‘WE CAN TYKE BABY STEPS TO SAFETY’

MILLWALL

BARNSLEY 1 2

GERHARD STRUBER believes the changes that he has made as Barnsley boss are already paying off.

Patrick Schmidt scored in stoppage-time to secure a second successive win and lift the Tykes off the bottom of the Championship table.

Austrian Struber took charge last month and believes his methods are making a difference, particularly for Conor Chaplin, who scored his seventh goal in seven games to give the Tykes a first-half lead at Millwall. The Barnsley chief said: “We changed the formation, communication, game style, especially when we are on the ball, we change the positioning.

“We work on this every day. We grow up step by step and we are making the right progress. For me this is the start and it is important that we work very hard together.”

Schmidt (celebrating, above), a fellow Austrian, believes the spirit in the squad has helped Barnsley’s improvement, which has seen them lose only one of their last five games.

“We worked so hard for the last weeks and months and had so many good games, but didn’t get the rewards and the points,” said Schmidt. “And we showed again here that we can turn things around.”

The result ended an unbeaten seven-game run for Millwall, who thought they had snatched a point through Aiden O’Brien’s 85th-minute header.

And Lions captain Shaun Hutchinson groaned: “We seem to struggle against the teams fighting for their lives at the bottom.

“We got ourselves back in the game and then threw it away, the lads are gutted.

“It’s a hard one to take, but we just have to pick ourselves back up now.”

MOTM

CONOR CHAPLIN (BARNSLEY)