Barnsley Fans Verdict: Loyal Royals Left Frustrated, Again

I’ve said it time and time again this season, but Pauno has really instilled a different mentality into the fans - well, he’s instilled it into me, anyway. I’ve very rarely woke up the day after a game still feeling the emotion of the game itself; what’s been has gone and all eyes have to be on the next game.

But on Saturday I woke up still absolutely seething - and I'm sure I wasn't the only one feeling like that. My mind is still in overdrive: will that miss cost us the play-offs? Are we going to go the whole season sitting in the top six and then bottle it when it really matters? How on earth is Pauno going to pick the players up after this? These are just some of the questions that have been running through my mind since about 7:30pm on Good Friday.

The rest of the fans, I’m sure, I know, are feeling exactly the same. It’s a draw that feels like more than a loss, it feels like it’s the end of our season. But it’s important to state that it’s not - there are still seven huge, huge games to go and we need to be behind the players for every single one of them.

Here’s how the fans reacted to some of the key talking points...

Ovie Ejaria

Let’s start with the good. And it was very good. The kind of good we all know Ovie can produce, but also the kind of good he doesn’t produce consistently enough.

Ejaria is the epitome of ice cool. Football is just too easy for him, which as good as it sounds, is probably his biggest downfall too. But when he produces the run, touch and finish that he did on Friday, it frustrates you as much as it wow’s you. Because he has the ability to do that so much more than he currently does.

This obviously happened before the calamitous second half, so the fans were in a good mood...

Andy Yiadom

Onto the bad. And this was very bad. It was a stupid, stupid thing for Yiadom to do, especially considering Holmes had dealt with the incoming cross with no problems at all.

You just can't put your arm round another player's throat and expect to get away with it. Nine times out of 10 the ref doesn't see it and you get away with, but unfortunately for Yids the ref did see this one, so he can have absolutely no complaints.

Joao’s miss will make this error go under the radar, but it's another individual mistake that cost us at a time in the game where we were looking as comfortable as we had done all game. And it left the fans fuming...

Lucas Joao

Now time for the ugly, the very, very ugly. I love Lucas as much as the rest of us, but how many howlers is he going to miss? We’ve already seen them at Wycombe, Forest and Preston and also in the last game against QPR - but this one tops the lot.

I don't need to say how bad it is, read the tweets below and you’ll find the fans have done that job for me, but what worries me the most is what state his confidence will be in now.

Pauno has a big job on his hands now. It’s easy for us to say that Joao needs to be dropped to get him out of the spotlight, but Lucas strikes me as the kind of player who might go into his shell even more if that does happen. It’s a balancing act that needs to be done by Pauno, but it’s a balancing act that will have a huge say in how our season pans out.

Here's what the fans had to say...

Conclusion

It’s out of our hands but it's not over. Not by any means. However, like I said before, how on earth Paunovic is going to lift the players after that I don't know - but he will have to do that or else the play-off dream will be over.

If you watch Liam Moore’s interview with both Sky and the Reading media team from after the game, he sounded distraught. And that’s one of the senior players. We have to pick ourselves up.

If we get a fully firing Joao back, we get into the play offs, no problem. I know that seems a long, long way off now but its not impossible.

URZ