Barrow AFC manager Ian Evatt wants his side to give a better account of themselves in front of the BT Sport cameras when Yeovil Town visit Holker Street tomorrow evening.

It has been a mostly disappointing start to the season for the Bluebirds, last week’s win over Eastleigh excluded, which was followed by a 3-2 defeat at Stockport County that saw them fritter away a half-time lead in double quick time.

They’ll certainly need to tighten up for the match against the Glovers, which kicks off at the later time of 5:20pm and marks the 40th anniversary of AFC’s first-ever National League fixture.

That also came against Yeovil, who are back in non-League football after their 16-year stay in the EFL came to an end last season.

Evatt said: “We’ve got to get things back on track. Are we a bad team? No. Am I worried? No, but we need to start putting the wrongs right and very quickly.

“We want to be promoted out of this league this season and with the group of players that we’ve got there’s no reason why we can’t, but we’ve got to stop this soft centre that’s somehow developed yet again.”

That ‘soft centre’ was something that unfortunately characterised the early months of the last campaign for Barrow, as they looked vulnerable at set-pieces and made a habit of gifting the opposition goals.

It was a habit that was largely broken after a switch to three at the back last November, with the Bluebirds making themselves harder to beat, particularly on the road.

That wasn’t the case in the second half at Stockport, with a slipshod defensive display being typified by the Hatters’ second goal when centre-back Jordan Keane was allowed to advance without anyone closing him down before he fired a long-range strike into the bottom corner.

Evatt said: “It’s the lesser of two evils at the minute. We play three at the back and we lose a bit of our identity and we don’t dominate games like we do when we play 4-3-3.

“When we play 4-3-3, we dominate games and we limit the opposition to few and far between chances, but they seem to take them.

“Let’s have it right; people see we’ve played three at the back on Saturday and we’ve won the game, but Eastleigh had very good chances to score as well and they didn’t take them.

“Goals change games and we have to make sure that when we get the opportunity to score, we take them.”

Meanwhile, there hasn’t been any progress when it comes to the Bluebirds bolstering their defensive ranks, which were further depleted by Patrick Brough’s hamstring injury in the early stages at Stockport.

“I’ve said many times that we’d like a defender, but also we have a budget that we have to stick to and also we have to get the right one in,” Evatt said.

“There’s no point in me taking on someone who I don’t think will improve us and at the moment centre-halves are few and far between.

“We have to back and support the ones we’ve got at the moment until we get another one in.

“They do a hell of a lot of things right in games, but we just concede goals at wrong times and it’s not always the defenders’ fault, as midfielders and centre forwards have defensive responsibilities as well and we’ve shirked them.”