Neill Collins says Blackpool caught Barnsley FC by surprise – and the poor standard of League One refereeing has been unexpected too and also sending key words to the board

Neill Collins says Blackpool caught Barnsley FC by surprise – and the poor standard of League One refereeing has been unexpected too and also sending key words to the board

 

Neill Collins says Blackpool caught Barnsley FC by surprise – and the poor standard of League One refereeing has been unexpected too

Neil Collins admitted Blackpool’s gameplan caught him by surprise, but also that Barnsley need to be better at solving the questions teams pose them, especially at Oakwell.

The Scot came away from his side’s 10th league game of the season feeling his side had done a fairly decent job, yet licking his wounds after a fourth defeat of the campaign – all at home.

He does, though, want more help from referees after seeing his side were refused a couple of penalty appeals.

Since starting the season with a 7-0 win over Port Vale, Burton Albion are the only other side the Reds have beaten at Oakwell in League One.

They ought to have added the Tangerines to that, but Neil Critchley’s side were able to cling on to Jordan Rhodes’ first-half penalty and claim a 1-0 win. For all that Barnsley dominated possession, they did not have a shot on target.

“We had Portsmouth and Oxford come here and really come at us,” said Collins. “I honestly thought Blackpool would do the same.

 

“When they’re not necessarily doing that it can be different questions for the players.

“Sometimes in these games you have to just be patient and in the second half more gaps open up.

“We definitely need to play with more purpose and look to go forward quicker. It’s something we need to learn from this game, definitely.”

 

Collins was more unhappy with referee Charlie Breakspear than his players.

He had no complaints about the “blatant” penalty Corey O’Keeffe conceded, but felt his side should have had a spot kick too.

“Not an awful lot went particularly wrong,” he said. “We gave away a poor penalty, which was a mistake. I think that was Blackpool’s first attack after we’d started the game well.

“As we’ve done at home we made life hard for ourselves then we spent the rest of the game trying to create opportunities.

 

“We created a few but I would like to have created more of course but we just fell short of getting the goal. I think we had two or three good opportunities.

 

“Blackpool are a good side. We definitely did need to play forward quicker at times but you’ve also got to recognise Blackpool gave us a lot of that possession and sat 11 men behind the ball so we had to show a little bit of patience.