Barnsley FC hit rock-bottom following chastening defeat to Cardiff City

Defeat to play-off chasing Cardiff City, allied to Luton Town’s goalless draw at Wigan Athletic, consigned head coach Gerhard Struber’s team to the bottom of the table with nine games left.

Goals from Will Vaulks and Callum Paterson, scored within a minute of each other midway through the second half, settled events on an afternoon when a half-time tannoy announcement warned home fans about offensive/racist chanting.

The exact nature of what was said was unclear, but a further announcement was made towards the end of the second half advising people to report any abusive comments heard.

There was, as is normally the case when Cardiff are in town, frequent reference to sheep and what might be termed unhealthy recreational activities with said animals, although much of that took the form of self-deprecating chanting in the away end.

Barnsley, for whom defeat at Reading last Saturday ended a run of three successive wins, initially started the game brightly on a breezy, bitterly cold afternoon.

Cauley Woodrow looked in the mood at the top of Struber’s diamond, and he produced the game’s first meaningful effort in the eighth minute, firing a right-footed drive not far wide from 20 yards.

Cardiff, defending in the first half the goal behind which their fans were in fulsome voice, are difficult to break down, as evidenced by the fact that only promotion-chasing West Brom, Leeds and Nottingham Forest had lost fewer than their nine fixtures going into this game.

They are not a pretty team - words such as “workmanlike” and “combative” might have been invented for them - but they are effective, and the match quickly descended into a physical, attritional battle mostly murky skies.

To their credit, Barnsley attempted to play football but found opportunity and space mostly at a premium.

Woodrow’s effort was the first of any description until the 35th minute, when Luke Thomas cut in from the right and bent a left-footed effort wide of the target when he might, as his reaction suggested, have done rather better.

Cardiff’s only effort at that stage had come when Will Vaulks headed well over from a corner in the seventh minute. Other than that, their chief impact on the match was when their captain, Sean Morrison, clattered into keeper Brad Collins and injured Michael Sollbauer in the process, Reds’ fans angered that referee James Linington did not produce a card.

Not until the 42nd minute did the visitors threaten Collins’s goal, the keeper producing a functional save at his near post when Albert Adomah lashed in an 18-yard drive.

After the ponderous first period, Cardiff began the second half with a sudden explosion of energy.

Callum Paterson saw a close-range header saved by Collins, and then Junior Hoilett somehow turned Joe Ralls’s left-sided cross over the bar from six yards. Moments later, Leandro Bacuna was not far away with a speculative effort from outside the box.

Paterson thought that he should have had a penalty in the 54th minute when Collins made a hash of dealing with a high ball, possibly because the sun had appeared and was dead in his eyes.

The Barnsley keeper dropped the ball and, claimed Cardiff, brought down Paterson as the striker tried to seize it with the goal at his mercy, but referee Linington was unmoved.

Joe Bennett almost put the visitors in front in the 62nd minute only for Collins to divert his left-footed shot around the post with his legs.

The reprieve for Barnsley was temporary, however, Vaulks stabbing in a minute later from close range following a goalmouth scramble and Paterson doubling the advantage 60 seconds later when he latched on to a through ball from Morrison and slotted past the exposed Collins.

The match rather petered out thereafter, and although Barnsley huffed and puffed in the closing stages, there was no way back on an afternoon that ended with boos among their frustrated fans.

Barnsley: Collins, Williams B, Brown (Simoes 71), Woodrow, Chaplin (Schmidt 82), Ludewig, Thomas, Ritzmaier, Sollbauer, Halme, Mowatt. Unused subs: Walton, Williams J, Dougall, Andersen, Bahre.

Cardiff City: Smithies, Sanderson, Bennett, Morrison, Vaulks, Bacuna, Ralls (Pack 81), Paterson (Glatzel 85), Adomah, Nelson, Hoilett (Murphy 84). Unused subs: Etheridge, Flint, Whyte, Smith.