Callum Styles on why the world is against him and his Barnsley FC team-mates

After an outstanding and remarkable first half of 2021, Styles and his team-mates have been afforded a huge and sobering reality check with the club having swapped a play-off quest in the first half of last year for a grim survival battle in the second half in a rollercoaster year.

Barnsley have won just twice in 24 forgettable Championship matches in 2021-22 - and have let to win away from home this term - and require a desperate infusion of hope from somewhere to stop their season petering out completely and their fate being sealed comfortably before May.

Styles, handed plaudits aplenty last season, cut a dejected figure after the club's most recent defeat at Blackburn, when the Reds suffered their seventh league loss by a single goal in 2021-22.

Styles said: "It is just seems everything is against us and we have got to stick together, stay strong and try and turn it around.

"It was bittersweet at Blackburn. We lost, but had some really good play in our game. It is just the little things we need to change and for the luck to come our way as at the minute, we have had zero luck and a lot of teams have had a lot of luck against us.

"I was so down as we are so close, but just are not getting the rub of the green at the minute. If we were miles off, then I would hold my hands up and say: 'we're miles off it, we don't deserve to win - what can we do'. We are so close, it is just those little details that we need to change.

"The Championship and Premier League are very clinical. You just have to nullify as many mistakes as possible."

Plenty has been made about the lack of experience in the Reds ranks - and the need to address it in the January window to somehow galvanise the club's survival quest.

On the notion of experience, Styles takes a different stance.

He continued: "It is always good to have experience in the squad and we had the likes of Solly (Michael Sollbauer) last season.

"But most of the squad played last season and the season before. We have had experience at the top and bottom, it is just getting those things to click in place. We have to keep believing and pushing on."