Neil Harris knows Cambridge need transfer dealings after Barnet draw

Neil Harris acknowledged his Cambridge side requires additions after their goalless draw with Barnet.

The U’s offered little threat and were second best, relying on a strong performance from goalkeeper Jake Eastwood, and they suffered the additional blow of losing forward Kylian Kouassi to a hamstring injury early in the second half.

“Four clean sheets (in a row) is a good effort by the lads,” Harris said afterwards. “There’s a positive to that. We’re chugging along but we need to be more creative and score more goals.

“We can look at our defensive record and say we’re the best in the league or second best, but at the top end of the pitch we’ve got to find a way.

“We’re playing four attacking players every game and we’re still not finding a way. You go ‘is it a system?’ We changed the system last week and didn’t quite find that cutting edge. You just say ‘well is it just the players?’

“That’s where we have to look and say we need transfer windows, we need to keep developing the group, keep trying to be better all the time.

“In the mean time keep working with the group, keep encouraging, try and find that confidence and belief in some of the individuals that have just lost that a little bit in the last four to six weeks, and encourage them to find that end goal again.”

Barnet boss Dean Brennan offered similar comments about his side’s defensive strength while reflecting on chances the Bees did not take.

“That’s a sixth clean sheet in 16 games which is a real positive,” he said. “What’s cost us not having more points is we haven’t taken our chances when they’ve come along. We haven’t scored enough goals.

“We’re in a fair position at this moment in time, nothing to be too down about, nothing to be elated about.

“Their goalie made several saves, he made a great save from (Adam) Senior at the start of the second half, so we asked them questions but without that real oomph.

“We had to work extremely hard today to get out of here with a point. We’ve no right just to come to Cambridge; they were in League One last year, we were in the National League for the last seven years.

“We’ve come a long way in a short space of time. We’ve limited a good side to very little chances.

“Even though it was a strong performance, we need that extra one or two percent to make sure we win games like this, but I’m still proud of the performance. Little old Barnet coming up here. We’ve got a big heart, a lot of togetherness.”