‘Sporadic’ ‘individualistic’ and no ‘cohesion’: Barnsley head coach Neill Collins highlights what went wrong in League One loss to Peterborough United at Oakwell
An absorbing contest, in which both sides threatened going forward, saw the Reds make the all-important breakthrough when Barry Cotter scored his first ever professional goal in England in the 51st minute, with his low drive beating the defences of Posh keeper and former Huddersfield Town custodian Nicholas Bilokapic.
After taking the lead, Barnsley could not kick on and sat back to a certain degree and invited pressure from a dangerous Posh side who had plenty of threats in the likes of Kwame Poku, Joel Randall, Ephron Mason-Clark and Jonson Clarke-Harris.
Hector Kyprianou levelled with a crisp strike on 74 minutes and two minutes later, Posh went in front when Clarke-Harris, who potentially looked onside, tapped home.
Five minutes from time, an error from Reds captain Liam Kitching was seized upon by Poku, who blasted home high past Liam Roberts, who made three excellent saves for the hosts as Posh maintained their 100 per cent record with a third straight league win.
Reflecting on his side’s first league defeat of the season, Collins, whose team welcome Oxford United on Saturday, said: “That will take a little bit of digesting. For everything that we did well for the first 55 minutes, I thought we then proceeded to do the opposite almost.
“Up until that point, the team had been fantastic – both sides of the ball – and were very good against a really good side and deservedly took the lead.
“We should probably have been ahead at half-time, but came and felt confident we could go and give it a go. But then, I am not quite sure why we then proceeded to lose the cohesion and stop doing the things we had done so well and attempt to try and do the things that we had done.
“We just become sporadic and individualistic at times in terms of what we were doing. Despite a couple of warning signs and the keeper making some fantastic saves, the goals were cardinal sins in terms of the ones we gave away.
“While there were individual errors within those goals, it was a collective and we stopped doing everything we did which was good and I need to look into why that was. We had to try and focus and do the same things.”
On whether Clarke-Harris’s key second should have been given, he continued: “It looked as if it might be offside, but I do things decisions here and there will even themselves out, even if it wasn’t.
“I am more concerned with the general performance and structure of the last 25 minutes of the game.”
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