I've slept on it twice and watched EFL on quest yesterday, he was worse than I remember. I was shouting at the telly again....
The referee was very poor and frankly, it was a lazy performance. The shirt pulling Swansea deploy is outrageous. Yet we didn't get anything we were penalised for standing there with arms aloft. But fundamentally we showed one moment of quality in 180 minutes and they showed 2. Nothing to be gutted about really.
I think the most annoying thing for me is that neither Sky nor Quest mentioned the ref other than one incident where the defender was shielding the ball against Morris trying to let the ball run out and the ref penalised Morris not the defender for the obvious obstruction. Otherwise, not a word. Are they completely blind, or is it just that we're Barnsley?
I've slept on it twice and I think Morris's header was a worse miss than Brittain's side foot in the first leg because Morris is paid to hit the onion bag and Brittain isn't. They were both shocking though.
Why does the club not question the ref’s performance. Call him out over it. Shirt pulling is an offence punished by awarding a free kick. And continued shirt pulling is certainly bookable. Neither punishment seems to have been applied by the ref. Questions must be asked over his reluctance to apply the rules.
Talking of who gets paid to do what..... I recall a tale Billy Houghton once told me many years after he retired whilst we were working on a building site ( Billy was a joiner...I was the apprentice plumber ) When Billy was at Barnsley he found himself becoming a bit of a voice in the dressing room ...in those days of no agents Billy discovered that one of the forwards was getting paid more than him and the lads...so went to see the chairman about a raise in wages... at the time players were paid retention money during the close season....so armed with the facts that the striker was being paid double the retention money than Billy and his team mates ..the lads elected .Billy to approach the chairman about more money .... On hearing Billy's request the chairman snapped.and ranted ..He gets paid more than the rest of you because he's better than the rest of you he scores goals... Goals lad Goals win matches... winning matches brings folk through the door more folk through the door means we can buy better players.... Billy stopped him in full rant and replied ...the downside of your argument Mr chairman is the rest of us play an equal part in this team and without our input he wouldn't score those so called goals...and as for scoring goals the rest of us score the same amount of Goals during the close season that he does ..... Billy and the lads got the retention fee raised ... but not long after he was sold ...and was told it was because he was disruptive in the dressing room lol...happy memories..he was a lovely fella was Billy
We need to develop an anti pull shirt Something the opposition can't get a hold of. Wonder if anyone has ever looked at the advantages that could be gained from kit design rather than just a fashion item? In swimming they developed the fins in the fabric to make it slip through the water easier and allowed more speed - that took someone to look at it and have a think. Maybe we could do the same here - a bit like David Brailsford and the cycling team - they looked at 1% improvements all over and everywhere they found them they all added up. From sleep to training to food to training and equipment. What were fine margins all become bigger ones when added together.
The disappointment of the loss is easing all the time as I knew it would especially given the season we’ve had. Wish I could say the same about my anger at that ref.
I remember jedione once saying to me "If we we're playing Real Madrid in the Champions League Final in Monaco, some of our fans would still be complaining & saying something like their lobster wasn't as good as they were used to!". He's spot on.