Dale keeper James Spencer kept his first clean sheet of the season, as Dale were held to a goalless draw by Barnet on Saturday.

Rochdale travelled down to Underhill looking to build on an ace stoppage time victory against MK Franchise two weeks and hopefully push up the league a little but we had to settle for a 0-0 draw which in my view, was a lucky point for us. 

Ideally, we could have done with a game last week following that victory but because of international call ups, we had to postpone the Wrexham home game leaving us with a two week gap which wasn't at all helpful in my view. 

 Anyone who was there will tell you that the game was absolutely awful to watch and that Dale failed to deliever a good performance yet again which has been the case all season in the league.  But, you travel over 200 miles each way down to a team who you very rarely beat away so is a point a bad result?  Being honest, I'd probably have taken a point before the game had it been offered.

 As an away trip, Barnet isn't one I usually look forward to.  I don't mind the travelling, the further south the better usually for me but the ground is awful, the place is awful, we never win there, it's expensive and Barnet are a team I feel don't belong in the league really.  It also meant a second consecutive coach trip which wasn't great either.  The one benefit of the Barnet trip is the pre match boozer which is one of the better ones in the division but we had to duck out of that as well given that the plan for the coach trip was to stop off at a pub in Cambridge for some food.

 Anyway, we got to the ground at about half two and I got the text to tell us that Muirhead and Rundle weren't playing and immediately I though of the Hereford game where we were tactically poor to the point where we couldn't work out where players were actually playing.  This match was more simple as it was quite clearly a 4-3-3 which we know doesn't work.  Due to the defensive injuries we've got, Dale brought in Kelvin Lomax on loan from the BIFFO's and he slotted straight in at right back with McArdle, Branston and Kennedy making up the rest of the back four.  Jones, Doolan and Perkins played in midfield with Alfie, Murray and Dagnall up front.

 In my view, we were lucky to come away with a point and had the Barnet strikers not been Paul Tait like with their finishing, the scoreboard would have looked more like the Spotland one last Sunday afternoon at full time at the Hornets match!  Exaggerations aside, Barnet should have won the game.

 One positive aspect of the day was the performance of the defence.  Guy Branston was up against a pacy and skillful forward line but was an absolute rock throughout and made several superb challenges thus making him my Man of the Match by some distance. 

 The first half saw the pretty much every ball we put up to the strikers come back and this put a lot of pressure on the defence with the midfield pretty much invisible for the most part. 

 On a few occasions, Birchall, Thomas and Puncheon broke through for the home side only to either be thwarted by good defending or by wasting an effort and blazing it off target.  Twice when put through, Birchall blasted the ball high into that sweet-pea net that holds up the terrace behind the goal and I lost count of how many times we came out with the phrase "Another let off there"

 Rochdale weren't completely without chances as Chris Dagnall had a great chance to score and he let rip from the edge of the box and it looked to be going in until it took a massive deflection and went out for a corner.  Gary Jones also shot wide from about 20 yards

 It became clear very early on that 4-3-3 wasn't working and we called for changes to be made for the second half but it didn't happen until well into the second half.

 James Spencer was forced to make an excellent save at one point from a free kick and substitute Jason Norville had the ball in the back of the net with his second touch of the ball, thankfully for Rochdale, his first touch was with his hands as he controlled the ball and the referee quite rightly ruled it out.

 Chris Dagnall had Dale's best chance in the second half as well as he got on the end of a corner and his header was superbly saved by Harrison in the Barnet net.

 Daggers also went down in the box and at the time I thought no contact was made and agreed with the ref when he waves play on but Keith Hill was apparently adamant that it was a penalty as was Dagnall.

 Kelvin Lomax was twice called up to save Dale with two absolutely outstanding goal saving blocks in what was an impressive debut for the young lad.

 Eventually, some substitutions were made with about 20 minutes left.  I'd hoped that it would be Murray and Doolan to go off, Doolan was carrying a knock from the first half and Murray had been awful and looked uninterested throughout thus highlighting the fact that he doesn't like playing a 4-3-3.  Instead, Doolan and Le Fondre came off do my disappointment as Muirhead and Prendergast came on.

Dale took the game to Barnet from this point on but failed to create any clear cut chances.  In fact it was only with about 5 minutes left that Ben Muirhead even touched the ball!

 Rory Prendergast tried to win Rochdale a penalty with the most unbelievable dive I've ever seen to the point where he should have been booked for it and the referee just waved play on.

 The game finished 0-0 and concern is growing just a tad that we're 5 games into the new league season and we've yet to play anything like what we saw last season.  Still, as I keep telling my City fan supervisor at work, the season ends in May, not September! 

Photo: Action Images

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