In a week where he’s been able to begin focusing on football again, manager Ian Evatt is hoping Barrow AFC can get back to producing the sort of free-flowing football that earned them admirers earlier in the season.

The previous week involved the shenanigans surrounding the departure of midfielder Kemy Agustien from the Bluebirds after the expiry of his contract.

The fall-out included Evatt feeling compelled to say why the loan of striker Kyle McFarlane from Birmingham City was cut short after a source from outside the club made the news of his early departure public.

Now, after three games without a goal for his side, Evatt’s thoughts are solely on getting AFC back to winning ways when they travel to his old club Chesterfield on Saturday.

He said: “It’s obviously a big game, for personal reasons, on Saturday, but emotions aside, we have to get back to what we are and who we are.

“We are an attacking, free-flowing, pleasing-on-the-eye team that didn’t quite reach those heights last Saturday (against Halifax) for whatever reason.

“The positives are we didn’t lose – we drew 0-0 – and that’s what I’ve always said to the players, if we’re not at the races and we’re not as good with the ball as we should be, then drawing 0-0 is the worst-case scenario.

“We didn’t quite get to the levels that we have been at, but we’ve dusted ourselves down, we feel refreshed and ready to go.

“We hold no fears of going there, we’ll go there playing our way, doing our things, and hopefully that’s good enough to get us three points.”

Over the last couple of months, Barrow have become a much tougher nut to crack, losing just one of their last ten National League games and conceding just five goals in the process.

But if they are going to close the gap on the teams above them, Evatt knows that the Bluebirds will need to pose a greater attacking threat than what they managed against Halifax, when they didn’t have a shot on target.

“Because of the run we’d been on – that month where we lost four or five games on the trot, a run that’s been shown that can happen to any team – we changed and we tightened up,” Evatt said.

“We’ve kept seven clean sheets out of ten, but during that spell I think we’ve kind of lost the way we attack, the way we are free-flowing, the no-fear possession-based football.

“I just think we’ve come away from that a little bit and we need get back to that, get back to enjoying attacking, enjoying scoring goals and enjoying playing with freedom. Hopefully we can get back to that on Saturday.”