Forget Forest & Spurs... Barrow are the kings of chaos

The 2025-26 season will surely be remembered for the clubs that have lurched from one crisis to another, chopping and changing managers and head coaches at the drop of a hat.

Four different bosses at Nottingham Forest. Tottenham Hotspur needing three to try to avoid an unheard of relegation from the Premier League.

North of the border, Old Firm pair Celtic and Rangers have both changed bosses mid-season for the first time ever. The Hoops have even performed the hokey-cokey with Martin O'Neill, bringing the 74-year-old in, not once but twice, to perform interim spells either side of the disastrous reign of Frenchman Wilfried Nancy.

Meanwhile, in the Championship, West Bromwich Albion burned through Ryan Mason and Eric Ramsay before handing over to James Morrison for their late-season survival bid. And Watford are on their third boss, but nothing new there.

All very chaotic and all worthy of consideration for the prize of the most disruptive season award.

But the winner, emerging from the pack is League Two Barrow.

Sat in the relegation zone trying to avoid the drop to the National League, the Bluebirds have had five different head coaches - three permanents and two interims.

So how have Barrow ended up in such a perilous position?

Tucked away in the south west corner of Cumbria, Barrow are a long way from the beating heartlands of English football.

But keeping up with events at Holker Street this season has created a soap opera all of its own with the main characters changing so frequently.

They have gone through the managerial playbook at alarming speed.

The man coming up through the ranks from non-league.

A grizzled veteran with experience across the divisions and abroad.

A rookie moving up from high-level academy football.

The lower-league survival specialist.

And now last of all, the most senior player in the squad handed the role of interim player-head coach.

This has not been played out over five years but fewer than five months. The result at the moment is that Barrow are 23rd in League Two, two points from safety with seven games left to play.

Will they save their season after a truly disastrous winter run of two wins in 25? Or has the damage already been done?

Andy Whing was at the helm when the season began in August. He had some credit in the bank after arriving from National League Solihull Moors in January 2025 with the Bluebirds on a downward spiral.

They eventually finished 16th and ended the campaign with just one loss in the last 13 games across the final two months.

However, that was followed by an enormous summer overhaul with 16 players arriving, offset by the departure of 17 others.

Not surprisingly perhaps, Barrow did not make a great start, losing six of their first eight games.

It was felt that Whing needed help in his first EFL role and Rob Kelly, twice a caretaker at the club, came in as assistant head coach in September.

That coincided with their best spell of the season as they put together a seven-match unbeaten run that moved them up towards mid-table.

But Kelly's stay was brief as he went south to Reading to resume a partnership with Leam Richardson.

Without Kelly, Whing did not win another game with his tenure ending after a 3-0 home loss to Tranmere Rovers on a miserable Tuesday night at Holker Street in early December in front of the club's lowest league crowd since their EFL return in 2020.

At that stage, Barrow were on a seven-game winless run but they were still 18th, four points clear of the bottom two.

Neil McDonald had returned to Barrow to provide that bit of experience to Whing in the light of Kelly's departure and less than a fortnight later he was stepping up as interim head coach.

There was an impressive comeback from two goals down in McDonald's first game at Gillingham, but the club were unimpressed at the 60-year-old publicly declaring his interest in taking the job permanently.

They looked at Steve Evans, before Bristol Rovers beat them to it in appointing the Scot for their own salvage job.

And yet 23 days after Whing's departure, the surprise name of Paul Gallagher emerged as the Bluebirds' new head coach.

Barrow had dropped a place to 19th, but the cushion to the relegation zone had increased to seven points.

Gallagher had been brought in to assist McDonald during his spell in interim charge and impressed the hierarchy, who believed that the Scot had a big hand in what they saw as an upturn in performances.

A former assistant in the Championship at Preston North End and Stoke City, this was a step into the unknown, dropping down into a relegation scrap in the League Two basement.

As it was, the 41-year-old was in charge for only 40 days and lost all five of his matches.

But crucially, his brief reign covered almost the entirety of the transfer window in which seven new players came in and seven others departed, while David Worrall went from a player-coach role to a permanent role in the backroom staff.

Gallagher's last match was a 2-1 loss at Shrewsbury Town, which saw Salop leapfrog them in the table. This came less than a week after the club's chairman Paul Hornby had called for everyone to "stay calm".

Suddenly, Barrow were now 22nd in League Two, only three points above the bottom two.

Six minutes after the club announced Gallagher's departure, white smoke was emerging to signal the appointment of Dino Maamria.

Out of work since leaving Burton Albion in December 2023, the 54-year-old Tunisian was parachuted in and heralded for his ability in helping teams avoid relegation against the odds.

He had the magic touch in his first match on 14 February as a late winner from captain Niall Canavan against Colchester secured a first victory at home since September.

That turned out to be the high point. Five more matches produced only one more point which included costly home defeats by relegation rivals Harrogate Town and Bristol Rovers.

The 2-0 reverse by Rovers was greeted by boos after a limp performance and one day later, Maamria's time was up after only 28 days, which he described as "abrupt".

He departed with Barrow still outside the bottom two, but this time with no wiggle room as only goal difference was keeping them out of the danger zone.

With 11 games to save the season, veteran midfielder Sam Foley was asked to step up to be the interim player-head coach.

At 39, Foley is the senior member in the squad, but he had only just returned to action after more than six months out with a serious thigh injury.

There was a point from a draw at home to Accrington Stanley, but successive away defeats by Salford City and Grimsby Town plunged the Bluebirds to the bottom of the table, with the 5-0 hammering at Blundell Park the low point of a season to forget.

Captain Canavan said that the "penny had to drop" for the struggling squad and somehow from nowhere, they came from behind to defeat league leaders Bromley on Saturday and end their 21-match unbeaten run.

It was not enough to lift them out of the bottom two as Newport County and Crawley Town, immediately above them both won, but it has offered a glimmer of hope when previously there was little.

Foley also revealed post-match that Irishman Graham Coughlan, an EFL manager with Bristol Rovers and Mansfield Town had taken on an advisory role.

Heading into Friday's match at MK Dons, Barrow are two points adrift of safety and have only seven games left to get out of danger.

There is a last-day home game with Newport looming on the horizon, as Foley tries to clear the mess left in his wake.

He may need as many as 10 points to secure safety - he only needs one to become Barrow's second most successful boss this season.

Analysis - Adam Johnson, BBC Radio Cumbria Barrow commentator

The summer started with a lot of departures to the squad and a lot of wholesale changes.

The club has admitted that they took a lot of gambles in terms of the players bought in and sadly those gambles have not paid off.

At the same time they haven't been helped with a long injury list - and a lot of long-term injuries which meant a lot of chopping and changing and never being able to play a settled side.

The managerial merry go-round certainly hasn't helped things - the departures have all probably been warranted in terms of the points-per-game stats for each manager, but like with the player recruitment, similar gambles on the managerial side have also hindered things.

The decision to sack Andy Whing without a clear plan was bad - then to eventually replace him with an unproven head coach - and to give that unproven boss the January transfer window has also proved a concern. The board again has admitted to this as being something they regret.

Dino Maamria was probably the right appointment but sadly came in too late, as with not having a window to bring players in, left him having to use a squad which three previous head coaches struggled to get a tune out of - and so comes Sam Foley the hopeful saviour.

The change of shape (to a back four) is something that the fan base were calling for and does look to have made slight improvements - the 5-0 collapse at Grimsby aside.

The win over Bromley has given hope where there certainly wasn't any prior to that game.

Any chance of survival rests firmly on the players being able to replicate the desire and intensity shown in that victory.

If they do that over the course of the seven games, then they certainly have a fighting chance - whether they can remains to be seen.