BLOG: After Barnsley win I can see us beating Blades and Donny

Barnsley vs Chesterfield - Lee Novak celebrates his goal - Pic By James Williamson

Firstly we put in a full 90 minutes performance; each and every single player was trying their upmost to see out the game and in the end that paid off for us.

So many times this season we have seen just half a performance and Port Vale last week was a prime example of this; however at Oakwell on Saturday we were switched on and controlled the game pretty much throughout.

Secondly you have got to look at our fighting spirit, something which has been lacking this season.

I am sure I was not alone in thinking when we went down to 10 men that we were going to struggle to get anything out of the game, despite us looking threatening.

However we just carried on playing how we were, we didn’t sit back and absorb pressure we just played how we would with 11 men.

Gboly has to get a special mention for his performance, he was absolutely incredible.

He managed to cause the opposition multiple problems and he thoroughly deserved his two assists.

Over the past couple of months Ariyibi has come in for some criticism for his performance, however it is fair to say that we can’t expect at this level 10 out of 10 performance each week, if he was putting in those then he wouldn’t be with us, he would be playing higher up.

He is definitely a great talent and I can see him going far in his career.

We are probably a win, possibly two wins, away from safety and I can probably see us getting those victories in our next two games. Sheffield United arguably have nothing to play for now after Saturday’s draw, whereas we appear to have enough fight in us to gain the points.

As for Doncaster next Tuesday we really should defeat them, obviously nothing is a given in football but if we are to stay up we definitely need to gain three points at home to a side who haven’t won in 17.

Going forward I would love to see more of Rai Simons in our starting 11.

Admittedly I probably wouldn’t see him in the side that started on Saturday however with Jamal out for two games, and probably ineligible to play against his parent club; perhaps Simons could be the ideal person to come in.

We are short of wide players at the moment and I want to keep O’Shea in the centre as he is certainly better there, therefore if we brought Rai into the starting line-up we could move Novak out wide or experiment with Simons out wide; the former the likeliest to happen.