Poya Asbaghi admitted the result felt like a loss in the wake of our 1-1 draw with Stoke City on Tuesday evening.
The Reds looked set to claim three crucial Sky Bet Championship points following Domingos Quina’s sumptuous solo strike before Lewis Baker delivered a sucker punch five minutes into stoppage time.
“Of course, right now, so soon after the game, it feels like a loss,” conceded Asbaghi. “When you are 1-0 up and there’s minutes left and we’re not able to defend the lead – even if it’s a point right now, it feels like a loss.
“I think if you look at the whole game, the first half we struggled a little bit; they were pushing us down, playing a lot of deep balls and creating a lot of set-pieces, and we were maybe not as aggressive as we want.
“But I felt that in the second half we were a much better side; we had the game more like we wanted and evened out things a lot. It’s not a second half where either team is creating a lot of chances, but we scored the 1-0 goal – a good performance from Dom to score the goal.
“From there, after the lead, we started to defend the lead in a good way and still had some good counter-attacks or situations to score a second one.
“But in the last minutes when we got tired, maybe we should have defended that better. They scored a goal where we had 10 players behind the ball and they were still allowed to score a goal.
“That is not good enough from our side, so in that way, it’s a disappointment, of course.”
Up next for the Reds is the unenviable task of runaway leaders Fulham at Oakwell this weekend, who travel to South Yorkshire on the back of a resounding 5-1 victory at Swansea City.
However, despite the daunting prospect, the Reds have shown that they can go toe-to-toe with the league’s high-fliers this season, with recent victories over Queens Park Rangers and Middlesbrough enough to provide a glimmer of hope.
“They are a little bit on their own level in the Championship, so of course, it is going to be a tough game,” continued Asbaghi.
“But we have a couple of days before that to regroup, refresh and make sure that we can put up a good fight on Saturday.”
You can watch Poya’s post-match interview on iFollow Barnsley.