James Bree's 50th game for Barnsley brought his first official man of the match award but he admits the atmosphere was 'not nice' after the 5-2 defeat to Nottingham Forest and that the Reds may have to change their approach to home matches in the future.

The right-back reached the half-century of appearances the month after he turned 19 and is now in his fourth season of first team action after coming through the Oakwell academy. He believes teams have changed their approach to playing the newly-promoted Reds after they made a blistering start on their return to the Championship.

Bree, the youngest player in the division's youngest side, told the Chronicle: "I think we have shown what we can do and teams are coming to Oakwell set up to defend against us and break on the counter-attack.

"We have got to break teams down a lot more and it's down to us to change our game so we get more points. There are a lot of young players in our team but we are mature enough to deal with this run and turn it around. There are a few older lads who can help us.

"This league has been as tough as everyone said it would be. "The quality is much higher and the tempo is a lot quicker. All the players have made the step up well. It's just a case of settling down now and getting a good run of form and we'll be all right."

Bree was quite pleased with his individual performance against Forest after he set up the opening goal for Sam Winnall and continued a recent trend of being more attacking, prompting the supporters to vote for him as man of the match.

Earlier in the season he suffered one of the regular hamstring injuries which have plagued the early stages of his career but he has played the last seven games.

He said: "It's pleasing to get man of the match for the first time.  I played well but I could have done better. Hecky (head coach Paul Heckingbottom) has been telling me to believe in myself, drive forward and help the team.

"It's good to keep the ball but sometimes you have to make things happen yourself. "I am trying to change my mindset to getting forward and getting goals and assists.  Hopefully I will get my first goal soon because I need to add that to my game.

"I have been slowly progressing going forward and I think I am getting better defensively as well. It's been good for me to get a nice run of games and I haven't been injured recently."

Bree was one of the few defensive players to come out of the heavy loss to Forest with credit. He said: "It was a really tough one to take and it wasn't a nice atmosphere in the dressing room after the game.  It was one of those up and down games. We played quite well in the first half but a few silly mistakes cost us."