Poya Asbaghi spoke to the press ahead of our trip to Coventry City this weekend.
ON INJURIES
“Both Callum Styles and Amine Bassi had a reaction after the last game. Still, it’s unclear. I think Amine is going to be difficult for the game tomorrow and Styles is a big question mark as well. They are short term injuries.
“Aapo Halme already had 45 minutes in the cup against Huddersfield. Of course, he was still absent for a very long time, so for him to get into that shape he needs to be in, he needs proper training. But, physically, he’s available for the squad tomorrow.
“It’s important because we need all the players we can with the schedule we have. We’ve had seven days, but we’re going to go back to normal, which means a lot of games every week. We need to have cover in different positions and, in terms of centre backs, Aapo is more than welcome to be back.
“Liam Kitching will be out for the game. Let’s see, he’s not ruled out for the Hull game. Callum Brittain, we’re a bit more optimistic that he will at least make it to the squad.
“Of course, we have picked up some new injuries, but the new injuries we have picked up are hopefully not affecting the players for too long. With this, I’m hoping that in a couple of weeks if we don’t pick up serious injuries, that we can have good competition in all the positions – which we haven’t had since I arrived.
“Cauley Woodrow, Victor Adeboyejo, Aaron Leya Iseka and Clarke Oduor, these players are still not available.”
ON SURVIVAL HOPES
“You feel more optimistic today than you did a week ago, and that shows that with football you almost feel like your last result. Let’s see what the result tomorrow is at Coventry – if we are going to lose that game, we will probably talk about us being doomed again. That’s football.
“As players and coaches, we cannot follow in the emotion elevator – we cannot just go up and down all the time. We have to keep stable and focus on the next game.
“Of course, if you ask me, it feels good to have a victory last weekend and it gives a lot of confidence for us.”
ON PREPARATION
“This week came at a good time. We can have some normal training, and when I say normal I mean you don’t train directly on an opponent – you can work on things that are us, no matter the opponent, which we haven’t been able to do in a long time.
“We have focused not on one specific topic, but to talk short in different areas which we haven’t had time to talk about during this intense schedule.
“As well, it’s a week where you don’t have to stress players into training or into playing a game on Wednesday, so the players who have had a really high load and played a lot of games, we also used this week to help them recover in a good way.
“So, in that sense, to train on what we need to train and to get the players even more fit, it’s been a really good week for us.”
ON COVENTRY CITY
“We believe in what we need to do, and we don’t try to get too affected by what’s ahead of us two months from now or three weeks from now. We try to focus on the next game.
“I know it’s a big challenge as well, because what I’ve heard is that Barnsley has not won against Coventry away since 1923, so it’s almost 100 years.
“But we don’t see that as something that scares us. We see it as fuel to go there and hopefully do something that we haven’t done since before World War Two.
“We have good confidence from the last game and we hopefully can use that in a good way to create a historic result tomorrow.”