Chaplin is quick to praise the impact of Ismael
DAYS into his new job as Barnsley coach, Valerien Ismael has already impressed his new players, not only with his first win, but the way he clearly got his message across whilst cramming so much information into them.
After watching Saturday’s 1- 1 draw at Millwall from the stands, Ismael started work on the training pitches on Sunday. By Tuesday the Reds had won for the first time this season, beating Queens Park Rangers 3- 0 at Oakwell.
Ismael’s new three- man forward line scored two of them, with Conor Chaplin finding the net for the first time since June.
“A new manager has new ideas and new things that are important to him so we all need to buy into that, and he and his coaching staff have done a really good job to make us understand what are the important things,” said Chaplin.
“It’s been really impressively put to us because everyone was clear. There was a lot of information and we worked on the training pitch – even if we had a recovery day we were out on the pitches to watch his sessions and understand what he wanted.
“There was a lot of training time in such a short amount of time. There was analysis, tactics meetings where he explained the way he wanted to play. It was packed with information but I think the gaffer was happy with what he saw on Tuesday and there’s a lot to build on because he’s not been in the door long. There’s definitely more to come.
“Managers are picky and rightly so because if they’re not, who’s going to be? There are ways to improve after a good win and that’s very important because you never want to stagnate as a team, you never don’t try and pick holes out of things because there are always things you can improve on.”
What pleased Chaplin most was the number of chances Barnsley created after scoring just six in their first seven games. They really should have scored more, Chaplin missing one of a host of opportunities in the final 10 minutes.
Under Ismael’s predecessor Gerhard Struber, the Reds went from a team which scored and conceded plenty of goals before the coronavirus lockdown to one which tightened up at the back and dried up at the front after it.
“It was a relief,” said Chaplin of his goal. “It hadn’t been preying on my mind in terms of not being able to score but I wasn’t getting the chances and that was playing on my mind. I hadn’t really had a good chance this season ( before Tuesday) that I can remember.
“We were aware as a team that we weren’t creating as much as we were before lockdown.
“I honestly don’t think there’s something I can tell you as to why. Confidence is a big thing for strikers as it is for defenders. When you get a clean sheet you look to build on that and in the first game after lockdown we got a clean sheet and built a really impressive tally but the goals dried up.
“I don’t think anyone was bothered when we were winning 1- 0 although strikers are naturally selfish players who want to score goals and create them.”
Ismael tweaked Barnsley’s formation from 3- 5- 2 to 3- 4- 3.
“You find yourself in pockets of space you don’t usually because there’s three of you up there,” said Chaplin. “( My role is) not a winger, it’s a narrow forward and that’s probably perfect for me.
“We complemented each other quite well at times, you could see that for my goal with a great bit of invention from Cauley ( Woodrow) for the flick and Friesey ( Dominic Frieser) picking me out in the box.
“It’s something we’ll definitely look to build on but we need to finish more chances because in the second half we could have had four, five, six or seven goals.”