Something to look forward to…

With the Football League season well and truly over after last weekend’s League One and League Two playoff finals at Wembley, it seems like such a long time until football returns. It is in fact only a week away, with the Euro 2012 competition commencing next Friday. The most exciting part of that for me is this:

Yes, I am one of those sad geeks over the age of 21 collecting.

I am also a part of that minority that cannot get excited over the national side and England’s chances. I don’t think I can even explain why, I’ve always felt that way. I will never understand why people get so overly optimistic, they must know themselves they sound stupid saying really out-there statements like “England will win the Euros”. Let’s all be honest, they won’t.

I’m not a pessimist, I’m just a realist.

I mean, I support Barnet. I know they aren’t very good; I’ve never for one moment pretended they are. Every year we scrape relegation on the final day. Every year I predict a lower half finish. It’s just how we are. I’d be kidding myself if I said we’d get promotion, make the playoffs, even finish top 10. It just wouldn’t happen – although would be a lovely surprise (and somewhat, a miracle) if we were. So why is supporting England the same? You get those people who get outrageously ahead of themselves, like the national side is some kind of super team, it’s just average. I know my opinions on the matter are unpopular, but it’s true.

I can’t even get excited over England games the way I do about Barnet either. I watched that friendly last weekend in silence – I didn’t really have anything to say on the matter. I didn’t cheer when the goal went in, I didn’t moan about substitutions or anything. But then again, watching England in a friendly, is like watching your club team pre-season. I can’t get excited about pre-season friendlies either; even if it’s against the likes of Arsenal ‘reserves’ and even more so, when you’re playing a team at least five divisions below you.

I sometimes think maybe this lack of enthusiasm is down to not watching an international match live. But on the other hand, I really don’t think it’d appeal to me. I think watching an international game at a stadium would have the same impact as that poor girl who knows nothing about football who gets dragged to football by her obsessed boyfriend! And don’t even get me started on the people who take time off work to watch England matches, or phone in sick the next day when they’ve had too much to drink. I’d much rather be earning money!

Now don’t get me wrong, I watch the tournaments and enjoy watching them – but that isn’t because of England, it’s to be entertained by some of the best footballers in the world, and to see who can cause the biggest shock. That underdog country that springs a surprise on the rest of the competition makes it all that more watchable; like Greece in 2004, defying the odds.

Group B, tipped this year’s ‘group of death’ looks the most interesting. Denmark, Germany, Holland and Portugal. Trying to vie for the two quarter final places will be interesting. If you look back to qualifying, Germany won all 10 of their games and only conceded seven goals. Denmark finished top of their group, ahead of Portugal who had to go into playoff against Bosnia and Herzegovina. Holland also finished top of their group, scoring more goals than Germany, but losing a match.

And of course, midway through the competition, the Football League fixtures are announced – June 18^th at 9am. The League Cup draw is often the day before. At least then we can start to plan our first away trips, and who we will be travelling to on that dreaded Tuesday night.

I shouldn’t really complain, all in all, it’s a pretty good summer of football, right?

Cup competitions: should they really be a priority?

Our unsurprisingly bad start to the campaign continued last week with two league defeats (at home to Northampton, 2–1 and away to Shrewsbury 3–2) on either Saturday with a victory on the Tuesday night – 3–1 in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy at the hands of Gillingham, at Priestfields.

This was our second win in the competition, following a further 3–1 victory in the first round against Colchester United at the Weston Homes Community Stadium. The draw which took place on Saturday morning before the game at the Greenhous Meadow saw us pitted against Cheltenham, which will be in the Southern area quarter final (for those who are remotely interested, games will be played on the 8^th/9^th November) – a mere three games away from a trip to Wembley for the final. It’ll also be our fifth away tie (out of five games) in all Cup competitions this season so far!

I think it’s fair to say we seem to be performing a lot better in the cup competitions this season, in comparison with recent years; however, for me, this is massively frustrating, as despite decent runs, we are clearly underachieving in the League. The table doesn’t lie and I would much rather be getting the points on board (now, and throughout the season), than be having these cup runs. Even more so when you take into account one is nicknamed the “paint pot”, and the other, the “Mickey Mouse” trophy – both inferior in terms of prize money and overall club revenue, and the former inferior in terms of the quality and stature of the teams that participate.

Talking of the League Cup, a further example of where we fared well (up until the second round, that is). Round one saw us paired up with a massively difficult away tie at Fratton Park and Portsmouth – where we triumphed to a victory, albeit a 1–0. The second round wasn’t much kinder to us, again another trip on the road, this time at Burnley. Despite unfortunately losing in extra time (with the scores levelled at 2–2 after 90 minutes), we gave a very good account of ourselves – it’s just a shame we cannot put those kind of performances in on the average League game, where ultimately it matters.

With the FA Cup still in its preliminary qualifying stages and us not scheduled to play until the first round proper (November 12^th is the date for that), the following month is surely high time to get some wins together and more importantly, gain some points. We haven’t got the concern of any Cup competitions up until the second week of November – but it looks set to be a busy month with the League and two Cups to worry about.

Now, let’s be honest, if you’re a supporter of a League 2 club like myself, you’re only ever interested in a cup run if it culminates in your team getting a glamour tie at the stomping grounds of the likes of Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Tottenham etc. This is where the League Cup was harsh on us (with no disrespect to Burnley, of course) – in our case, it’s all about getting a tie we as fans, and the players could only ever dream of.

After looking at the prize fund in the said, JPT, I can’t help but feel slightly disappointed and that surely our priorities should be focused elsewhere, i.e. the League. Obviously this is scraping the bottom of the barrel for the worst case scenario, but imagine if we (or any other club, for that matter) got that trip to Wembley and won the £40,000 jackpot at the end, but then got relegated. Think of all the money lost as a consequence. Like I said, worst case scenario, and it doesn’t really bear thinking about.

For beating Colchester in the first round of the cup, we received a measly £5,000 – probably covering the wages of Izale McLeod and Mark Marshall for a week! The victory against Gillingham last week saw us pocket £7,000, again not much better! A win in round three against Cheltenham will see a prize of £10,000; area semi final winners receive £17,000 and area finalists, a more modest £25.5k. I was unable to find the prize pot for each round of the Carling Cup, but I can’t see a knock-out after round two really generating that much cash. The FA Cup has yet to release its prize money for this season, but again, that will also depend on how far we progress.

In the long run, is it really worth it?

Fan Poll:

To see if it was just me who felt this way, I decided upon putting a poll on the blog for a couple of days. The question posed was: ‘As a fan, which do you feel is more important?’ – with the answers ‘League’ and ‘Cup progression’. The results are as follows.

Travelling taking its toll?

20/08/11 – Rotherham – Don Valley Stadium – 310 miles

23/08/11 – Burnley – Turf Moor – 444 miles

27/08/11 – Bradford – Coral Windows Stadium – 392 miles

30/08/11 – Colchester – Weston Homes Community Stadium – 130 miles

So in just 11 days, Barnet fans, players and staff have been travelling a little under 1300 miles. Obviously when the fixture list came out, we could have no complaints about expecting to have two away games in succession – regardless of distance, especially with most teams being ‘out of the way’. But for two cup competitions (the Carling Cup and Johnstone’s Paint Trophy), resulting in a further two away trips to fall in between those two League games is somewhat unfortunate.

For a small squad like ours, with the numerous injuries to players like Darren Dennehy, and Steve Kabba (who should be okay to play on Saturday against Accrington), the three long trips ‘up North’ have been difficult. With fatigue setting in with the countless training sessions and miles racked up, it’s with no real surprise the team have found it difficult to deliver positive results (Colchester aside).

Managing to hold a Championship Burnley side at the end of 90 minutes in the Carling Cup on their turf could well be the highlight of the aforementioned fixtures. Taking them to extra time miles from home, and then having to travel a similar distance three days later for a League 2 fixture, it’s clear that the same energy and determination would be lacking. Which of course was the case in a 4-2 defeat at the hands of (then manager-less) Bradford City. It would probably be wrong to quickly jump to conclusions and say the team weren’t good enough, and although the defending was similar to what we have been used to expect – how many teams of a similar size and calibre could say they’d not fall short?

I’ve not been able to get to any of the games, so thought it’d be interesting to hear the opinions of someone who was; as well as how the team think they’ve coped.

Fan’s view:

“4 away games in 10 days is not a usual occurrence – beginning with two league games in a row on the Saturdays were scheduled league games at both Rotherham and Bradford. Our progress in the League Cup gave us another away game at probably the longest unattractive game available in Burnley and in the JPT handed us another away game at nearby Colchester on consecutive Tuesdays.

It is apparent that four away games in such a small amount of time is bound to affect the players mentally and physically. However, in our first two games previously at Morecambe and Portsmouth we put some really impressive performances in and ended up winning both 1-0.

At Rotherham we continued to impress and we really should have won this game in which we mostly dominated. Although it’s also fair to say at the start of this four game away special most would have taken a draw, which is how it ended (2-2).

At Burnley we put another decent performance in but tiredness must have kicked in after the initial 90 minutes, and we lost out in Extra time.

At Bradford after a fairly even first half in the second half we just fell apart some bad defending did not help but you have to wonder had all the travelling had taken its toll on some”.

Thanks to Chris Emery

Player’s view:

“We are looking forward to playing in front of our home crowd on Saturday; it’s been a long few days”.

Thanks to Dan Senda, who can be found on Twitter here

Carling Cup: does anyone really care?

So this week looks set to cure my football withdrawal symptoms, at least for a couple of days anyway – Thursday sees the Carling Cup first round draw and Friday, the Football League fixtures for the 2011-12 season. I’m going to concentrate on the former in this entry.

The Carling Cup is often known as the Mickey Mouse trophy, which is something I have never understood. At the end of the day it’s the chance to win a trophy and enter the European stages for the following campaign. It seems to me, however, that the trophy seems worthless when your team is knocked out, or play a weakened side – however, in the opposite case, becomes one of the best things ever when you win, or progress against opposition of a higher league or league position! I mean take last season, for example; nobody expected Birmingham City to win it and the biggest surprise was Ipswich Town (who eventually lost to Arsenal in the second leg of the semi final).

For me, although there isn’t the same kind of ‘underdog’ mentality which is displayed in the FA Cup, the Carling Cup is still a chance for a club in the Football League to cause a shock.

However, as a Barnet fan, I can’t say of late, there have been any real shocks as these results suggest:

2007 – Round 1 – Norwich 5 – 2 Barnet

2008 – Round 1 – Brighton and Hove Albion 4 – 0 Barnet

2009 – Round 1 – Barnet 0 – 2 Watford (after extra time)

2010 – Round 1 – Swansea City 3 – 0 Barnet

My one big stand-out memory though comes from the 2005-06 season, when we managed to get to Round 3, following victories against Bristol City (4 – 2) and Plymouth Argyle (2 – 1) – with a plum tie against Manchester United, at Old Trafford. For us, it was the stuff that dreams are made of. I still remember to this day where I was when the draw was made, and my reaction to the game of my life.

However, those dreams turned to nightmares on the night. If you don’t know (or can remember that far back!) what happened: Ross Flitney, our keeper was sent off within 90 seconds for handling outside the area. Understandably it is a red card offence, but on a big stage where dreams are made, for a poor lowly team like Barnet, he should have been given the benefit of the doubt. From there, Scott Tynan (on the bench) had to replace Louie Soares and United scored from the resulting free kick. We were 3-down before Dean Sinclair scored the goal he’ll probably remember for the rest of his life; however, the final score finished 4 – 1. If you get chance, have a read here.

Just under 5,000 Bees fans went to the game though and the atmosphere throughout was amazing, possibly the best I’ve ever witnessed. Even before the game, it was electric inside the concourse. Even when our dreams were shattered within 2 minutes. Even though we were eventually defeated. That night still remains to be one of the best of my life, and I can honestly say, hand on heart, I’m proud to be a Bee.

So there we are, I’d like a nice easy-ish tie drawn on Thursday please, and the hopeful chance to relive a night like that one – minus the controversy of course!

Oh, and it’s needless to say that THAT official has never taken charge of any games since, and that’s the way I’d like it to remain.