The road to somewhere or nowhere?
Well that last blog aged well didn’t it! If you didn’t get to have a look, it’s titled ‘Make the right appointment’, but Barnet being Barnet didn’t and once again we’re in familiar territory of a close season with no manager whilst pretty much the laughing stock of the National League amongst supporters, our own included.
That image above I knew was going to be the last time those particular Bees were going to be together but I wasn’t expecting one or all of the management team might also be heading out the door.
Within a day or two of me penning that blog, I had a text ‘prepare for bad news coming your way’ and with that I knew Simon Bassey was on his way out of The Hive. Having been out of contract as of the Monday I posted the blog it was no surprise to then hear clubs were sniffing around a man who had changed around the fortunes of the team in such a short space of time and no compensation was needed to be paid.
However you like to dress it up it falls on the one man making the decisions at Barnet Football Club. Yes, Bassey was offered a contract, was it good enough? Obviously not as he didn’t sign it. Did Tony Kleanthous go back with a new offer? If he did it can’t have been much better or surely it would have been signed?
I went hunting back through the statement the chairman put out in early April when Bassey arrived along with Dave Anderson, announcing his long term plan for a strategy and these two appeared to be a part of that. Has that plan already hit the buffers? Incidentally both Dave and Gary Anderson have so far had no mention of whether they are staying, if they go as well then once again the club is back in complete no man’s land which via the statement was the idea of avoiding? You seriously can’t make this up at times!
Did both Simon and Dave want to stay? Absolutely. But no assurances over his future, waiting, dilly-dallying once again from the top has cost the club the one bright spark it had this poor excuse of a season.
That brings you then to the retained list issued earlier on Friday afternoon, one or two surprises in there but then when the club is so secretive of contract lengths when signing players you’ve no idea on most what the hell is happening.
I did know a few days ago Ben Nugent was on a 2 year deal, despite the fact he’s shown a big improvement over the final few games when he was recalled to the starting line up he has a lot to prove next season. Three other centre backs are also contracted for next season which appears to be the only position where we’re completely covered providing the other three remain.
Few will point to Tomi Adeloye and Lee Vaughan being released, both worthy of contracts in a lot of opinion but without knowing who has actually had the final say then we’re shooting in the dark for answers.
From my point of view we’re in a worse position than last year. In just four weeks’ time the players will be back in pre-season training, with such a short close season clubs would have begun looking at options for next season three weeks ago so by my reckoning we’re four weeks behind today and with no manager in the chair how much further will we be down the pecking order?
What encourages Sam Beard or Sam Skeffington to sign without knowing who they’re going to be playing under? By the time you actually read this though there might be a manager but I’m not holding my breath, it took too long to get Bassey and Anderson in the door.
I’ve seen plenty across social media to suggest TK is rapidly running out of time to convince anyone that Barnet FC are worth investing your hard earned cash into let alone actually watching a game next season, I’m starting to lose the will to be honest if we are going to have this scenario every summer. I might expect it at the lower levels but a National League club with still no strategy three years after relegation from the Football League is pretty desperate.
Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow morning and find out the last twelve months were just a dream and Darren Currie is still the gaffer, well we can all dream can’t we, just don’t wake me up from this one………………..
Image courtesy of Ben Fullylove (@BenFullylove)