Barnsley boss Markus Schopp under huge pressure ahead of clash with Sheffield United

The Reds’ lost 2-0 to Middlesbrough at the Riverside, increasing their winless run to 11 league matches and leaving Schopp’s side second bottom of the Championship table.

Barnsley were poor on the night, missing a number of gilt-edged chances and it would be unsurprising if another defeat to a local rival proved to be the final nail in the coffin for a manager who has found it a huge challenge to replicate the success of his predecessor Valérien Ismaël who took them to the play-offs last season.

Schopp said as he turned his attention to a luchtime kick off with Sheffield United on Sunday, who fell to a defeat to Millwall on Tuesday: "I wanted to be manager. It is not always easy when the sun is shining.

"It is the situation when it is raining and right now it is raining a lot right in the face.

"I will do everything so that we go in the right direction and I definitely something different than you [journalists] do. It is one thing to discuss about the result, but it is a different process for the team where at the end of the season, we will see a big benefit."

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On whether he will be given time to turn around Barnsley's fortunes, he added: "This is the wrong person for this question. I can only tell you what I see and what we have to understand that this is the way how we want to succeed.

"We have a couple of players who will be back soon and this is definitely something that will help us. But right now, with the situation we are in, we have to find the best solutions and I think the solutions are not that bad even if the results don't give us this impression.

"This is a really hard situation for the fans, for the team, for the staff and everybody. What we try to do with the possibilities we have right now is do our best."