Barnsley FC boss Darrell Clarke channels his inner Neil Warnock and Alex Ferguson after Carabao Cup mauling at Manchester United

A few yards away from where Fergie gave the occasional – but memorable – blast of ‘hair-dryer’ treatment to his Manchester United players during his reign at Old Trafford, Clarke similarly let rip in the away dressing room following Barnsley’s soft and flaky defensive performance in an embarrassing Carabao Cup exit.

Clarke was in no mood for soft-soaping with the press afterwards either, even accounting for the fact that Barnsley had just played a Premier League side who were 41 places above them in the football pyramid.

His words chimed with an iconic documentary starring veteran manager Warnock during his time at Sheffield United, when he lambasted his players and spoke about them having to ‘die’ to get three points during one famous dressing-room scene.

Clarke, with some of the same heart-on-sleeve traits as Warnock, was very much on the same page.

Reflecting on a torrid 7-0 loss, he commented: “I don’t hide my emotions, I never have. Straight after the game, I am an emotional guy. My reaction to my players is what I felt.

“I said to the players in there that we should be ‘dying’ on the pitch for our fans. Every single game. We should be absolutely crawling off the pitch because we gave that much.

“They have had a piece of my mind in there, make no bones about it. I don’t care that it’s Man United.

“We want to have a successful season and performances like that – yes, it’s against a class team, I get it – cannot be tolerated and accepted as a group.

“I’ve said my piece in there and I’ve told them I want a reaction at Burton.

“For me to lead a team out against Man United, my boyhood club, means that the special night has been tarnished by the performance.”

Daft as it sounds, the margin of defeat was not likely to have been the major concern for Clarke.

The manner of the concessions, which were all self-inflicted to varying degrees, most definitely was.

United’s forwards were sharp, for sure. But it was not brilliance that opened up Barnsley, more the visitors’ decision making which Clarke rightly labelled as ‘absolutely shocking’.

Barnsley have now conceded 10 goals in their past one-and-a-half games in effect after letting in three unanswered goals in a grim second half at Stevenage last weekend.

While the talk towards the end of the summer window was about the Reds’ need to bolster their attacking options, attention is quickly switching to issues at the other end of the pitch and Barnsley’s League One rivals will be starting to cotton onto that fact.

For the time being, certainly until January, Clarke – with two back-up centre-halves in Jack Shepherd and Kacper Lopata out on loan – must find in-house solutions and hope that Barnsley’s backline find some lasting connections and the right sort of consistency, while also keeping his fingers crossed on the injury front.

Clarke continued: “We gave cheap goals away, so it didn’t give us a platform to get into it.

“The goals were absolutely shocking with the decision-making at times. The performance was nowhere near the standards we need to be at.

“One or two were flaky in terms of making decisions. The decision-making for some of the goals, I didn’t recognise it.”

Clarke also channelled his ‘inner Warnock’ amid highly-charged comments directed towards his players regarding his club’s supporters in the away dressing room at Old Trafford.

It echoed a Warnock blast from the past in a different documentary during his time at another Yorkshire club at Huddersfield Town – when he castigated his Terriers players for letting the club’s rain-sodden fans down during one infamous loss at Shrewsbury Town in the Nineties.

Alongside justifiable anger, Clarke’s other main emotion was embarrassment at seeing his players short-change a 6,500-strong travelling support whose incessant backing was the one positive on an otherwise dire night in Manchester.

Those in visiting jerseys got an ovation at the end which they scarcely deserved, in the view of Clarke, who is conscious of the need for his players to provide some pay-back for a fanbase who paid top-dollar on the night.

Clarke added: “I said to my players that they didn’t deserve that. They paid a fortune to come to this game and backed us in their numbers and sang in every minute of the game.

“It was unbelievable. They were the winners. I don’t say it lightly, but I can’t thank them enough for their support.

“We need to repay them and have a successful season.

“We need to get them on board and keep them on board and make sure we are dying for the shirt on a regular basis.”