Season to remember - Barnsley’s Premier League adventure

So says Nicky Eaden, as he reflects on Barnsley’s Premier League campaign of 1997/98, during which he made 35 appearances.

Danny Wilson’s unfancied Tykes gave a good account of themselves that season, but were ultimately relegated, and their often selected right-back’s enduring memory is one of huge struggle to meet the standard required and to compete both on an individual and a collective level.

“I knew that I had to be playing at my maximum just to survive at that level,” says Eaden.

“I struggled physically at times, particularly with the pace of it because I wasn’t the quickest, but I held my own in a lot of matches.

“There were times that I was found wanting, but it wasn’t for a lack of effort.

“At the end of the season, we knew that, as a group, we just hadn’t been quite good enough, but we’d given it everything, so there were no real regrets. It had been tough, but we’d been competing against some very strong teams.”

There were certain games where, if you’re going by the scoreline alone, it would appear as if Barnsley were not competitive.

They were thrashed 6-0 at home by Chelsea in just their second home outing of the season and went on to lose 7-0 to Manchester United, 6-0 at West Ham and 5-0 at Arsenal.

Wilson’s team were, however, a long way from being the division’s whipping boys.

They were only relegated on the penultimate weekend of the campaign following a 1-0 reverse at Leicester, eventually finishing five points adrift of safety in 19th place.

The Tykes had earned promotion to the top-flight by playing good football and earned the respect of their peers in 1997/98 by sticking to their guns and continuing to do so.

“We won 10 league matches, which has been enough to keep some teams in the Premier League, but in the end we probably didn’t get enough draws to help us up towards that 40-point mark,” reflects Eaden.

“There were too many games where we lost by the odd goal that we should have had a point from. That maybe came down to a lack of know-how and experience of the level.

“We were a good footballing team. We weren’t overly physical, but we’d got promoted by outplaying sides and I remember Danny [Wilson] and Eric [Winstanley] saying during pre-season that we weren’t going to change our style.

“There was no point setting up defensively in the Premiership, we didn’t have the players to do it. We tried to get it down and pass it and take teams on. We took some right beatings, but we never lost belief in the way we played.

“I think that earned us respect from other teams in the league. We tried to play, we weren’t about parking the bus or trying to kick people out of games.”

As admirable as Wilson’s footballing philosophy might have been, by the end of February 1998 Barnsley had won just six out of 26 matches and were in danger of being cut completely adrift. It seemed that they were dead and buried.

Apparently, nobody had told the players inside the Oakwell dressing room that.

“Even at that point, we didn’t think we were going to get relegated. There was still belief in the changing room and we’d turn up for every game thinking that if things go well then we could get something,” says Eaden.

“Nobody ever mentioned going down. If Danny had got a sniff that anyone had given up or stopped believing then they’d have been for it.

“We kept fighting and went on a little run.”

The run which Eaden speaks of commenced with a 2-1 home success over Wimbledon on February 28, Jan Aage Fjortoft bagging a brace.

An Ashley Ward strike then proved sufficient to sink Aston Villa away from home before top-scorer Neil Redfearn’s penalty ensured that the Tykes came out on top of a seven-goal thriller with Southampton.

By mid-March, Barnsley were alive and kicking again, and within touching distance of 17th place. But then came a defining moment in their season.

Leading at half-time, the Tykes were beaten 3-2 at Oakwell by Liverpool, Steve McManaman hitting an 89th-minute decider after referee Gary Willard had controversially dismissed three home players. Barnsley never recovered and went on to win just one of their remaining eight matches.

“I think that game knocked the stuffing out of us, not consciously because Danny was good at picking us up after a loss, but we’d put so much into it and ended up with nothing, and lost three players through suspension” adds Eaden.

“If we hadn’t conceded that late third goal I think things could maybe have ended up very differently that season.”

That Barnsley did ultimately drop straight back into the second tier will have come as a surprise to few outside of Oakwell, particularly given their lack of spending power compared to some of their top-flight rivals.

Wilson opted to conduct a fair amount of his business in the European market, breaking the club’s transfer record to capture £1.5m Macedonian striker Georgi Hristov in addition to the likes of German goalkeeper Lars Leese and Slovenian defender Ales Krizan.

Eaden, however, does not believe that the Tykes’ foreign imports brought much to the party and hints at something of a divide in the dressing room.

“The signings we brought in who made the biggest difference were Daz Barnard and Wardy [Ashley Ward],” he says.

“Most of the foreign lads were no better than what we already had.

“The club broke its transfer record to sign Hristov, but in my opinion, he wasn’t as good as Andy Liddell, who’d come through the youth ranks alongside me. Andy was technically as good and worked a lot harder.

“Arjan de Zeeuw had signed for the club a few years earlier. He was great, he made the effort to mix with us all and settled in well. A lot of the others didn’t particularly make the effort to do that.

”You heard comments about how they wanted to use us as a stepping-stone to get to a bigger Premier League club and you’d be thinking ‘Cheers! How about getting in our team first and trying to help improve us?’”