Flitcroft maintains positive approach as Tykes face fight for Championship lives

The Reds were on course for a first win in four games and a positive response to a 6-0 drubbing by Charlton when Paul Coutts snatched a dramatic leveller that saw Barnsley drop back into the Championship’s bottom three.

Such a blow could have been psychologically damaging to a side who have spent the entire season battling against the drop.

And while Flitcroft admits that a second successive home defeat would have sucked the life out of Barnsley, he believes their point gained will have the opposite effect.

“After a 6-0 thumping, when everyone in the stadium stayed with us and supported the lads, for us to lose again would have been game over,” said Flitcroft, whose Barnsley side travel to Nottingham Forest tomorrow.

“It would have been tough to come back from. People can look at it and say ‘how has that last-minute goal impacted on your season?’ But I look at it as ‘how can the positivity of the last few months impact on the last three games?’

“People look at these things differently. That goal can either wreck you or it can make you – and I believe it will galvanise us.”

Barnsley now have three games in which to save themselves, with tomorrow’s trip to play-off hopefuls Forest followed by Yorkshire derbies with promotion-chasing Hull at Oakwell and then a potentially defining finale against Huddersfield Town on May 4.

The point gained on Tuesday saw Flitcroft’s side reach the traditional safety mark of 50, though in a season when everyone is beating everyone else, Barnsley may need two more wins to survive.

Flitcroft is not a man to set targets, adding only that since his appointment in early January the Reds have always known their fight against demotion to League One would go down to the wire.

“You don’t know what’s going to happen week-to-week in this League, the only guarantee is everyone around us will win,” he said ruefully. “If you give the lads a target of two wins from three there’s disappointment if you don’t get that. It might be enough for us to win one and draw one, we just don’t know.

“We were in trouble when I took over, and we knew we had to win games and we’re still of that mindset.

“If you go somewhere to try and shut up shop then you can get undone. We need three points against Forest, but we’ve known we needed three points in each of the last 20-odd games and we’ve done it successfully over that period.

“We’ve got the experience to cope with tough challenges.

“The pressure will also be on the three teams we’re playing against. They are three good games and if we can keep this squad, the whole club and the fans believing that we can get out of it then we’ve got a fair and equal chance of winning all three of them.”

To extricate themselves from the drop zone in the final three games, Flitcroft needs his players to stay positive and continue showing the attributes that have helped them garner 29 points from his 18 games in charge.

“It’ll take what we’ve built already, which is a foundation of honesty, sincerity, hard work and resolve,” said Flitcroft.

“They’re the qualities we’ll need to get out of there.

“If we get out on Saturday then the job’s not done. If it means we’ve got to beat Huddersfield then that’s what we’ll have to do.

“I’ve seen enough in that dressing room to know we’ve got the qualities to do it.

“We are still in with a fighting chance of staying in this League and there’s a lot to look forward to. We started with the impossible and we want to achieve the impossible.

“You’ve got to be positive and I’m able to do that every day because I’m with a group of players that desperately want to stay in this division.

“While there’s that, there’s still encouragement.”