Phil SumblerPoya Asbaghi took charge of Barnsley for the first time last night and had to watch from the sidelines as a dominant Swans side were patient and waited for the right opportunity to break down their hosts which we did with two late goals from Olivier Ntcham and Jamie Paterson.
Those two goals lifted the Swans into the division’s top 10 but for Barnsley a season of struggle lies ahead as they sit at the wrong end of the table after last season’s venture into the play offs.
It was a third win at Oakwell this year for the Swans who were victors over that play off Tykes side last season on our way to the play off final which we eventually lost to Brentford.
The new Barnsley boss though was not a fan of his side’s performance when he summed up in his first post match press conference and admitted that it was not a game for the spectators as far as he was concerned.
“If I was a spectator, especially at home in front of the TV, I would fall asleep. It was not a super-funny game to watch. But our ambition was not to make the most funny game, but to work well as a unit and defend well, which we did,” he said
“What we wanted to do better was to try and convert our defence to create even more counter-attacks and press them higher and win the ball higher up. At the start of the second-half, we were doing this is a better way and we had a good chance when Devante (Cole) played it inside for Cauley (Woodrow).
“Then we made two substitutions and it felt like we were getting even more energy and it felt we were coming into the game, getting more momentum and scaring Swansea, but then we did something we had done something we didn’t do in the game – losing the organisation and then what happened was Swansea had midfielders free in the middle to dribble the ball against our backline and how we reacted was not good enough and they created chances to score.”
He made the wrong subs! Devante was only Foward with any drive – Cauley couldn’t be bothered to skip in the direction of another player never mind press. He did lift his arm up to point a few times (after noticing Helik was trying to galvanise the team).
A lot more worried now than I was.