Ahead of our Sky Bet Championship clash with Blackburn Rovers on Wednesday evening, Valérien Ismaël says he wants Barnsley to maintain their impressive and high-intensity performances from the past few weeks.
The Reds were imperious against Brentford at the weekend and ran out deserved 2-0 winners in west London, now it is a case of being consistent in the coming weeks in order to achieve the goals set out at the start of the campaign.
“This is our purpose, to sustain the performance,” asserted Ismaël. “We are looking at getting the results now. It’s all about getting the results and, for sure, it is possible. Normally you don’t have such a schedule, I think it’s only because of the pandemic that you have such a crazy schedule this year – normally you have more time between the games, more time to recover – and we have the squad to make the rotation.
“For us, it’s not a problem; we’ve done it so far, we’ve sustained the intensity so far and now it’s important to stay that way because we are near to our purpose. We need to have the players focused to stay hungry, to give everything and to keep moving in the table to reach our purpose.”
This is the third match in a run of fixtures that sees the Reds play 12 times in 38 days as an unrelenting schedule cranks up a notch once more.
However, as the mantra has been since Ismaël took charge back in October, we continue to take it one game at a time and continue to build momentum moving forward.
“For us, it is Blackburn first,” insisted our Head Coach. “We are not satisfied at the moment and we want it to stay that way. We got a lot of praise last week, but last week is finished; now it is a new week with and important game for us.
“Blackburn is the start of this week and we are focused on what we have to do to win the game but, for sure, we have the confidence. We need to keep the momentum going, we need to come in another good run now and keep going – this is our purpose, this is our focus and this is my expectation on the guys.”
You can watch Valérien’s post-match interview on iFollow Barnsley.
