JIM O’Brien is confident that Barnsley have enough strength of character to get their Championship campaign back on track at home to Bolton Wanderers on Saturday.
The Reds’ impressive nine-game unbeaten run was abruptly ended by a 5-3 defeat at Bristol City last Saturday.
Scottish winger O’Brien has stressed that the Reds will not take anything for granted having still managed to stay outside the bottom three.
“Hopefully it’s only a blip,” O’Brien told The Star. “We’ve got time to regroup now and get things going again.
“It’s a massive game for us on Saturday – and we’ll be ready for it.
“At the end of the day it’s not about individuals. We win as a team and we lose as a team, so we’ve got to go again.
“It (the defeat) was disappointing for the fans and the manager, because we felt as though we let them down, but we’ll bounce back.”
Amazingly all three Barnsley substitutes netted at Bristol.
The Reds are two points above the drop-zone with 13 league fixtures still to play.
“The lads feel OK because we scored three good goals, but you turn up to work sometimes and it doesn’t happen, so you do feel disappointed,” admitted O’Brien.
“The run we’ve been on has been pretty special, but we just go again on Saturday against Bolton.
“Everyone is disappointed with our performance and I came off and was sitting on the bench wishing I could start the game again.
“We were just a little bit off it, for some reason, to be honest. They did to us what we’ve been doing to teams lately.
“There’s still a lot to play for even though we’ve got ourselves out of the bottom three.
“We’re not going to take our foot off the gas just because we’ve achieved that. There’s a long way to go.”
Meanwhile Barnsley had sold just over 1,500 of their allocation of 6,000 tickets for the FA Cup quarter-final clash with Manchester City at the Ethiad Stadium on March 9.
The club are drip-feeding tickets to their season-ticket holders first, with supporters who have watched all of their FA Cup games this season given priority before general release towards the end of the week.
There are also hospitality tickets available, starting at £45, available from the club’s commercial department.
“Ticket sales have been going, but we don’t expect it to be until early next week before we sell out,” Reds director Don Rowing told The Star.
“It’s great occasion for our supporters and everyone involved with the club. We’re all looking forward to it.”
Comments