The on-loan striker now has three goals in his first four appearances as a Barnsley player, and he spoke to us following yesterday's crucial victory at St Andrew
Oli McBurnie says he and his teammates are delighted after the striker’s double helped Barnsley to a crucial 2-0 victory over Birmingham City at St. Andrew’s this weekend.
McBurnie’s two first-half goals swung the game in the Reds’ favour as a brilliant all-round display kept out Steve Cotterill’s hosts.
“The boys are absolutely buzzing, it’s been a long time coming,” the 21-year-old said following the win.
“We’ve had the performances there but often not got the results to go with them, so we had to score the goals in the first half and then go and grind it out in the second half, and we’ve done that. We’ve shown we can dominate these games.”
The striker’s brace came either side of seeing his penalty denied by Blues goalkeeper David Stockdale, in an eventful first 45 minutes.
“They all count, don’t they! It was especially nice to get a goal after the penalty had been saved,” McBurnie claimed.
“I’ve hit it quite well and to be fair he’s gone early and made a good save. I was in my own mind a bit after missing the penalty, there’s the nightmare that the other team could go up the other end and score. The best thing you can do is to try and get yourself a goal again, so it put my mind at ease to get another one soon after.
“I’ve come here to score goals and to try and help the team, and thankfully I’ve done both here, playing in a slightly different position – I enjoyed it out there with the freedom to get on the ball.”
Jose Morais made the bold decision to start the game with a front three, giving McBurnie and his fellow attackers the opportunity to excel going forward – a decision which paid off.
“There’s been a lot of work defensively throughout the week, and the gaffer has just told us in attack to go out there, be creative and show why we’re at the club.
“We were fluid today, [being out wide] took some pressure off myself winning everything in the air and Kieffer [Moore] up top was tremendous.
“It could have been more in the first half; we ground it out in the second, against another team with a big budget.”
Looking ahead to Tuesday night’s trip to the KCOM Stadium to face Hull City, McBurnie has highlighted the importance of the result against Birmingham and is confident that the Reds can build a positive run.
“The result was massive, we weren’t even thinking about Hull until after getting the job done in this game so it’s important we’ve got the three points and will now move on.
“The gaffer will prepare us and we have to go into Tuesday to look for the same result.”
