Good Luck to Bolton | Page 2 | Vital Football

Good Luck to Bolton

king_dezeeuw06 said:
I agree we were by far the better side at Oakwell and they benefitted massively at the DW from a wrongful red card. But they had been in the top 6 nearly all season and had nearly a 60% win ratio. So they were doing well before failing to win any of their last 10.
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To be fair when we won the league under Richardson, we were poor performance wise for probably 75% of the season. We scraped so many late wins and a lot against the weaker sides later on, that our experience and individual quality won, as they stepped up at the end of the game. It shows how week the league is when this Barnsley squad is finishing top 6. Our record two seasons ago against the top 8 was awful and the warning signs were there when we went up as The Championship, the top 8 of League One would be the bare minimum quality faced.

That's one big positive of the us under Maloney, a much younger squad, with more technical ability and pace. Our record against the top 8 was the best in League One this season, which gives you more confidence if you get promoted that you perform better against the minimum sort of sides you will be facing if you went up. Maloney has showed he is better at finding ways to beat the better teams and we were much improved in The Championship under him.

It's just getting that improvement against the bottom half sides which is needed to get promoted in the first place. Whilst tactics and line ups needed improvement in a lot of games, I do feel the biggest barrier was the players mentality against the bottom half. Probably the 8 point deduction, meaning for a while we weren't going down or up, the players didn't put in that same level of application against the weaker sides and when it was close with 20-30 minutes left, no desire to step up a level.

Next season were those kind of matches will define a promotion battle, I think the players will show a lot more against the weaker sides and put them to the sword, like we did against Bristol Rovers on the final day, play like that next season against the bottom half and we won't lose many.
 
NorthernSoul said:
To be fair when we won the league under Richardson, we were poor performance wise for probably 75% of the season. We scraped so many late wins and a lot against the weaker sides later on, that our experience and individual quality won, as they stepped up at the end of the game. It shows how week the league is when this Barnsley squad is finishing top 6. Our record two seasons ago against the top 8 was awful and the warning signs were there when we went up as The Championship, the top 8 of League One would be the bare minimum quality faced.

That's one big positive of the us under Maloney, a much younger squad, with more technical ability and pace. Our record against the top 8 was the best in League One this season, which gives you more confidence if you get promoted that you perform better against the minimum sort of sides you will be facing if you went up. Maloney has showed he is better at finding ways to beat the better teams and we were much improved in The Championship under him.

It's just getting that improvement against the bottom half sides which is needed to get promoted in the first place. Whilst tactics and line ups needed improvement in a lot of games, I do feel the biggest barrier was the players mentality against the bottom half. Probably the 8 point deduction, meaning for a while we weren't going down or up, the players didn't put in that same level of application against the weaker sides and when it was close with 20-30 minutes left, no desire to step up a level.

Next season were those kind of matches will define a promotion battle, I think the players will show a lot more against the weaker sides and put them to the sword, like we did against Bristol Rovers on the final day, play like that next season against the bottom half and we won't lose many.
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I agree with all of that but i think if you are winning such a high percentage of your games you clearly must be doing at least some things really well (even if you have lots of flaws or warning signs).
 
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