BEES STING BLUEBIRDS TO GET FIRST WIN OF YEAR
BARNET recorded their first league victory of 2019 with a deserved victory over mid-table Barrow who only got going as an attacking entity in the second-half.
Elliott Johnson gave the home side a fifth minute lead but the Bees had to wait until after the hour to add to their tally with, first, Shaq Coulthirst and then a Dan Jones own goal deeming Kyle Jameson’s late strike as consolation.
“Our players were excellent, outstanding, all of them,” beamed Bees boss Darren Currie. “We have played better before and taken nothing from those matches, but for today’s game I needed men and I needed characters.”
Barnet wasted no time in getting the job done. A deep cross from the right by Cheye Alexander found Johnson lurking with menace at the far post. He took control of the ball and drilled home with his right foot; a collectors’ item.
The recalled Jack Barham then twice went close to increasing Barnet’s lead during the first-half.
Just after the half hour mark a great run down the left by the Bluebirds’ Lewis Hardcastle carved open the Bees’ defence but Dior Angus failed to capitalise from the pull back and skied his effort.
Angus would again fail to find the target when he blasted over after creating space for himself on the edge of the Barnet box.
With a strong wind now in their favour, and having made positional and personnel changes during the interval, Barrow were a more purposeful outfit in the second half, but they still rarely managed to penetrate deep into Barnet territory. Barnet’s second goal came on 62 minutes when the persistent Coulthirst bided his time before he released a piledriver from just inside the Barrow penalty area that arrowed into the bottom far corner. Barrow’s misery was complete 13 minutes later when the otherwise impressive Jones headed Wes Fonguck’s innocuous centre into his own net, leaving keeper Joel Dixon hapless. Moments later, Kyle Jameson turned the ball home to narrow the deficit and the visitors did then put the Barnet defence under pressure, forcing a number of corners. Barrow boss Ian Evatt, though, was frustrated his side were unable to get anything from the game. He added: “I am frustrated because it was there for them today, Barnet more or less sat eleven men behind the ball for the entire game. “We didn’t defend well enough, their three goals were sloppy, poor goals to concede, which is unlike us. “But when your defenders are perhaps having a bad time you need the strikers to step up to the plate and bail them out, and they have not done that today. “We have more or less passed them off the pitch, but we’ve been beaten 3-1.”