carabao'ing Out

Preston North End (H) - League Cup - 12th August 2025

It’s a balmy night at Holker St, global warming rewarding our errant ways with sweaty brows, shorts and a stunning sunset over the slag bank. Mother Nature’s breathtaking byproduct lit in all it's glory. Entry tonight is only ten quid, or two coffees or 20 Freddos (or whatever British currency metric you prefer) but you might not know it from the clubs promotion. SHOUT THAT BIT OUT LOUD LADS.

The fixtures computer has not been kind, three of the League's big spenders up first, which could easily suck all the optimism clean out of us. Especially if we fail in front of goal again against Notts on Saturday. Hopes are flailing wildly between, playoffs to one point above relegation to mid table and everything in between.

Two games, no goals and a tepid cup of Horlicks home performance on Saturday has quickly faded the memories of the good finish to last season. The facts might be uncomfortable, but we aren’t waving fat stacks and we haven't got bank. But we have proven we can be competitive as recently as two seasons ago. Is this the worst Barrow team ever? Of course not, did you see the Andy Nicholas’ debut?

And so then it comes with good timing that we face a gentle promenade along the docks of a first round tie in the Carabao (I’m yet to meet a person who has drank it, looks like it tastes like fizzy Cilit Bang) Cup.

Ah, well if nothing else, facing an established and competitive (last season notwithstanding) Championship club in Preston gives us something of the clichéd free hit. Has someone at the EFL been heating our balls? With these fixtures we've had our pants pulled down quicker than Gregg Wallace dropping his undies in the BBC dressing room (allegedly) haven’t we?

But all we really want tonight is a performance, proof we haven’t turned into Nautical reserves over summer. Preston have turned up in numbers, filling the away end. They’ll make some noise for five minutes before breaking out the cozy crime fiction novels and a flask of camomile for some fingers-on-lips quiet time. Their slow start is a lot to do with it. Jeppe Okkles gets his legs mixed up on two minutes with an effort that is more Scissor Sisters than scissor kick and troubles the corner flag rather than the onion bag. Osmajić has so far managed to suppress his chomp reflex and won’t be facing off against Barkhuizen (relegated to the bench) for some Bark vs Bite silliness. Winterbottom starts between the sticks with Shipley coming into defence; both will go on to have very solid competitive debuts (ahem, more on that later).

Mahoney gains a start and will go on to have his best performance in a Barrow shirt, an audacious lob in the second half shows his undoubted ability. Unfortunately it hits the roof of the net rather than the back of it. Repeat: More please. Preston’s Mads Frøkjær leaves the pitch injured with the Tannoy pronunciation of his surname leaving the crowd tittering like it’s Carry On Football. Tyler Walker has the ball in the net on 35, but is judged to have toed the ball out of the keeper’s gloves before slotting home. Booty has made a moderate start to his Barrow career but is much improved tonight, showing glimpses of why he was so sought after. Maybe if Morecambe hadn’t had the brass neck to go bust just to avoid playing us in pre-season, that extra friendly would have got us up to speed a bit earlier. With Preston struggling to create chances and us having a pathological aversion to scoring, it looked like the game would be decided by penalties. That is however until the 66^th minute, when Raglan and Winterbottom had a suboptimal communication malfunction which saw the ball headed into the bottom corner of our own goal by the latter. At least we’ve finally got on the score sheet. To our credit our heads didn’t drop; we defiantly continued to get it forward, with Barkhuizen coming closest, pinging the post in the last ten. Not enough however, and it’s now three games, three losses and no goals. We live in hyperbolic times where every minor indiscretion is a disgrace, everything is finished and we used to live in a real county (I missed that, was it around 1994ish?). Let’s keep perspective. I’m not wetting the sheets just yet; we looked much improved against a strong side. But we need to start scoring. And quickly. We’ll get it right, but losing the quality of Gotts, Campbell and Spence is maybe proving a harder walnut to crack than we thought envisaged and our constipation in front of goal is a carry over from, well, the Quigley era. Although it would be nice not to have to rely on a 20 goal a season striker and find some goals from around the pitch.

The bigger game of the week is Saturday. Must win? #NotYet

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