A silver lining in every cloud

Barnet's awful start to the season has seen them lose their first six matches of the season. Four league matches have ended in defeats and the club have exited from the Carling Cup and the Johnstone's Paint Trophy at the first stage. The knives have been out amongst many fans after this dreadful start, but can any silver linings be drawn from Barnet's failure in this new season.

Well, for one thing Barnet have made poor starts to both the last two seasons, but they have ended up improving on where they finished in the table at the end of each season since returning to the league in 2005. Indeed, it is noticeable that the one season when the Bees got off to a really good start to the season was our first season back in the league in 2005-06.

That season we gained 10 points from our first 4 matches and after winning 1-0 at home to Macclesfield Town the club stood at the top of League Two. Progress into the 2^nd round of the Carling Cup was assured too with a 4-2 win at League One side, Bristol City and we later defeated Championship side, Plymouth in the next round and went on to draw Manchester United in the 3^rd round at Old Trafford. Stirring stuff!! However, the Bees took just five points from their next eleven matches as they slumped down the table and ended up nearly going down, still unsure of their league safety until we won 2-1 at Rushden on the final day of the season.

Last season, after taking just 1 point from our first 3 matches, we went on a 10 match unbeaten run which took us into the play-off positions. In 2006-07, we lost our first 3 matches and then after losing 5-0 at Lincoln City and 2-0 at Darlington in October leaving us only out of the relegation zone on goal difference, we took 22 points from our next 10 matches, a run that took us to the verge of the play-off places.

Both of the last two seasons saw us ending up in mid table safety despite poor early form so there is nothing to say that we cannot do it again and a look at our early fixtures reveals a strange fact. For our first 6 matches this season, all the games in the corresponding fixtures last season were lost, which, unfortunately, does not auger well for the matches at Lincoln and at home to Morecambe!! Our 7^th game of the season is at home to Bury, a game we won last season 3-0. Let's hope though that we have points on the board before then and with Ismail Yakubu, Joe Devera and Kenny Gillet back for the Lincoln game the defence should hopefully leak a little less and we can hope that Adam Birchall keeps up his scoring form.

To finish, in 1994-95 another club lost their first 5 league matches of the season and sat at the bottom of the 3^rd division of the football league (now League Two). They ended up a respectable 14^th in the table, three places below Barnet. The club was Wigan Athletic, now a Premiership club.