For a club that has been through eight managers in the four years since 2008, League Two’s Barnet would not be the most obvious club to use as an example of sensible stewardship and a settled hierarchy, though it looks like chairman Anthony Kleanthous maybe on the way to bringing a calm assurance to the seemingly forever troubled Barnet.
The London club have been entrenched in tier four relegation trouble for each of the past four years ith no league finish above 17th achieved since 2008. This year the outlook looks no different as after four games, the Bees lie rock bottom of the football league with just one point on the board.
This has bought about some feeling amongst the Underhill support that Mark Robson, installed as head coach in the summer following over a decade of involvement in the football league at youth level, is showing signs of not being up to the job. Playing the role of generous Chairman, Kleanthous has backed Robson with a much larger budget than in recent years but the optimism this has generated has been betrayed by a sluggish start and a reversion back to the position that Barnet seem to have reserved as their own.
Yet, in a climate infested by a knee-jerk lunacy characterised by near-immediate sackings of Andy Thorn at Coventry and John Sheridan at Chesterfield so far this season, it is rather refreshing to see Kleanthous re-enforce his stance of support for his manager, embodied by an open letter to Barnet supporters, in the build-up to the opening of the loan transfer market which could well act as the last-chance saloon for the welfare of Barnet’s season.
For a club that has struggled near the bottom of the league for as long as the memory can go, Robson was always going to need time to imprint his ideas on his new squad regardless of the budget he was supplied with by Kleanthous. In this current culture of immediacy in which football demands a return on results as soon as possible with the manager acting as the expendable asset should they not flow so soon, it would be a pleasant exemption to the rule if Kleanthous honours his word and sticks by his man.
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