Daniel Stendel insists the Reds must forget about Tuesday evening’s defeat to Carlisle United and focus on this weekend’s clash with Charlton Athletic.
Barnsley exited the Carabao Cup at the first hurdle after being humbled 3-0 by the Cumbrians at Oakwell, but attention now turns to Sky Bet Championship matters and the visit of Lee Bowyer’s Addicks, who also won promotion from League One last season.
“No one expected this performance and, in the end, Carlisle deserved to win 3-0; it’s hard for us to take,” admitted Stendel. “I don’t think it’s the worst we’ve seen, at the moment it’s very difficult to explain why we showed this performance. We tried, but it just didn’t happen.
“Nine days ago we won against Fulham. We’re the same players and the same team, and we’ll try again on Saturday against Charlton.We can be confident after the Fulham game but we can’t forget the reason why we won this game – we played well, it was a good fight and a team performance.
“This is the way for Barnsley and we will have enough chances to win games in the Championship, I just hope we can show it on Saturday.
“I think the quality of the players was good enough to win this game against Carlisle but the quality from the team was not good enough. We missed a lot of chances.”
Stendel praised the performance of Brad Collins, who made a number of fine saves to keep Carlisle at bay – including a stunning reflex stop to tip Ryan Loft’s effort over the bar.
The summer arrival from Chelsea made his Reds’ debut on Tuesday night and certainly impressed his new Head Coach.
“Especially in the first half – he made some amazing saves,” asserted Stendel. “His performance was very good, and I said that we don’t have a number two goalkeeper – we have two number ones.”
You can watch Daniel’s full post-match press conference on iFollow Barnsley.