This weekend, Barnet are able to put their League Two worries behind them as they entertain Charlton Athletic in the 1st round of the FA Cup. After Tuesday’s awful performance at home to Stevenage which brought calls from the Barnet fans for the dismissal of manager, Mark Stimson, it will be a relief for the Underhill supporters to be involved in a match in which little is expected of the Bees and in which a win would be seen as a real giant killing act to add to those against the likes of Colchester United in recent years.
Tomorrow could see the return of striker, Steve Kabba for the Bees which will hopefully give Barnet some much needed firepower up front and hopefully a goal or two!! Kabba has been missing since the Hereford United home game at the beginning of October and his experience and skill has been sorely missed. Hopefully, this will be the beginning of a return of some of the missing players to the side which has brought such disruption to Barnet’s season so far. Tuesday saw the welcome return of former Charlton defender, Grant Basey to the side after he was injured against Bradford City. So, some of Barnet’s ‘walking wounded’ are recovering at last. Hopefully it will not be too long before we see another former Charlton player, Izale McLeod in a Barnet shirt.
Barnet will have to play considerably better than they did against Stevenage when very few of the home players did themselves justice. The central defence partnership of Basey and Joe Devera seemed, on paper, a good one but Devera had another poor match while George Francomb gave away a very silly penalty with the handball that lead to Borough’s third goal, but by then Barnet had, more or less, given up the ghost. In fact, the home side’s heads seemed to go down when Stevenage scored the opening goal and a second goal came soon after, an occurrence that seems to happen far too often this season; Rotherham, Shrewsbury, Wycombe, Bradford City and now Stevenage have scored twice in quick succession against the Bees to effectively finish the games off. Mark Stimson, if he is to remain as Barnet’s manager will have to stop his side collapsing as soon as they concede a goal or the Bees will find themselves in the Blue Square Premier next season.
For the Charlton match, it might be time to give Joe Devera a rest from the side as his form has been poor recently. Clovis Kamdjo can count himself unlucky to have been left out on Tuesday, as his form has been quite good recently, and he could return tomorrow. Another player who has been out of form is Mark Hughes and he was poor again against Stevenage. As against Shrewsbury, Rossi Jarvis came on and looked the better player and he may have done enough to start tomorrow. Though, it’s possible that Stimson may choose to start new signing, Craig Dobson, who showed a few nice touches and a couple of good crosses after coming on against Stevenage.
If Steve Kabba starts up front, Stimson will have to decide whether to play him alongside Mauro Vilhete, or rest the youngster, or have an experienced strike force of Kabba and Kevin Gallen, who missed two glorious chances to score against Stevenage with the game still goalless. Another option would be to play Ricky Holmes alongside Kabba and use both Vilhete and Gallen as impact substitutes. With the team’s form at a low at the moment, it is not easy to predict the side that Stimson might choose for tomorrow’s cup tie, but it could look something like this:
Cole
Francomb Kamdjo Basey Parkes
Marshall Jarvis Southam Byrne
Kabba Gallen
Barnet have been involved in some giant killing feats over the last few years, but with the side playing so poorly, it will be a major upset if tomorrow’s result ends in anything but a win for the visitors and, quite honestly, that’s almost certain how it will end up, sorry to say.