Conor Hourihane says he will take a ‘real look’ at Barnsley’s first half performance at Bolton on Saturday and their poor away form.
The Reds were 3-0 down at half-time before coming back to 3-2.
They have not won in seven away league games.
Hourihane told the Chronicle: “I will have to have a real look at the first half, why we looked slow lethargic and they managed to score three past us. It could have been four or five.
“We need to have a real tough look at where we’re at, especially away. I am thinking about the next couple of home games after Stevenage and thinking they will take care of themselves in terms of performance. I feel confident we will play well but we need to do better away for sure.”
Asked why Barnsley looked so nervous early on, Hourihane said: “It’s hard to put your finger on it. It’s a tough away ground, big crowd. The same at Cardiff.
“When you concede an early goal it gets the crowd up and all of sudden, usually you are playing in front or seven or eight thousand fans, then it’s 16, 17 , 18 thousand. It sounds louder, there is more anxiety, they are on top of you. It’s something we need to get better at for sure.”
Barnsley were far better in the second half.
“I have played games when you’re 3-0 down.
“We try to win every game and attack because I think that’s our best way to win games. In the second half there was freedom about them. You look for the first goal and can you cause anxiety in the crowd?
“It probably sums up where we are, conceding a lot and scoring a lot.”
Winger Scott Banks also spoke after the game. He told the Chronicle: “It’s hard to put into words. We just let the game get away from us too quickly and didn’t do a lot of basic things right. There is not much to say about the first half. We know it wasn’t good enough. Credit to everyone involved, they dug in and tried to make something happen. We had enough chances that we almost did.
“The least the fans deserved, coming here and being 3-0 down at half-time, is we all give our all to get something. There are loads of positives from the second half but it’s hard to focus on that when we know we didn’t start well enough. If we start how we played the second half, we’re in a really good spot.”
