Conor Hourihane says Lincoln City ‘made it difficult’ for his side in the 2-0 win at Oakwell.
A goal in each half was enough to give us a fifth win in six visits to Barnsley, with Tom Hamer’s head scoring the first, and Tom Hamer’s hands creating the second. Both goals came from set pieces, our 11th and 12th of the campaign, to put us at the top of the ‘goals scored from set pieces‘ table.
The result cemented our second spot in the ‘most points gained up to December 31st table’, which is the one that many think will count, while Hourihane saw his side slide into the bottom half. He described the early goal, from Ivan Varfolomeev‘s delivery, as ‘soft’ and ‘disappointing’.
“To give them a soft goal early on in the game was disappointing,” he said. “They were happy then to sit back, stay in their shape, block shots and all the rest of it.
“To be fair to them, they work ever so hard, block loads of shots and made it difficult for us.”
Making no mention of the obvious penalty, which makes a refreshing change as other managers would have been all over it, Hourihane then correctly asserts his side made a good start to the second period.
“I think we started the second half bright and started okay, and then a complete sucker punch.
“Dealing with their long throw was something we wanted to do all night because we know it’s a big threat for them.
“It landed to Adam Reach on the edge of the box, he swings his right foot, it hits the crossbar and goes in. It’s just the moment that we’re in and it took the game away from us.”
The former Aston Villa man was not shy in his praise of us, but he did suggest we ‘don’t score loads’, which is funny given that we’ve scored 34, and they’ve scored 32. I suppose when we’re second and they’re 15th, we’d be expected to have more goals to our name,
“They don’t give much away. I don’t think they peppered our goal either. They’re not a team that will dominate the ball and create loads of chances. They don’t score loads and they don’t give away loads.
“They ended up getting a set play and one from a long throw, which is really disappointing because there’s not much in the game at all.
“They then made it difficult for us to break them down. We’re really hurting. We know we need to do better. I’ll be the first person to look at myself and work so hard to try and turn it around.”
That’s the end of our one-sided rivalry with the Tykes this season, a rivalry which has brought us six points, a cup win, seven goals and just one conceded. Our focus now remains on staying in the top six, while Hourihane has a big job on keeping his side away from the bottom four.
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