EOGHAN O’Connell was disappointed personally with Northampton’s equaliser on Tuesday night and knows there is still work to be done on Barnsley’s defence despite seeing improvements in his month at the club.
The 30-year-old Irish defender joined early in the January transfer window as a free agent and has been an ever-present in league games since then.
He lost a rare header for Max Dyche’s leveller in a 2-2 draw in midweek.
O’Connell told the Chronicle: “The first goal is probably their only attack of the first half and they score then, the second goal, I think I’ve got to win the header at the back post.
“Obviously they score off the second one. It was disappointing.
“I think on the whole we’ve probably defended quite well as a unit, but we’ve just got to defend those moments where it can kind of go either way a little bit better and just try and improve on that.”
On the game in general, O’Connell said: “Obviously we didn’t start very well. But I thought once we got control of the game, midway through the first half, we played really well until half-time.
“We got the goal to go ahead and then the game just became really frantic.
“We had a lot of chances. We’re disappointed not to win, but we just have to take the point and move on.”
Barnsley top-scorer Davis Keillor-Dunn was sold to Wrexham this week, the club O’Connell helped to three promotions in the previous three seasons.
“I’ve known Davo for a number of years now. He’s a really top lad.
“All the lads in the dressing room are delighted because obviously it’s a great move, he deserves it.
“But obviously we’re disappointed, losing the quality player he is and his goals this season.
“That’s football. We’ve just got to pick ourselves up and move on.”
Keillor-Dunn’s sale and a lack of extra strikers brought in has led to anger in some sections of the fanbase but O’Connell says it has not filtered into the dressing room.
“It’s not something we discussed.
“We’re in that busy schedule now where it’s game, recover, game again. So there’s no real time to think about outside stuff.
“It doesn’t really enter our thought process as players or as a team.”
