BlackpoolsFinest
Well-known member
Disclaimer : As per the title, from an article on the Athletic (pulled from the old site)
Long read, but fascinating.
By Stuart James Feb 4, 2020 66
“We’ve scored some good goals,” Ian Evatt says. “One of them was after 24 passes. And we had another where every player touched the ball before it went in the net. Our fans started nicknaming us ‘Barrowcelona.’”
Evatt, who made more than 500 appearances for Derby County, QPR, Blackpool and Chesterfield before taking over as Barrow AFC’s manager, has a little chuckle as he looks around his office at his staff. “Barrowcelona,” he says again, almost under his breath.
Barrow is a long way from Barcelona. In fact, this Cumbrian industrial town is a long way from anywhere. Located at the end of a peninsula that overlooks the Irish Sea, Barrow-in-Furness is isolated and open to the elements. It is the sort of place where trees bend over to greet you.
“Gusts of up to 45mph tomorrow,” Evatt says, looking at the weather forecast on his phone and grimacing at the thought of how hard it will be for his team to play their brand of free-flowing football in those conditions.
“Brutal,” says Peter Atherton, the former Coventry, Sheffield Wednesday and Bradford City defender who is Barrow’s assistant manager.
Torquay United will be making the 698-mile round trip to face the National League leaders. Even when their coach turns off the M6, it will be the best part of another 40 minutes to Barrow. It’s one way in and one way out here. “The longest cul-de-sac in Britain,” says Lewis Duckmanton, Barrow’s analyst and goalkeeping coach.
Duckmanton is scrolling through his phone to find a few facts that are more pertinent to what we’ve been discussing, namely how Pep Guardiola’s influence stretches from the Etihad campus at Manchester City to the humble environs of Holker Street, the 110-year-old home of the best non-League team in the country.
Opta don’t gather statistics at this level but Duckmanton has now found the answers. “The average percentage of possession for us this season is 59,” he says. “Average number of passes is 507. The highest possession in a game was 81 per cent. We’ve got the best ball recovery time in the league, the most passes per match and the highest time of ball being in play.”
Evatt looks up from behind his desk. “Have you got your laptop?” he asks. “You can show him Dior Angus’ chance from the other night [against Solihull]. He doesn’t score but it’s a perfect pattern to what we work on.
“The keeper has it. He rolls it out to the middle of the three centre-halves, who steps out and raps a pass through the lines into the forward, who has come deep and rotated with the midfield player. He then switches play out to our left-sided centre-half, who has stepped in. Our left wing-back then makes a flat run behind their right-back and the ball gets threaded in behind and he plays a square pass, and Dior misses from two yards out.”
That Evatt can reel all that off, without the aid of any footage, says everything about the work Barrow do on the training ground. His team are encouraged to play with freedom and intensity but they also have choreographed movement patterns, especially when their goalkeeper has the ball.
Ian Evatt, manager of Barrow (Photo: Morgan Harlow/Getty Images)
After looking at that move against Solihull on the laptop, it feels like it would have been the perfect goal if Angus converted. “It’s as good as it gets,” Evatt replies. “You’re talking about all that happening in probably less than 10 seconds. It’s the incisiveness. It’s playing out from the back but playing out with a purpose. That isn’t something they’ve done off the cuff. It’s something we’ve worked on and drilled into them.”
Ball recovery time seems relevant too. “Again, that’s Pep’s influence — the six-second rule,” Evatt says. “If we’re not winning the ball back in six seconds, there’s something going wrong. Especially at this level. No disrespect but the more pressure you’ve got on the ball, the more people struggle with it.”
The Athletic’s interest in Barrow came about after another National League manager mentioned Evatt’s side’s style of football is unique at this level, especially their commitment to playing out from the back.
Yet Barrow are doing much more than playing attractive football. Despite having a bottom-six budget, they are top of the table, unbeaten since October and on course to return to the Football League for the first time in almost half a century, ever since they lost their place in a manner that still fuels anger and resentment in these parts.
“This football is not like anything we’ve ever seen before,” says Ryan Sutherland, who has followed the club for nearly 20 years and does everything from looking after the kit to working in the club shop, selling tickets and managing Barrow’s Twitter account. He is one of only two full-time staff on the operational side of the club.
“If you speak to some of our older fans tomorrow,” he says, “they get a bit emotional talking about it, especially the fact that we could go up this year. We have people coming into the club in the week now just for a chat about how good it would be if the club got promoted. It’s literally their dying wish to see League football here again.
“We’ve been nowhere near before. The closest we got was when we were in the play-offs for a brief spell four or five years ago under Paul Cox but the football was just, ‘Get it to the full-back and hoof to the centre-forward’. People just didn’t buy into that as much as they do now, so the way we’re playing clearly does make a difference.”
Barrow have just had five consecutive attendances of 2,000-plus for the first time since they were in the Football League. They are tapping into a new fanbase, aware that a generation of supporters were lost through the years spent in the wilderness, and in the process lifting some of the gloom in an area where the locals tend to drink from a glass that is half-empty. Indeed, according to a survey carried out by the Office for National Statistics six years ago, Barrow was deemed to be the least happy place in the United Kingdom.
“I think it’s one of those places where there’s an us-against-the-world mentality, where they feel hard done by. ‘We got voted out the Football League, no-one likes us, no-one wants to come up north’. There’s that siege mentality,” Evatt says. “In many ways, it’s like that now. But I think, in hindsight, you have to understand, they weren’t relegated from the League, they got voted out. So there’s that proper dislike for…”
“Everyone!” interrupts Duckmanton.
“For everyone, yeah,” Evatt adds, laughing.
For Evatt, who describes himself as “a modern-day coach with old-school values”, there was additional motivation at Barrow from day one. “Everybody I spoke to said that you can’t get out the National League playing football,” he says. “And that made me even more committed to doing what we do.”
When Evatt was appointed at the end of June 2018, the club was in a mess. Barrow had finished 20th the previous season, one point and one place above the relegation zone. Evatt, whose managerial experience was limited to the three games he spent in charge of Chesterfield as caretaker, didn’t even have enough players for a five-a-side team.
“We inherited a club where the connection with the fans was completely gone. They’d just survived the previous season, the crowds were low, the style of football was route one at best. And then we came in with this new philosophy and only four players, so we had to recruit a whole team in July.”
Evatt’s philosophy owes much to his time playing under Ian Holloway in a Blackpool team that won promotion to the Premier League in 2010 with what the former central defender describes as an “attacking, expansive and brave” style of football. “But the biggest thing that Ian changed was the mentality of our entire club. And that’s what I bought into the most,” Evatt says. “He wouldn’t accept that Blackpool were just happy to stay in the Championship. And he didn’t want us to accept that.”
The 38-year-old felt the same way about Barrow and the National League, yet he soon realised that both himself and Atherton had their work cut out when it came to implementing their football ideas. A simple rondo on the opening day turned into chaos. “The first training session, we couldn’t string three or four passes together; it was frantic,” Evatt says. “But then, six weeks later, we’re scoring goals when it’s 24 or 25 passes.”
Evatt brought in players who were comfortable on the ball and then it was all about training how they play by working on possession-based drills, passing combinations and repetitive shadow play exercises. Coaching, in other words. “I spend a lot of time studying Pep’s methods and training sessions, and other people that play a similar style and philosophy to us,” Evatt says.
Long read, but fascinating.
By Stuart James Feb 4, 2020 66
“We’ve scored some good goals,” Ian Evatt says. “One of them was after 24 passes. And we had another where every player touched the ball before it went in the net. Our fans started nicknaming us ‘Barrowcelona.’”
Evatt, who made more than 500 appearances for Derby County, QPR, Blackpool and Chesterfield before taking over as Barrow AFC’s manager, has a little chuckle as he looks around his office at his staff. “Barrowcelona,” he says again, almost under his breath.
Barrow is a long way from Barcelona. In fact, this Cumbrian industrial town is a long way from anywhere. Located at the end of a peninsula that overlooks the Irish Sea, Barrow-in-Furness is isolated and open to the elements. It is the sort of place where trees bend over to greet you.
“Gusts of up to 45mph tomorrow,” Evatt says, looking at the weather forecast on his phone and grimacing at the thought of how hard it will be for his team to play their brand of free-flowing football in those conditions.
“Brutal,” says Peter Atherton, the former Coventry, Sheffield Wednesday and Bradford City defender who is Barrow’s assistant manager.
Torquay United will be making the 698-mile round trip to face the National League leaders. Even when their coach turns off the M6, it will be the best part of another 40 minutes to Barrow. It’s one way in and one way out here. “The longest cul-de-sac in Britain,” says Lewis Duckmanton, Barrow’s analyst and goalkeeping coach.
Duckmanton is scrolling through his phone to find a few facts that are more pertinent to what we’ve been discussing, namely how Pep Guardiola’s influence stretches from the Etihad campus at Manchester City to the humble environs of Holker Street, the 110-year-old home of the best non-League team in the country.
Opta don’t gather statistics at this level but Duckmanton has now found the answers. “The average percentage of possession for us this season is 59,” he says. “Average number of passes is 507. The highest possession in a game was 81 per cent. We’ve got the best ball recovery time in the league, the most passes per match and the highest time of ball being in play.”
Evatt looks up from behind his desk. “Have you got your laptop?” he asks. “You can show him Dior Angus’ chance from the other night [against Solihull]. He doesn’t score but it’s a perfect pattern to what we work on.
“The keeper has it. He rolls it out to the middle of the three centre-halves, who steps out and raps a pass through the lines into the forward, who has come deep and rotated with the midfield player. He then switches play out to our left-sided centre-half, who has stepped in. Our left wing-back then makes a flat run behind their right-back and the ball gets threaded in behind and he plays a square pass, and Dior misses from two yards out.”
That Evatt can reel all that off, without the aid of any footage, says everything about the work Barrow do on the training ground. His team are encouraged to play with freedom and intensity but they also have choreographed movement patterns, especially when their goalkeeper has the ball.
Ian Evatt, manager of Barrow (Photo: Morgan Harlow/Getty Images)
After looking at that move against Solihull on the laptop, it feels like it would have been the perfect goal if Angus converted. “It’s as good as it gets,” Evatt replies. “You’re talking about all that happening in probably less than 10 seconds. It’s the incisiveness. It’s playing out from the back but playing out with a purpose. That isn’t something they’ve done off the cuff. It’s something we’ve worked on and drilled into them.”
Ball recovery time seems relevant too. “Again, that’s Pep’s influence — the six-second rule,” Evatt says. “If we’re not winning the ball back in six seconds, there’s something going wrong. Especially at this level. No disrespect but the more pressure you’ve got on the ball, the more people struggle with it.”
The Athletic’s interest in Barrow came about after another National League manager mentioned Evatt’s side’s style of football is unique at this level, especially their commitment to playing out from the back.
Yet Barrow are doing much more than playing attractive football. Despite having a bottom-six budget, they are top of the table, unbeaten since October and on course to return to the Football League for the first time in almost half a century, ever since they lost their place in a manner that still fuels anger and resentment in these parts.
“This football is not like anything we’ve ever seen before,” says Ryan Sutherland, who has followed the club for nearly 20 years and does everything from looking after the kit to working in the club shop, selling tickets and managing Barrow’s Twitter account. He is one of only two full-time staff on the operational side of the club.
“If you speak to some of our older fans tomorrow,” he says, “they get a bit emotional talking about it, especially the fact that we could go up this year. We have people coming into the club in the week now just for a chat about how good it would be if the club got promoted. It’s literally their dying wish to see League football here again.
“We’ve been nowhere near before. The closest we got was when we were in the play-offs for a brief spell four or five years ago under Paul Cox but the football was just, ‘Get it to the full-back and hoof to the centre-forward’. People just didn’t buy into that as much as they do now, so the way we’re playing clearly does make a difference.”
Barrow have just had five consecutive attendances of 2,000-plus for the first time since they were in the Football League. They are tapping into a new fanbase, aware that a generation of supporters were lost through the years spent in the wilderness, and in the process lifting some of the gloom in an area where the locals tend to drink from a glass that is half-empty. Indeed, according to a survey carried out by the Office for National Statistics six years ago, Barrow was deemed to be the least happy place in the United Kingdom.
“I think it’s one of those places where there’s an us-against-the-world mentality, where they feel hard done by. ‘We got voted out the Football League, no-one likes us, no-one wants to come up north’. There’s that siege mentality,” Evatt says. “In many ways, it’s like that now. But I think, in hindsight, you have to understand, they weren’t relegated from the League, they got voted out. So there’s that proper dislike for…”
“Everyone!” interrupts Duckmanton.
“For everyone, yeah,” Evatt adds, laughing.
For Evatt, who describes himself as “a modern-day coach with old-school values”, there was additional motivation at Barrow from day one. “Everybody I spoke to said that you can’t get out the National League playing football,” he says. “And that made me even more committed to doing what we do.”
When Evatt was appointed at the end of June 2018, the club was in a mess. Barrow had finished 20th the previous season, one point and one place above the relegation zone. Evatt, whose managerial experience was limited to the three games he spent in charge of Chesterfield as caretaker, didn’t even have enough players for a five-a-side team.
“We inherited a club where the connection with the fans was completely gone. They’d just survived the previous season, the crowds were low, the style of football was route one at best. And then we came in with this new philosophy and only four players, so we had to recruit a whole team in July.”
Evatt’s philosophy owes much to his time playing under Ian Holloway in a Blackpool team that won promotion to the Premier League in 2010 with what the former central defender describes as an “attacking, expansive and brave” style of football. “But the biggest thing that Ian changed was the mentality of our entire club. And that’s what I bought into the most,” Evatt says. “He wouldn’t accept that Blackpool were just happy to stay in the Championship. And he didn’t want us to accept that.”
The 38-year-old felt the same way about Barrow and the National League, yet he soon realised that both himself and Atherton had their work cut out when it came to implementing their football ideas. A simple rondo on the opening day turned into chaos. “The first training session, we couldn’t string three or four passes together; it was frantic,” Evatt says. “But then, six weeks later, we’re scoring goals when it’s 24 or 25 passes.”
Evatt brought in players who were comfortable on the ball and then it was all about training how they play by working on possession-based drills, passing combinations and repetitive shadow play exercises. Coaching, in other words. “I spend a lot of time studying Pep’s methods and training sessions, and other people that play a similar style and philosophy to us,” Evatt says.
Older supporters that have been around forever 
️#BarrowAFC#BackTheBluebirds