Barrow currently sit top of the National League, heading for promotion with a seven-point lead
after 33 games.
With their commitment to style over pragmatism, Ian Evatt’s side are attracting admiring
glances from throughout the non-league game, especially due to their commitment to playing
out from the back.
Yet Barrow are doing much more than playing attractive football.
They are top despite having a bottom-six budget and on course to return to the Football League
for the first time in almost half a century.
“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,” 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.
It's a place incongruous with its club’s rebirth.
“We’ve scored some good goals,” manager 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 made more than 500 appearances for Derby County, QPR, Blackpool and Chesterfield before
taking over as Barrow AFC’s manager in 2018.
He describes himself as “a modern-day coach with old-school values”, who found an 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 he was appointed, 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” he remembers.
“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 his assistant Peter Atherton, the former Sheffield Wednesday full-back
and captain, 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 Guardiola’s methods and training sessions, and other people
that play a similar style and philosophy to us,” Evatt says.
Then there are what Evatt describes as the “non-negotiables”.
Some are quite intriguing.
For example, when Barrow play a 4-3-3 formation, their winger on the opposite side of the pitch
to the ball has to stay high and wide even when they’re not in possession.
“He cheats,” Evatt says.
“Our centre-forward occupies their two centre-halves.
And so it always gives us that out ball — bang, counter-attack.”
Opta don’t gather statistics at this level but Lewis Duckmanton, the club’s analyst
and goalkeeping coach, has compiled his own.
“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.”
It shows how Guardiola’s influence has stretched from Manchester City to the humble environs
of Holker Street, the 110-year-old home of the best non-League team in the country.
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.”
Another relates to the psychological side of the game.
“At half-time, our players have to run in.
That’s non-negotiable.
It sends that mental message that we’re relentless.”
One non-negotiable is absolutely fundamental to how Barrow play.
“Regardless of what the opposition do when we have a goal-kick, whether they’re pressing
high or not, my players have to show for the ball.
Then, it comes down to decisions.
“If teams do commit bodies to stop us playing out, we will try and be brave, even if it
means using the keeper to create an overload or the midfield players rotating.
But we have this set plan where we the three centre-halves will go into the six-yard box
as you are allowed to do now and the wing-backs will then stay high and wide.
“The midfield players will probably suck their midfield players in towards our goal
if they’re going man-for-man and pressing high, and then we’ve got that opportunity
to go bang, straight into Scott Quigley, a bit like Ederson does with Aguero at times.
And then, it’s more or less four-v-four.
But our structure, how we look to play out, is non-negotiable.”
It is fascinating to listen to and feels like a ballsy way to set up at non-League level.
“It’s massively ballsy,” Evatt says, nodding.
“But what is football?
What do you believe in?
I believe that football is there as an entertainment industry.
Supporters work hard, 9-5, five or six days a week, to be able to afford to come to football.
If my team are just going to set up to win games by set pieces and long balls, it’s
not what I would want to spend my hard-earned money to watch.”
That said, Barrow’s own supporters had to be “re-educated” about the new style of
football they were seeing and that process is ongoing.
“When we first started, there were moans and groans — and there still are one or
two when we recycle the ball.
‘Get it forward!’
‘Get it in box!’”
Evatt says, mimicking a northern accent.
Within the National League, managers and clubs have generally been very complimentary about
the way that Barrow play.
Yet there is also some curious post-match feedback at times that leaves Evatt and Atherton
slightly baffled.
“When you go and speak to some managers, they say: ‘We’d love to play how you play
but I haven’t got the players.’
Hang on a minute, your budget is three times what mine is — if you want to play football,”
Evatt says, “recruit footballers.”
“It’s that simple.
Then coach them.
Teach them.
Improve them”.