Nottingham Forest may have made it three league wins on the spin and moved closer to the play-off places, but boss Steve Cooper couldn’t hide his disappointment at the full-time whistle.
Goals from Keinan Davis, Ryan Yates and Brennan Johnson toppled Barnsley 3-0 at the City Ground, lifting the Reds to within a point of the Championship’s top six.
But Cooper wasn’t happy with the second half performance from his team, as their intensity levels dropped.
Coming on the back of Saturday’s emotion-filled victory over arch-rivals Derby County, the head coach was keen to avoid any potential banana skin against the division’s bottom side.
Before the game, he had sounded a warning to his players about what happened in February 2020, when, under Sabri Lamouchi, Forest beat Leeds United 2-0 at home and then lost 1-0 to Charlton Athletic just a few days later.
“It was a good result, 3-0, a clean-sheet, those sort of stats are good,” said Cooper. “We could, and should, have scored more goals, with hitting the post, Cookie’s (Steve Cook) header and Xande Silva’s chance at the end.
“But the second half performance wasn’t what we want to be.
“Part of me gets it, with it being such a high for everybody on Saturday and to then try to get back up in such a short space of time is sometimes maybe a hard thing to do.
“But we talked to the players before the game. We put up the stat about when we - before I was here - beat Leeds, a similar game, a similar event, maybe, and atmosphere to the Derby game, and then played Charlton on the following Tuesday, didn’t play well and lost 1-0, Lyle (Taylor) scored.
“I said, ‘we’ve got to move on from being that team’. We did in terms of the result, but I don’t think large parts of the performance matched the result.
“I’ve said many times, we’re trying to raise standards in every part of the club. That’s including the team on the pitch.
“When, for me, they don’t reach the standards that they could and should, then I’ll say it.
“Don’t get me wrong, there were loads of good things from the game. I thought the goals were excellent, finally Djed (Spence) has got his assist, Keinan’s got his goal, which is really important, we kept a clean-sheet and there were some excellent individual performances, Scott (McKenna) again, Jack Colback, Cookie… I don’t want to miss anybody out.
“But as the collective, as the team… not for me at times.”
The hosts had been well on top in the first half, and were two goals ahead at the break. But they made a sloppy, and slow, start to the second period, with Barnsley seeing more of the ball.
Three points, though, moved the Reds up to seventh place ahead of Sunday’s trip to Cardiff City.
“It was a really good opportunity to go play with good intensity. There were gaps to play through, which we didn’t take,” Cooper said.
“At times, Brice (Samba) was too slow getting the ball back into play, and then that had a knock-on effect. It invited the press, and we weren’t quick enough to play out of it.
“In the end, the game became a bit of an average spectacle.
“We’re better than that.
“It’s great to be where we are, but it’s only great if you keep going.
“We’ve got Cardiff away, which is a long journey. We’ve got the extra day, with it being on Sunday, but they’ve not had a midweek game.
“I just want to get back to work with the boys, make sure we get back to the way we know we can play. They will know that as well.”
