What Barnsley can expect from Oxford United on Saturday?

Despite the poor start to the season, Karl Robinson has continued to persist with the same style of play that has seen us have reasonable success in recent seasons. This is a high possession based style with a range of attacking options on the pitch. One of the main frustrations with this style is the amount of “pointless” passing across the back four in front of the opposition and against teams with a high press, we give the ball away incredibly cheaply.

Formation wise, we tend to play a 4-1-2-3 with at least one of the 3 being an out and out winger. There are plenty of attacking players in the squad but many of them have missed parts of the season with injury so haven’t really got going as yet.

We’re currently on a 9 match unbeaten run in all competitions but too many of these have been draws which is why we haven’t closed the gap on the playoff spots. That being said, despite our horrendous start to the season – 3 wins in first 10 – we are only 6 points off 6th place, which perhaps says more about the quality of the league this season than anything else.

Barnsley have a good away record this season, how’s your home form this season?

Not great, which is a new thing for this season. Previous seasons have been built on really good home form but this season has not followed suit. Just 12 points have come from a possible 30 at home so far, which has included a total of 5 points from games against the current bottom 4. It means that we’ve earned more points away from the Kassam so far this season. We did have a good 4-1 win against Exeter in the FA Cup last time out though.

Who should Barnsley look out for in a yellow shirt. The ones who could hurt the reds.

There is a lot of talent across the squad but it hasn’t been showcased with much consistency so far this season. Players like Josh Murphy and Yanic Wildschut arrived with big expectations in the summer but have barely played due to injury, though both travelled with Murphy featuring at Accrington last week.

Midfielder Cameron Brannagan has continued his goalscoring exploits from last season with 8 in all competitions so far and really does get around the pitch. Ciaron Brown has made the left-back spot his own after turning his loan spell from Cardiff into a permanent one and has been one of the most consistent players. Marcus McGuane has been reinvented as holding midfielder this season and we’re starting to see signs of why he has been on the books of Arsenal and Barcelona. Kyle Joseph, a loan signing from Swansea has 5 league goals but is out until the new year through injury. Gatlin O’Donkor and Tyler Goodrham are two youth products who have impressed during the gametime they have seen with both scoring their first senior goals.

Give us your thoughts on Herbie Kane’s time at Oxford on loan

As Herbie began to settle, he showed that he has talent that is clearly above League One level. His passing ability was fantastic, and he was often the start of a lot of our good attacking play. We obviously paid a fee to prevent a recall clause being activated but sadly the first half of the season was more impressive than the second half. Towards the backend of the season, it did feel that clubs had worked out that they needed to stop Kane to stop Oxford, and he found himself under much more pressure than earlier on in the season and began to go missing in games completely. This is reflected by one of my main memories of Kane’s time at Oxford being an away game at Morecambe where he was at fault for a goal, with that game ultimately killing our playoff hopes for the season. A good player for us, but I’m not sure any one was too desperate for him to come back in the summer given how his form drifted away.

Oxford have some tough fixtures in December against Barnsley, Sheffield Wednesday, Ipswich and Charlton. How many points do you think Oxford will win in those games?

It feels like a season defining month really! We sit 6 points from the playoffs currently, and you’d think we have to pick-up at least 7 points from those fixtures to at a minimum maintain that gap, yet alone close it further. Last season’s trip to Hillsborough was a memorable one with a stoppage time winner in front of the travelling masses, so I’m sure they’ll feel like they owe us one for that. Ipswich are flying and a trip there on Boxing Day is going to be tough for any team. Charlton will likely have a new manager installed by then so could be an entirely differ proposition. We need a minimum of 7, can I see us getting that? Realistically probably not. A positive result on Saturday though would be a real confidence booster.