‘As nervous as you can possibly be’ – Barnet await more last-day drama

Barnet entertain Chesterfield at the Hive in their final game of a turbulent season knowing victory alone will not be enough to keep them in the Football League. Martin Allen’s side have to beat the already doomed Spireites and hope Morecambe lose at Coventry if they are to stay in League Two for a third successive season. Two points clear of Barnet, Morecambe’s superior goal difference means a draw will almost certainly be good enough to keep them up. For Barnet’s owner, Tony Kleanthous, it is an unsurprisingly stressful time.

“It’s as nervous as you can possibly be,” he says. “We really live it. For us as club chairmen, our livelihoods and our whole reputation is on the line. However, we’re not the ones crossing the white line to play the match, so as much as it matters, the bit that really counts is the one thing we can’t really affect. It never leaves you; you spend most of the day trying to get on with other stuff so you don’t have to think about it.”

Barnet’s owner for almost 25 years, Kleanthous has invested more than £30m – and counting – in the Hive, the club’s stadium and training complex since they decamped from Underhill in 2013. Home to a medical facility with few equals in world football, it hosted Germany and Brazil before the last World Cup. Such impossibly glamorous guests are several worlds removed from the squad of basement dwellers more used to calling these opulent surroundings home.

Seven points from safety with eight games to go at the end of a chaotic season in which Rossi Eames, Mark McGhee and Graham Westley had unsuccessful spells in the dugout, Kleanthous picked up the bat-phone and reappointed Allen, who agreed to go “back to the madhouse” on a short-term contract for the fifth time in his managerial career. It was one last, desperate throw of the dice and his impact was instant, but four wins and a draw in seven games have not been enough to extricate Barnet from the mire.

“With Martin, you can just leave him to get on with things,” explains Kleanthous of his relationship with Allen, who last left Barnet for a better-paid job with the National League side Eastleigh in December 2016, only to be sacked after 14 games in charge. “He likes to be left to get on with it and that suits us both. He has very strong opinions on what he wants to do and how he wants to do it. You’ve just got to support him and have faith.”

While Barnet’s owner and fans have every reason to keep the faith in a manager who has pulled off implausible escape acts at the club before, they can but hope Coventry do them a favour by beating Morecambe. “It’s always better to have your destiny in your own hands, isn’t it?” says Kleanthous, when asked whether he feels a certain amount of helplessness. “But it is what it is and we’re glad to be in with a shout.

“We’ve been here before, we’ve fought our way out of it before and we’ve been relegated before. There are teams that yo-yo between the Championship and the Premier League because they find that jump hard. We struggle with that at our level, between the National League and the Football League.”

Kleanthous answers without hesitation when asked what advice he would give his younger self if he could travel back in time to 1994 when he became, at 28, the youngest chairman in the Football League. “I’d say: ‘Don’t do it,’” he replies with a wry chuckle. “Actually, you know, it’s been horribly hard and health-wise it’s not been the best, but I don’t regret any decision I’ve made because I love this club and it’s been an enjoyable ride.” An enjoyable ride and a white-knuckle one, with plenty more stomach-churning twists and turns ahead.