do not suggest we were markedly the poorer side.

This may sound silly, but I remember a couple of years ago bemoaning what had become City’s tedious style. We seemed to be constantly playing for draws, defending and not attacking, and sometimes not even defending that well. We never took any risks. We were both boring and ineffective – dull to watch and low down the league. Today the shots were not going in and fans were understandably frustrated, but players were constantly trying to score, and often from well outside the box. A couple of years ago they simply wouldn’t have tried at all - I remember games when the stats showed maybe one or two attempts on target. It would only have taken a small error of judgement on Barnet’s side and we could easily have been level, or even in the lead. It also does a great disservice to Barnet’s defence to suggest that our own strikers were somehow letting us down. Graham Stack made a couple of great saves, and others greatly limited our opportunities to score from closer in.

In the second half, things went downhill. You could almost feel the disillusion in the air. You felt that perhaps City had given up, whereas Barnet must have had one heck of a pep talk in the dressing room. Spurred on, perhaps, by their first goal, their second didn’t really come as a surprise. City carelessly seemed to pass the ball to the wrong team – or, more often, kick it hopefully to nowhere-in-particular – on a few occasions, and our defence seemed lacklustre. Wells has been criticised, and I agree he seemed to be having a bad day. Duke too was perhaps disappointing, but again, to blame Duke alone (“Duke is a terrible keeper” – how short are your memories??) is doing both a disservice to Barnet and letting the rest of our defence off the hook. After a promising first few minutes only Darby really stood out for me today – perhaps because of where I was standing – as being full of energy and outrunning Barnet. As the match wore on I felt that, had it been a film, it would have been the perfect example of pathetic fallacy – it gradually got darker and noticably colder, until some City fans started to bail out, others got vociforously angry, and the remainder simply looked crestfallen.

So yes, I agree that 2-0 is almost heart-wrenchingly disappointing, but let’s not forget the context: we have been spoilt, and our expectations raised, by some absolutely stunning performance against the likes of Watford and, of course, Arsenal. We are painfully but achievably close to an automatic promotion spot. Conversely, the squad must be exhausted, having been plagued by illness and injury and played two games most weeks recently rather than one. As our expectation goes up, their ability to meet it understandably goes down. As Barnet begins its inevitable annual phoenix-like ascent from the ashes we’ve got another tough week ahead with the Villa game looming. City look as though they are badly in need of a rest, perhaps an injection of new life but, most importantly, a bit of faith. Good luck for next week, chaps, and CTID.