Mark Byrne’s third season with Barnet saw yet another manager in place at the start of the season; this time, Mark Robson, former coach at Gillingham and Peterborough and development coach at Charlton. As a player, he played with Tottenham and West Ham.
It also saw another shuffle round of players with a largely new squad without key players from the previous season such as Sam Deering and Izale McLeod. Instead there were what to the Banet fans seemed to be a number of young, somewhat untried players along with experienced players such as Jon Fortune and Jon Nurse who were perhaps past their best. There was also the return to the club of young striker, Jake Hyde who had been paying in Scotland. Fortunately too, the club had been able to keep hold on their main asset in Ricky Holmes.
Unfortunately, the fans’ concerns soon became all too real as Barnet quickly became rooted to the bottom of League Two with just 3 points taken from the opening 12 league games which left the club five points adrift of safety at the bottom of the league. Even at this early stage of the season, many Bees’ fans saw relegation as inevitable. At this point though, to the amazement of nearly everyone at the club, Edgar Davids, former Tottenham, AC Milan, Juventus and Ajax star was appointed joint head coach with Robson and it was announced too that he would also play for the club.
Davids’ impact was instant as the Bees took 10 points from the next four games, including a 1-0 away win at promotion chasing, Chesterfield with Byrne scoring a late goal to take all three points for Barnet. The run took the club off of the bottom of the table, but, sadly, it was not sustained and a run of 6 matches without a win dropped the club back into trouble, though Byrne did help the Bees gain appoint by scoring in the 1-1 home draw with Accrington. A win at home to Burton Albion just before Christmas took Barnet out of the bottom two, but the season took an unfortunate turn with a defeat away at Bristol Rovers through a late goal for the gasheads. Worse, Ricky Holmes picked up an injury which was to keep him out for the rest of the season. Not that the team played that badly for the rest of the season without Holmes; there were good wins at Underhill against Morecambe, where Byrne scored in a 4-1 win, Southend and Fleetwood when the team looked anything but a struggling one and in any other season, Davids would have lead the team to safety, but just when it seemed that Barnet would escape relegation again, results turned against them. After defeating Wycombe in the final home game of the season in an emotional match which was to be the last ever league game at Underhill, Barnet needed just a point away at Northampton in order to survive. Having won three last day matches in the previous three seasons, Barnet lost 2-0 at Northampton and AFC Wimbledon won at home to Fleetwood to send Barnet down to the Conference despite having 51 points, generally a points total which would have been seen as one guaranteeing survival and the highest ever points total for a club dropping out of the Football League. Barnet’s luck had finally run out and the dreadful first couple of months had proved just too much to overturn. Mark Byrne scored just three goals throughout the season, reflecting again a lack of goals from midfield in a season when the team, in the final analysis, just did not score enough goals, only 47 goals. Only bottom club, Aldershot scored less.
In the last part of the series, we will look at Mark Byrne and Barnet’s first season at the Hive.