by WestYorksRoyal »
13 Sep 2025 17:33
I'm going to make a prediction that may haunt me. I think Hunt and the team will come good this season. By that I mean top half and playing football by April that gets us excited for 26/27. Not play offs.
As for today, Barnsley are a quality L1 side. They have had a stable core of good players for a few years and added quality like Vickers and McGoldrick. They will be pushing for promotion, and this was one of the worst fixtures we could have had after our first win of the season, which is why the Northampton postponement is frustrating.
First 30 or so were abysmal. If we play like that too often then relegation is a genuine threat. And we conceded from another set piece, which is becoming far too frequent. O'Connor can't come back fast enough.
But then Pereira did his timeout injury trick, Marriot scored out of nothing shortly afterwards and from that point on we matched them. Elliott played well, Kyerewaa was dangerous and we were better at getting the ball up the pitch on the deck. Marriot made a big difference, scrapping for possession and finding pockets of space for us to find and build attacks.
Unfortunately McGoldrick had Ahmed for breakfast today; he didn't know where he was or how to respond to his movement, and 2 goals in 5 minutes came from that which killed the game. It's reminiscent of Rhodes and Bindon a couple of years ago, and hopefully Ahmed reacts the same way as he is high potential.
But even after that, we were in the game. Kyerewaa's goal was well worked, and we had other half chances for Marriot, Savage, Wing's FK and the goalmouth chance for Wing/Kyerewaa where it was a goal if the ball dropped for us.
And that's what makes me more positive. We scored two and could have had more, while at the back we're simply begging for O'Connor to get fit and shore things up alongside Williams who had another great game.
Next week against Orient is big. They're a decent top half side, but not as good as Barnsley. We need to start picking up points at home to turn this around.
Last word on the fans at the game. I don't get to many games, but today suggests the toxicity you see on Twitter is also on the terraces; a sizeable minority are dickheads. The team did not deserve to be booed today, and if you can't handle losing maybe think of a better use of your Saturday than travelling the country. And there were even Tommy Robinson chants.
I think there is a lot of emotion around at the moment. 2 years ago we were preaching patience and dealing with bad results, that team ultimately got its rewards but here we are back in the same place 2 years later. That ultimately comes back to Dai. If the takeover completed like it should have last summer, it would not be like this. We would have offered contracts last season and been well ahead in our planning and budgeting for the summer transfer window. It seems like the fanbase right now is just a bit drained and doesn't have the energy to be patient again. The Dai years were mostly dire, but we had 18 good months on the pitch at the end. It's really shit to be back in the "be patient" phase again.
