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Appraisal
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Again?
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By:
Eric Hitchmo
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26/08/2012
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More On York City
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This may be a gross overreaction just a week into the new season, however from what I am reading, these moans and groans are on the lips of just about every Barnet fan around. The feeling that we are once again in for an extremely long season of making up the numbers in the Football League is palpable in the Underhill air. The painful inevitability of the whole affair is too much. Enough is enough.
There is nothing like an atmosphere at Underhill anymore. We sit or stand in indifference as we are subjected to dross. We have been for the last three seasons, at the very least, arguably even longer. Is it any surprise that the level of cynicism and criticism has been driven to its highest point? The crowd are restless, they have seen it all before, they are ready for their team to fail. How many times have we gone to a home game with a genuine expectation of victory?
With this in mind, and as I said the other week, it makes the task for Mark Robson incredibly hard. He has to stem the tide of overwhelming negativity and build a team capable of competing in League Two on what is clearly a shoestring budget. Filling our squad with youth and attempting to play nice football in this league is an admirable ambition, but we have seen it horrendously exposed already and the drawing board may well need to be reworked several times over. I can't find myself disliking him just yet, as he has been given an extremely tough job to turn this absolute joke of a football club into something sustainable.
Three games in, we are once again bottom of the league. I can hear the thoughts of everyone around the country with a passing interest in basement football as they express their lack of surprise that we find ourselves in this position. Must we continue to we such a complete laughing stock? It really isn't nice. When will I be able to have a conversation with someone about the team I support without hurrying the subject on through a desire to tear myself away from abject embarrassment?
While the move to The Hive and all its positives is almost force-fed to us to a point of nausea, one must wonder how the club expects us to uproot and follow such a diabolical state of footballing affairs. What encouragement is there? What makes us want to go? Perhaps the crux of my point is this: when will we see that there is adequate investment into footballing matters to inspire us to show our undying loyalty? From what I have seen so far, it seems abundantly clear that we are not putting enough money into the team. AGAIN. Barnet fans are ready and prepared again, and with just 1,400 home fans through the gate it seems that many are and will continue to vote with their feet. With such a lack of investment into what the fans want most - i.e. success - how many will follow? It is infuriating.
On Saturday I watched newly promoted York City cut through us with ease. I mean, they weren't that good, but we made them look like it. For me, the worst thing about this is that these results are not a surprise. How many people called this before the season started? As a squad, we look dreadfully under-prepared, with a lack of experience and a complete lack of physical presence. Did you see how big the York players, and indeed the Bristol Rovers players on Tuesday, looked compared to ours? This league is, has always been, and probably always will be built on physical presence. If you want to play your way out of League Two, you need to pay for it, and since it's clear that this won't happen, we need to find another way. We're into our eighth season, and we haven't worked it out. We have no muscle, noone wants to put a tackle in, and in three games we have been bullied off the ball on each occasion. How very frustrating to endure.
York's sizeable contingent enjoyed their afternoon, outshouting the mute home support. Not such a difficult task, Underhill has been mute for several years. What would you expect with such rubbish being served up? Three games gone, and already the trapdoor seems so close. This could be the year that we finally go. Pathetic. Boos rang out at half time, many others continue to cut their forlorn figures of silence, finding themselves unable to raise themselves out of their slumber, perhaps numbed by years of unending torture.
As I said at the beginning, I might be selling this squad a bit short. After all, three games have gone, just three. We could just be starting slowly. I feel like I'm kidding myself by saying that though. To me, it's already looking like something drastic and dramatic is going to need to happen. Oh I know I'm talking such negative rubbish and you may well dismiss it as such, however I've not seen much positive talk whatsoever. Not even the most optimistic of fans can find any straws to clutch.
So here we go again. If you want a snapshot of what this season will sound like from our point of view, just try and find some extracts from the last season or two, the themes are more or less the same.
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