Chris Stern insists Barnsley can learn from their mistakes against Brentford at the weekend when the Reds host Derby County on Wednesday evening.
Cauley Woodrow’s stunning opener inside the first minute was cancelled out by Ollie Watkins, before the Bees’ forward completed his hat-trick to seal all three points after the interval.
However, Stern says that the players remain optimistic ahead of the visit of Phillip Cocu’s side.
“It’s easy to say it was a bad game; we’re definitely aware of the fact that it wasn’t a good performance in the second half,” said the Reds’ First Team Coach. “Brentford exploited the space that we gave away and worked it well in front of goal but, in the first half, we had a brilliant start and scored to go 1-0 up.
“This gave us a boost but, with a young team, you experience things that turn the game around and their goal came out of the blue so this is a good experience for the lads to take into the next game. We’re still confident and trust the lads, and we have belief in the way we play.
“One bad half doesn’t mean that the last four or five weeks have been bad. We stay positive – we are positive – even though we didn’t have a great performance on Sunday, but we still remind our players what it takes to win games, to score and have a good performance on the pitch.”
Derby head into this midweek Sky Bet Championship fixture on the back of a 3-2 victory over Birmingham City.
Despite letting a two-goal lead slip and surviving a penalty scare, the Rams managed to claim their second win of the campaign to pull clear of the bottom three.
“Like every team in the Championship, Derby are a good team with individual quality and experience,” continued Stern. “They have a new manager and their style is similar to us. We’re prepared for Derby and are ready for the game.
“We’ve got two games before the international break and we want to take the maximum out of them to turn things around. We’ve been close in recent games and this is what we want to do tomorrow.”
You can watch Chris’ full press conference on iFollow Barnsley.
