The Cobblers endured a Friday night of fright at Underhill as they became the first team to lose to rock-bottom Barnet this season.
Town were the better side in the first half but were swept aside by a black-and-gold avalanche that included four second-half goals to secure a 4-0 win.
With the nation’s media and several hundred Dutch supporters descending on this corner of Hertfordshire the home side did not disappoint – giving Holland great Edgar Davids the full 90 minutes and treating their own fans to a first victory of the season.
Davids’ first action in the game was to foul Emyr Huws after the Manchester City loanee left him trailing in his wake after an excellent first touch, earning a free-kick in a dangerous kind of area.
Huws took it, too, and had Barnet keeper Graham Stack worried momentarily, the shot eventually swerving just wide of his left-hand upright.
It was all about the set plays in the formative stages, with 31 drawing a good save from Lee Nicholls on the angle from a free-kick right in the chalk of the penalty area.
Barnet were nervous at the back and anxious in possession – sloppy passing along the back four and Chris Hackett’s incisiveness led to Roofe winning a free-kick that Hackett quickly took for Alex Nicholls, arriving off the opposite flank, to head straight at Stack.
Seconds later, a piercing Roofe run took him past two defenders but he blazed his shot wildly over the bar.
Barnet were playing so deep – at times their centre-backs would receive the ball from the goalkeeper on the edge of their own box, and find themselves under immediate pressure from the Northampton strikers.
Roofe and Nicholls were operating almost as old-fashioned style wing-forwards, playing no more than five or 10 yards behind Platt and Akinfenwa and looking to pin the home side’s full-backs in their own half.
Davids, as you might expect, looked to get on the ball at all times but this just meant he retreated further into his own territory, so that what the hoof upfield inevitably came, there was one fewer player to aim it at.
The second half started in the same way the first ended, with Huws picking Davids’ pocket and ploughing forward to earn a dubious free-kick on the edge of the box.
It was another Edgar – Anthony Edgar – who might have found himself on the scoresheet had he not found Lee Nicholls in typical form, but from the resulting corner Krystian Pearce found space off his marker to glance home the game’s first goal.
The lead was doubled moments later when Anthony Yiadom wriggled clear of a couple of challenges and hit a shot that squirted beyond Nicholls with the aid of a deflection.
Barnet, to give them their credit, were like a different side after the break and, with the slope and the momentum, they dominated the match for long spells.
The Cobblers, after the first goal, looked like a collection of players that felt somewhat sorry for themselves, an emotion no doubt amplified by the loss of yet another right-back to injury, Chris Hackett.
They lost all their urgency as the game wore on, and the team that most looked like adding to the scoreline was the one who, prior to the game, had not won this season and so it proved, with Jon Oster hitting a tracer bullet of a shot inside Nicholls’ right-hand post.
The salt in the Northampton wounds was supplied by a goal in injury time for Edgar. The defeat, in the end, was an emphatic one.
Barnet: Stack, Fuller, Pearce, Stephens, Brown, Oster, Davids, Edgar, Yiadom, Kamdjo, Hyde
Subs:
Not used: Cowler, Saville, Lee, Byrne, Nurse, Abdulla, Lowe
Cobblers: L Nicholls, Hackett, Langmead, Charles, Widdowson, Roofe, Huws, Tozer, A Nicholls, Akinfenwa, Platt
Subs: Wilson (for Hackett, 52mins), Mukendi (for Platt, 65mins), Demontagnac (for Roofe, 71mins)
Not used: Snedker, Moult, Hornby
Attendance: 2,721
Away fans: 774
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