BARNSLEY shot-stopper Luke Steele believes “belief and unity” are the two key ingredients which will help the club turn around a worrying run of form which sees the club sitting precariously above the Championship relegation zone.
Steele starred on Saturday despite the Reds slipping to a 1-0 home Yorkshire derby defeat to Huddersfield Town at Oakwell, their fourth successive defeat and third game in a row without a goal.
And the challenge doesn’t get any as the Reds face former Premier League opposition Bolton at the Reebook Stadium this Saturday.
“It’s going to take hard work on the training pitch, but we can’t dwell on it [our bad form]. We’ve got to work on the positives and improve,” stressed Steele.
“It’s belief. You can’t just give people belief, it’s something you’ve got to search for inside yourself. You’ve got to believe that you can turn teams over.
“Our unity has won us games in the past, it’s kept us in the league in the past. Unity is so under-rated.
“You’ve got to become friends and you’ve got to want to do it for each other.
“And because we’re a proper team, and we care for each other, then that unity will help us get a certain number of points to stay in the league.”
Steele, like his manager Keith Hill, admits confidence is badly lacking after a losing run which has intensified the pressure on the team to start getting results before they risk getting dragged further down the table.
“Confidence is important, it’s the biggest thing that gets talked about in this sport,” added Steele.
“But we’ve got plenty of time to turn it around. The gaffer’s spot on with what he’s said, it’s not a case of looking back at the last three games, it’s just one game [at a time] and then move on and you focus on the next one. We’re above the relegation zone at the moment, maybe we’ve got to look to take a positive from that and say we’re not in the bottom three.
“The Barnsley fans have been spot on, you can’t fault them. People sometimes say they’re sometimes not loud enough, but the performance really comes before the crowd. It’s not crowd before the performance.
“We’ve got to show positive performances to get the crowd on their feet and applauding.”
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