Barnet have brought in Peter Shreeves to help Ian Hendon during this difficult period for the club. Shreeves has been brought in to add his considerable experience to the club. He has recently been working at Grays Athletic where he was director of football for the Blue Square Premier club.
Shreeves was a player at Reading, but had his career ended prematurely by a broken leg. He went into coaching at Charlton Athletic and later managed and coached at Tottenham Hotspur and Sheffield Wednesday and was coach at Chelsea under Glenn Hoddle. He was also coach at QPR and Watford and was assistant manager of the Wales national team under Terry Yorath.
In February 2002, he became the manager of Barnet, with Martin Allen as his assistant. Barnet were then in the Conference and struggling badly, having not won in their last seven league matches and having slipped from 3rd place just before Christmas to 15th (sounds familiar!!). His first match in charge was away at Hayes and the Bees won 2-0 and they won their next three matches as Shreeves and Allen took the side back up the table and Barnet finished the season a very respectable 5th. Play-offs were not introduced into the Conference until the following season, so the Bees missed out, but they were one of the most fancied teams to go up in 2002/03.
Unfortunately, things did not go to plan the following season. The club suffered from a number of injury problems with key players such as Greg Heald and Wayne Purser out for long periods and the team was inconsistent. The club too, for whatever reasons, failed to invest in new players and the injuries meant that there was not enough competition for places and also meant that often players were playing out of position.
As a consequence, the side under achieved and the Bees were 10th when, following an away draw at Morecambe, Shreeves suddenly resigned in March 2003. He was subsequently manager at non-league, Leyton and recently on the staff at Grays where he was caretaker manager for a short while.