Pete Wild feels Harrogate Town paid Barrow a 'compliment' by trying to stop them from playing

The Sulphurites went down 1-0 in Cumbria on Saturday afternoon, Josh Gordon netting the only goal of the game in fortuitous fashion just before half-time when his left-wing cross took a deflection and looped inside Pete Jameson’s far post.

But, it took until the dying minutes of the contest for Town to threaten a response during what was a lacklustre attacking display, in stark contrast to their performance away at Gillingham four days earlier.

And Wild was quick to acknowledge how dangerous Simon Weaver’s team have looked at times this season, though he felt their game-plan at the weekend centered around attempting to nullify Barrow.

"I’ve been watching them and they’ve played some real free-flowing football. They’ve been really good on the eye, have Harrogate, good to watch,” the Bluebirds chief said.

“They had a great win at Gillingham on Tuesday night, but I think that they came up here to try and stop what we do, which is another compliment to our players, that teams are coming here and trying to stop us now.

"So, we were really happy with how we've controlled the game, the whole game. We’ve slowed it down when we needed to and sped it up when we needed to and I think we’ve looked a good attacking threat.

"On another day, we could have scored another couple of goals.”

Town and their much-improved back-line headed to Barrow having kept clean-sheets in three of their opening four League Two outings.

And, although goalkeeper Jameson was required to make a couple of important saves, the Sulphurites once again looked fairly resolute throughout Saturday’s contest.

They were less impressive at the other end of the field, however, creating just the one clear opening, which resulted in Matty Daly forcing an excellent reaction save out of home custodian Paul Farman late on.

And the significance of that moment was not lost on Wild.

“We’ve found different ways to win football matches and we had to find a different way to win that on Saturday,” he added.

"I’d call it an industrious performance, really. The lads had to dig in. The wind was swirling, we had to try and get the ball down and play and find a way to break them down. They’ve had three out of four clean-sheets, so they were tough to break down.

"But, I thought we controlled most of the football match. They’ve had one shot in the 89th minute and it’s a great save by Paul Farman. You need your goalkeeper every game and he’s come up trumps, which has allowed us to win the match.”

Town boss Weaver was not at all happy with his players’ efforts while in possession of the football.

He said: "There was a bit of anger shown in the changing room, because we have wasted our supporters’ time for 80 minutes and our own time because we so wanted to build on that fantastic win in midweek.”

Saturday’s result sees Harrogate drop four places to 12th in the League Two standings.