Barnsley FC boss Darrell Clarke hails players' efforts through 'ridiculous' schedule
DARRELL CLARKE highlighted his side’s impressive first-half performance after Barnsley cruised to a 3-0 home victory over Crawley Town.
Jon Russell broke the deadlock for the Tykes before Max Watters and Davis Keillor-Dunn added second-half strikes.
Clarke said: “The performance for 65-70 minutes was fantastic; lots of chances, which we should’ve finished more of, and then a really sloppy final 20 minutes, but I’ll cut the boys a bit of slack on that.
“There were some changes, we were looking after minutes. I’ve had to be careful with Josh Earl and Donovan Pines.
“Marc Roberts is just coming back too, so there are a lot of reasons why we maybe lost that flow in the final 20 minutes.
“Ben Killip has had to pull a couple of saves off, but let’s focus on the positives. Four wins out of four, it’s great for the boys to respond in that way and also to make sure that we haven’t picked up any more injuries, because four games in 10 days is absolutely ridiculous.”
On his side’s early opener, Clarke said: “I thought we were really strong in the first half. I can’t remember Ben Killip having to do anything. We were on the front foot, the press was right, they couldn’t play through us or over us.
“We just need to be a bit more composed in the final third to create more chances. We said to the boys at half time that we needed to start again brightly and put the game to bed and we did that to a certain extent.”
Barnsley: Killip, de Gevigney, Pines (Roberts 68), Earl (McCarthy 60), O'Keeffe, Phillips, Nwakali, Russell (Connell 68), Gent, Watters (Cosgrove 81), Keillor-Dunn (Humphrys 81). Unused substitutes: Smith,Lofthouse.
Crawley Town: Wollacott, Mullarkey, Conroy, Barker, Quitirna, Anderson (Radcliffe 61), Kelly (Papadopoulos 78), John-Jules (Hepburn-Murphy 61), Camara, Showunmi, Swan (Ibrahim 61). Unused substitutes:: Beach,Roles,Mukena.
Referee: Gavin Ward (Surrey).