Town boss Mick McCarthy felt his side were excellent during the second half despite conceding the goal which saw Barnet to a 1-0 pre-season friendly victory at The Hive. John Akinde netted from the penalty spot in the 68th minute.

“It was a good workout for us,” McCarthy said. “I knew it would be a competitive game against Martin Allen’s team. I guess when a League Two team plays a Championship team it’s always going to be competitive.

“I didn’t think there was much in the first half and I thought we were considerably the better team in the second half and we’ve conceded the goal.

“We’ve tried to get the ball down and pass it, and I thought we did. In the second half I thought we were excellent apart from the backpass, which ends up as a penalty. Other than that, without creating chances, I thought we passed the ball around well.”

Andre Dozzell was amongst those impressing their boss after the break: “Doz is a good player and I thought James Blanchfield was very good in the second half as well.

“I thought the second half was a better performance. I thought Cameron Stewart played well, his delivery from freekicks and corners was excellent. I thought it was a much better performance. We’ve lost through a penalty and yet I thought we played well.”

The Town boss says results aren’t the most important aspect of pre-season, but admits he’d much prefer to be on the winning side.

“I’d sooner win it, don’t get me wrong,” he added. “I really hate it, I wanted to get something out of it, we were desperately trying to get a draw or something out of it because I don’t like losing.
"“Of course, people see that we’ve lost, they’re not at the game and it just reflects badly on us that we’ve lost to a League Two team.

“But, I keep saying, whatever happens in pre-season, our start will be defined by what we do against Barnsley and what we do after that.”

The Town boss refused to be drawn on links with Blackburn’s Elliott Bennett: “I’ve openly said I need some wide players so everybody’s going to put two and two together and get five. I had Elliott at Wolves and I like him.”

He added: "It’s unfair to speak about any players that are under contract. But anybody knows I had him at Wolverhampton, so I’ve known him of old.”

Blackburn are believed to be willing to sell the 27-year-old winger for the reported £250,000 they paid Norwich for him in January.

McCarthy says there has been no further progress on bringing in loan players: “The loanees, all the Premier League clubs will take their players away with them on pre-season tours and we’ll get to know whether we can do any deals with them when they come back.”

Photo: Action Images

muccletonjoe added 10:09 - Jul 14 Lose a pre season kick about and bring on the negative sarcasm of the great and wonderful itfc "supporters". Have yourselves a breather and press the minus button ffs
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Lightningboy added 10:12 - Jul 14 The 6th of August is when it will all matter - not pre season. I expect the fans pateince clock will be ticking very loudly this season though.
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vanmunt added 10:12 - Jul 14 Bristol City finished well below Town last year at least two summer signing so far Lee Tomlin and Hordur Magnusson from Juventus both reputed to be around 3M each.. don't think I will be taking any bets they finish below us this season.
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rinkydinkpanther added 10:46 - Jul 14 And I, for one, am looking forward to this headline come the end of the season: 'McCarthy: Excellent Second Half of the Season Despite Relegation' That would make me feel a lot better about things.
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battyblue added 11:19 - Jul 14 My god how low we have sunk and still the deluded think we are going to challenge for top six with this squad of players,,this managers style and tactics and most of all his continued verbal rubbish which is continually served up,,i predict we will be struggling to stay out of bottom six as things stand.
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onthehoof added 11:34 - Jul 14 OK a pre-season wobble and already our great fans show how sensitive they are to the current situation. It is rightly pointed out that these matches are meaningless (thankfully) to an extent until we play Barnsley. Lets hope management actually do something to alleviate our weak areas but we clearly need to let the players particularly the younger ones have a chance too. Foolishly (or possibly not) I live in hope for now. However, if little / nothing happens - every match will be like ground hog day if MM reports many excellent performances but the actual results do not support it. Living in hope for now.

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blues1 added 11:42 - Jul 14 Surco72. I've often disagreed with many of ur posted but have to say that this time you're spot on in everything you've wwritten
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blues1 added 11:50 - Jul 14 To those criticising those who are being negative. It's not about the result of this game. It's about the continuous rubbish spoken by mm. The lack of signings for certain areas of the team. Already mm has gone back on what he said at end of last season. He stated that chambers would be back in the centre of defence, but now he's 1st choice RB again, he's muting playing bishop on the right. Yet again, players out of position. So yes, people have every right to fear the worst. I've been accused many times in here of wearing rose tinted specs, but I sincerely fear we could get relegated this season. Maybe I'm being over pessimistic but I said last year, that if mm was still here this year that I believed that could happen, and nothing has occurred in this preseason so far, has changed my mind

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BrettenhamBlue added 11:51 - Jul 14 Elliott Bennett isn't the answer either. Norwich through and through, his heart won't be in it even if he is a good player.
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ormey75 added 12:06 - Jul 14 We've got an owner worth millions and millions and we're after players like Elliot Bennett, He's got a worse goal scoring record than Frank nouble, I can't beleave how far we have fallen under the ownership of Marcus Evans, it's getting embarrassing, it won't be long before the likes of Colchester and Northampton are out bidding us for players, how many more seasons of this will we have to put up with?? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

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Surco72 added 12:12 - Jul 14 Blues 1 ...it is always about opinions and I really hope I am wrong and we have a blinding season but just cannot see it with this squad , it lacks creativity , passing ability , sheer pace , width and the negative tactics have held us back , playing three defensive midfielders at home and wondering why we don't score or have a shot on target is unbelievable . And if we are talking about meaning less games that you cannot judge on the last two of last season were , we had nothing to play for and nor did the other clubs but we tout them about to back MMs 7th place finish when in reality without those 2 wins in nothing games we would have finished 10th the level we deserved to be

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cats_whiskers added 12:34 - Jul 14 If you study the fixtures We are more likely after 10 games played to be in the lower half and around bottom six we would have come FULL CIRCLE under McCarthy as this is where he came in! It's more than a probability and is VERY likely to happen that we will do a Coventry City.
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Dwillams57 added 12:41 - Jul 14 Excellent second half and we lose to Barnet. Unbelievable. I wish all the season ticket holders the best of luck this year you are definitely going to need it. I have been going since 1974 but no more.
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jas0999 added 12:46 - Jul 14 The club are treating us as fools. Evans and Mick must be having a good laugh behind the scenes. The stuff they come out with is ridiculous. 'We were excellent'. Really? We're we playing Barcelona! 'We cand get loans in' ... Why not buy players? Oh, and others are getting loans. 'We are bound by FFP' - we are the only club who adhere to it. 'The club is in debt' - yes, but the debt was bought for a fraction but owed in full by the Evans. It's lie after lie. Spin after spin. It's a joke. A two year old could tell them that we have a weaker squad than the one which failed last season and played some of the worst football in our history and no, even in pre season, the manager is deluded. Until evans goes, this club won't move forward.

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BrettenhamBlue added 13:06 - Jul 14 We have Coke Jas0999, all is not lost. But it is. Many of the youngsters stepping up are nowhere near Championship standard and it's going to be a steep learning curve. If we had talked about youngsters stepping up to the first team last season I would have said Dozzell, Harry Clarke (we lost him), Emmanuel, Kenlock and Sam Ford (and we lost him) could step in. Some of the others are a long way from ready. Charlie Brown was being talked about as excellent potential (and we lost him) and Ben Morris could make the grade after some time out on loan at a lower league club. I saw some truly awful football for the U21's last year.... I really fear for our status as a Championship club if we rely on some of these players.

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Bluetone added 13:08 - Jul 14 Just say that Gerkin will be your first choice keeper and you'll make our misery and sense of foreboding complete.
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bobble added 13:10 - Jul 14 Barnet were european champions 6 years in a row so we an not expect a result there.
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BrettenhamBlue added 13:13 - Jul 14 Team Mick will pick against Barnsley Gerken Chambers, Webster, Smith, Berra, Knudsen Skuse, Hyam, Douglas, Coke Murphy Tactics Hoof...hoof...hoof
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Surco72 added 13:34 - Jul 14 http://www.insidermedia.com/insider/national/146216-championship-club-club Same financial footing as Brighton and Boro roughly how can they afford big signings when we cant even though we received £8 million for Mings ?
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Seasider added 17:06 - Jul 14 Don't suppose you can expect the Manager to slate his players too much;but from the report on here,in the EADT and about a dozen supporters who went and have posted on here; to use the word excellent to describe performance in 2nd half seems to be pushing the boundaries of reality.Either that or he doesn't set his standards high enough these days. Wasn't too enamoured when MM came but he has managed to keep this club in top half of the table.However the style of football,and his attitude especially to criticism concerns me amongst other things. Have just ordered my ticket for the Colchester and Stevenage games.Two more teams who Ipswich had no trouble in beating in the past;but we must consider that he is experimenting at this early stage.However when it comes to the League Cup game I expect McCarthy to show a bit more respect to the fans and the competition than he did last year. Like JAS and many others concerned by lack of activity in the transfer market and Micks negative vibes talking solely about loans and having to wait;and like many others on here are concerned for the coming season,however in the past Mickmac out of the blue has pulled the odd rabbit out of the hat;so lets hope he does it again,even twice or thrice,if not it could be the same old,same old scrapping for results and hanging on for wins or draws when teams should be put to the sword,especially at home. This is why there will be only two season ticket holders in our car instead of four.Mind you the combined total of support will be well over 100 years instead of about 180 years last year. McCarthy and Evans are solely responsible for this,so by the time we reach the first mid season break in September we shall have an idea of what kind of season we will have,as it is too early to say at present.

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MicksZzzTactics added 18:07 - Jul 14 Well Surco72 may I humbly suggest that the answer to your extraordinarily fine & concerning question just above can be found -- among other places -- by revisiting & studying the main character in Charles Dickens's 1843 blockbuster "A Christmas Carol"!!! :-) lol And to those Die-Harder-than-Bruce-Willis "In Mick We [BLINDLY] trust" fans of ours who stubbornly claim that the nowadays solely tax-benefit-fixated Ebenezer Evans wasn't at all MISERLY [and then some!] to begin with .... but only got seriously pissed AFTER his first 2 appointed super managers spend his transfer-allocated Pesos soooo poorly..... welly welly welly well I say: What a poor & ambitionless argument to keep throwing around, season after season under their "guru" & "savior" i.e. Dinosaur Mick! Especially as you point out Surco72: 1) Evans pretty much each season since selling pricey and thus highly profitable players like Mings and 2) seeing other clubs with somewhat similar economic footing continuously strengthening their squad with sizable signings. And yep while it's absolutely true that this ONCE proud (also for it's way of playing both CREATIVE + PASSING football!!!) club is running on a serious annual loss and has been for long -- so in that sense Ebenezer Evans has his "right" to just pocket those 8 mill he got from Mings and continue to let Mick go pretty much penniless and succumb to just LOAN some ex-Wolves has-been (BTW doesn't my childhood Wolves idols Ken Hibbitt & George "Afro" Berry have some grandchildren by now Mick can sign from somewhere for a real discount, thinking that pure genetically, like with Dozzell for a homegrown example, there is small but fair chance they might turn out to be as succesful as their famous grandfathers??? :-) lol) -- it has become blatantly obvious the last year or 2 that alleged 750+ mill worth Mr. Evans nowadays is perfectly CONTENT to just let this club, along with it's current tactically inept & rubbish-talking fossil of a manager, swim UNAMBITIOUSLY around in the Championship, ever soooo nobly adhering to the Fair Play rules, while Evans keeps skimming his tax-benefit profits .... and Mick keeps adding "credence" to his Delusion of Grandeur as a Top-of-the-Pops manager and also his already enormous Yorkshire ego!!!

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Tractamatt added 19:02 - Jul 14 I'm not a Mcarthy out person but I'm not his biggest fan but I cannot see how Town will even stay up let alone compete for top 6 with little or no expenditure. To get excited buy the purchase of a player for £700,000 shows the level we have fallen to. I feel that MM should be given until Christmas but he just is not going to take us forwards anytime soon.
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essex57 added 19:43 - Jul 14 The question I ask everyone how does spending money = success? Many have spent fortunes and failed.
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RegencyBlue added 19:49 - Jul 14 Frankly I have come to the conclusion that it doesn't matter who our manager is whilst Evans remains the owner!
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essex57 added 20:07 - Jul 14 Regency it would matter because Without MM we would most probably at best be starting in League 1 or 2 or worst out of business
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