Barnsley Head Coach José Morais reflected on his first game in charge after a 2-1 defeat against Burton Albion at Oakwell.
Mamadou Thiam saw a late strike ruled out for offside as the Reds pushed forward for an elusive equaliser after Kieffer Moore had turned Dani Pinillos’ goal-bound shot home 15 minutes from time.
It was cruel on the hosts, who suffered two sucker punches at the beginning and end of the first half with Jamie Allen and Jacob Davenport both firing unstoppable shots past Nick Townsend.
“Well I can say that the first half wasn’t really what we expected to have as a start,” admitted Morais. "We conceded two goals; the first was a great shot from distance - sometimes this situation happens. I could say we could have pressed the player with the ball a little bit better.
"At 1-0 down, the team started to try and play and adapt to the game. At the end of the first half, we were unlucky because it was a free-kick and, once again, it was good quality and we’re 2-0 down at half-time. We had to re-think things in terms of organisation.
"The players were informed about what we had to do in the second half and the strategy that we had for the second half, in terms of intention, it was to try and score the first goal as soon as possible and put us in the game and force the situations where we could have more balls in the box - this is what we did.
"We scored the goal and continued to push until the last minute and we really had the opportunity to make it 2-2. We created enough chances to score more than the one goal and, at the end of the game, I believe that the situation that we scored could be a legal situation.
"If it wasn’t, probably before I believe it could have been a penalty. OK, we didn’t get the penalty and the result wasn’t what we wanted but we have our goals still in tact and we still believe in what we can do."
Up next for Barnsley is a trip to Birmingham City, who suffered a 5-0 defeat at play-off-chasing Brentford on Tuesday evening.
Morais is confident that the Reds can pick up a morale-boosting three points in the Midlands if they pick up where they left off in the second half against Albion.
"The next game is against Birmingham and it’s a very important game,” continued the Head Coach. "It’s a team that is also struggling and all the games will be important, but this is the next game and we lost this one so we won’t allow ourselves to lose two times in a row. We will go for a win; this is a must win game.
“I believe there is much more than we could show [against Burton]. I think that we have to do things, what I realise is that I came three days ago and the only thing that we could do until now is to encourage and make the players conscious that they could do much more and they can do even better than what they are doing, because they have the quality.
"They could do it in the second half and this is a very good sign of what they really can do. We are going from that second half and progressing now to a different level with players that have the character and the moment of competition that can help the team achieve the goals that we want."
