Flowers checks in at The Hive
No sooner had the ink dried on the ‘Beadle gone’ blog than the new man was in place at The Hive with chairman Tony Kleanthous wasting no time to trying to repair the mess the club once again finds itself in.
Last weekend I had heard rumours from two different sources and then a third during the week that Tim Flowers was indeed lined up after the Wealdstone game to take over from Peter Beadle. Nothing materialised and Barnet went on to record back to back defeats against Stockport and Chesterfield.
Eight days later Beadle was gone and then speculation amounted to who was the next manager to lead the charge back up to the right end of the table. I had my own preferences, some personal, some from the point of view of what or who I felt was needed.
Flowers himself was on my list of names I expected to be mentioned. A man with a decent career in the Premier League, in fact a winner of said competition at Blackburn Rovers. He did interview in the summer but subsequently not offered the job and pitched up at Macclesfield Town before they succumbed to extinction. So, why wasn’t he appointed those few months ago?
Many will point to Beadle having been the cheaper option having not managed at this level before, Flowers’ stint at Solihull Moors looked upon as a good grounding albeit with a more than a decent sized budget but his record of winning almost half of his games in charge that is the kind of thing you look very favourably at if he can replicate that for Barnet.
Whilst to an extent you can understand the cautiousness with no income and the on-going saga with the pandemic going for the cheaper option has brought on this scenario before and now as then it’s going to cost far more to rectify the situation than could have been the case with the right appointment back in late August.
If it’s to be believed, Flowers wasn’t the man in reality. During yesterday it was widely expected that Dean Brennan the current Wealdstone manager was signed, sealed, and delivered but it appears that fell through and Flowers became the go to man. How close if at all that was maybe we’ll never know but as always another fun day in the life of being a Barnet fan!
If Flowers is given the budget to build what he had at Solihull then Barnet will become hard to beat, it might not be a pretty game at times with a more direct way of playing than we’ve been used to over the past couple of years.
Whether he believes there is enough quality there remains to be seen over the coming weeks, personally I believe the squad is not good enough to be where we want to be, whether that was down to budget restrictions or a lack of intel when bringing these players in I’m not sure of.
Having listened to the first interview this afternoon, it sounded good, liked what I heard and those that don’t shape up will ship out I have no doubt, certainly going to be playing to strengths in the final third with the pace of Ephron Mason-Clark and Josh Walker when he returns, someone who knows how to unlock JJ Hooper, seems fairly keen on Wes Fonguck.
I don’t doubt he’s under any illusion of the task ahead and I’m also interested to see who forms his backroom team as well, those guys can be just as important in delivering the message through to the players.
So Bees fans there we have it, another former England goalkeeper takes the reins, following in the footsteps of the late great Ray Clemence, time for our season to turn itself around and I’m far more pleased this time that Tony’s actually read my blog and picked a name I listed………..