Barnet buzzing

Friday, 27/01/2012

by Rama Hill, Shoot's Barnet blogger

Last wdek I predicted a struggle and a draw against a Northampton team led by Aidy Boothroyd. Instead a mighty swarm of Bees went to Sixfields and came back with three points thanks to a 2-1 win.

I still predict that Northampton will come good under Boothroyd’s stewardship, but without going overboard too much Barnet are (relatively) on fire at the moment, and we simply could not be stopped despite falling to an early goal by the still surprisingly mammoth Adebayo Akinfenwa.

As a Barnet fan, the pessimist in me looks downwards rather than upwards and the fact we’re eight points above the trap door with a game in hand over teams around us is very encouraging indeed.

Although just a mere look at last season, where Lincoln collapsed from a considerable margin of ‘comfort’ will mean no-one is counting their Underhill farmed chickens just yet.

Looking upwards, we’re ‘only’ 13 points below the play-offs, and assuming McLeod stays and continues his form, his 57 goals should comfortably lead us to League One, where we’ll face a Nottingham-based team managed by a man who is extremely loyal to his employees and would never leave a few games before the end of the season.

So on to Barnet’s next game... I am quietly confident that after three league wins in a row, the team is more than capable of dispatching Crewe on Saturday. However, if we got thrashed 5-0 I would also not be surprised.

It’s typical of Barnet to mess up when for a rare time you’re actually expectant of success. In their last fixture Crewe thrashed Dagenham & Redbridge 4-1, and are pushing for a play-off spot, so to say they cannot be taken lightly is an understatement.

The ‘people scoring for us other than McLeod’ run has extended to three games so many prudent gamblers would be taking a look at the odds of Dean Brill finding the net against Crewe. Hopefully if McLeod doesn’t score anymore goals or even leaves his house until the February 1, suitors will forget who he is and not put a bid in for him.

On a final note, the mere shock of being able to say Barnet are on a three-game winning league run led me to research the last time we did this; this was two and a half years back at the start of the 2009-10 season, with consecutive wins against Morecombe, Torquay, and Notts County.

To go back even further, the last time we won four was in 2007-08 season, back in the era where Barnet fans liked Neal Bishop and Jason Puncheon played for us.

I attended Monday’s loss for Puncheon’s current club, Southampton against Leicester, and let’s just say the chants by Saints fans about him probably made him wish he was playing alongside Jason Norville again...

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