Reds striker Sam Winnall wants to bounce back in tomorrow's Yorkshire derby after describing how the weekend’s defeat to Crewe hurt him.
“We need to be more clinical,” said Winnall. “I watched the game back and Crewe entered our final third on four occasions in the second half. We spent pretty much the whole game in theirs and didn’t get any points, sometimes that can happen in football.
“I have faith we will turn this mini-blip around and get the results again,” Winnall explained. “We have got an ambitious group and we take pride in wearing the Barnsley shirt. When we don’t win in front of the fans it hurts. It ruined my weekend and it’s something we need to sort out.”
Sam was asked about whether the players know what the fans are saying after the matches, which he replied by saying, “I’ve read some of the tweets that get sent to me. Any footballer who says they don’t read their tweets is lying.
“Fan interaction is important and you want them on your side,” he added. “When you don’t get wins you hear some bad things but I’ve been lucky as the fans have always been good to me at Barnsley.”
Moving on to the match against Bradford City, Winnall was desperate to get back to winning ways. He could also see that the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy is a real chance of silverware for himself and the squad as a whole.
“It’s a real opportunity,” Sam said. “On our day we can beat anyone in this competition. I’ve never gone far in it and I want to get to Wembley. It would be a great day out for the club and we have to treat it seriously.
“We played Bradford here and it was 0-0. It was a difficult game as they are a physical side that look to be direct, so it will be up to us to match their physical challenge. We rarely get dominated in games so it’s about us putting our game onto them.”
Winnall wanted to finish with a message to the fans and to reassure them that things will turn around.
“We need to learn from the mistakes and make sure they don’t happen again. I feel we are getting better, we are starting to click. I know results say different but I see the lads in training every day and it’s only a matter of time before we find our best form.”
