Barnsley U23s coach Paul Harsley says his team need to learn after conceding a late goal for the second consecutive game.
The young Reds led through Victor Adeboyejo’s 81st minute penalty, but Cardiff City found an equaliser eight minutes into stoppage time at Oakwell.
It was a repeat of the side’s last outing to Crewe Alexandra, where the Railwaymen scored twice late on to snatch all three points in the Professional Development League.
“It’s football; I keep saying we’ve got to learn but, at the minute, we’re not really doing that,” said Harsley. “It’s a little bit ridiculous that we almost played nine minutes - I don’t know what’s gone on there.
“I’ve never seen a game where they’ve put nine minutes up on the board, but that’s what it is - we can’t do anything about that.”
With the academy preparing for next season, there were no less than seven trialists in the Reds’ match day squad to face Cardiff on Monday afternoon.
Five of those players started the game, with Harsley introducing another ten minutes into the second half as he looks to evaluate all of the options available to him.
“We had six trialists on the pitch at the end and they had two or three as well, so it’s difficult to get that cohesion going and it was a bit of a scrappy game really,” continued Harsley.
“I think, once the lads took the lead with the penalty, it would have been nice to hang on. To be fair, we’d rode our luck a couple of times with the ball flashing across the goal earlier on in the second half.”
Harsley has also confirmed that Romal Palmer, Louis Rowe and Matty Wolfe will miss the remainder of the season through injury.
The trio have impressed at U23 level, but have been unfortunate not to get more game time this campaign.
“Romal and Louis are out for the season, as is Matty - that’s obviously had a big impact over the second half of the season,” admitted Harsley.
“The lads that we wanted to go out on loan have gone out on loan, which is great. But our numbers have been impacted by the injuries we’ve got, which is unfortunate so it’s been a really difficult second half of the season. We’ve got three games left, so we’ll see what we can do with those.”
