Apologies for the delay but here’s a review of the Barnsley match from Briggsy one of our contributors to the forum.

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I woke up on Tuesday full of anticipation for the first time in weeks. My self imposed exile from watching Blues after the Coventry game had lasted just a short while, although that had nothing to do with the fact that somebody else paid for the tickets. We arrived at Barnsley in good time and headed to the pub for a pre-match pint of Guinness. I must take this opportunity to tell you that ‘we’ refers to my Dad and I, and a more positive Bluenose than my Dad, there is not, sticking by the team for 53 years and still believing we’re the best thing since sliced bread. As we made our way to the ground we were politely warned to keep our voices down if near any crowds as our midlands accents may provoke an unwelcome reaction from the locals, Barnsley turned out to be probably the most easy going ground I’ve ever been to, even Norwich was more intimidating!

The programme was quite a good read, they did short profiles of our players from the ’56 FA cup final and the ’63 League Cup final which started my Dad off on telling me tales of Bertie Auld and Jimmy Harris fighting with two players from Espanyol, Stan Lynn sending a Man City winger flying into the crowd and celebrating the ’63 cup win over Villa as a 16 year old on the turf at Villa Park. I took that time to wonder if I would wax lyrical to my own future son about any of the players in today’s team, sadly I just couldn’t imagine myself talking about the Bent’s, Costly’s and Martin Taylor’s of this world.

The game got underway with the 500 or so Blues fans in fairly good voice considering some of the poor showings this season. Blues started brightly having the first chance from a Larsson free kick which found Carlos Costly who headed over. The game was very combative which neither side seeming willing to take the initiative, Barnsley’s Daniel Bogdanovic had a shot blocked by Franck Queudrue after the Frenchman’s clearance found the Barnsley forward from a Rob Kozluk cross.

Barnsley’s best chance of the first half came in the 25^th minute when Bogdanovic crossed low for Michael Mifsud but the on loan Coventry striker fired wide but should’ve done better.

It was then Blues turn to come close when Carlos ‘Puskas’ Costly used his already legendary drag back trick to take the ball to the by line, squaring for Lee Carsley who couldn’t re-direct it into the net despite protests of the ball being saved by Heinz Muller in the Barnsley goal.

Blues did manage to put the ball in the net just after the half an hour mark when the returning Damien Johnson scuffed a shot from a Larsson corner, finding Cameron Jerome in the process leaving the big man to slot home, but sadly Blues were denied by the linesmans flag.

At half time I felt the game was fairly evenly matched and that both sides could’ve had a goal. On face value this was slightly disappointing considering Barnsley’s less than impressive league position but their quality at Oakwell may be the reason they avoid the drop. I also wondered if the missing Lee Bowyer may have added something that Damien Johnson couldn’t. The willingness to make runs into the box and link up with the forwards.

The second half started much the same as the first half; scrappy. Barnsley looked more of a threat from the right hand side with Jamal Campbell Ryce giving Franck Queudrue some problems. 10 minutes into the second half Barnsley had a shout for a penalty waved away after Campbell Ryce was tripped by Larsson but from my seat it looked as if the Barnsley winger wasn’t in full control of the ball when he went to ground.

Scott Sinclair then replaced Damien Johnson and looked dangerous for the first few minutes of his half an hour appearance but did little else. Hameur Bouazza replaced Carlos Costly on 74 minutes but was fairly annonymous. Then in the last 10 minutes the game came to life. A routine clearance for the biggest player on the park: ‘Tiny Taylor’ went horribly wrong and the ball fell to Micahel Mifsud at the back post who slotted away cooly. To make things worse I had found out from Kev (J&S Big wig) that Reading were 2-1 up. However Martin Taylor went a short way to making up for his horrible error by pouncing on a mistake by Barnsley keeper Heinz Muller and levelling the game up. At this point, depite the equaliser I felt angry. Did we really need to go a goal down before we were sparked into life?

5 minutes of injury time were announced to the pleasure of the Blues fans however it was Barnsley who provided all of the threat from the added time, substitute Mounir el Haimour having the best chance, volleying over by a matter of centimeters.

I left the ground feeling quite de-jected, after winning two games on the trot against in form opposition and playing well to boot I felt sure we could go to Oakwell and claim three points convincingly. However that’s not the way Blues do things. At this point I thought Reading had won until another text from Kev told me otherwise. After a little time to reflect on things I rationed that we were no worse off than we were at the start of the night. Wolves were poor and Reading failed to beat bottom of the table at home, whereas we had a string of injuries, playing a team with a good home record.

As for the promotion issue, I still think it will happen automatically for us, the presence of Kevin Phillips has been a big miss but hopefully should be resolved in the next week or so. Our rivals on the other hand have few injury worries yet still manage to falter against sides they should be beating. Although we may think we’re not getting promoted plenty of our counterparts in Wolverhampton and Reading think the same about their own teams.