Happy days for Winkler as Oxford boss Robinson is left reeling

Posted Sunday, August 05, 2018 by PA

Barnsley assistant manager Andreas Winkler was full of praise for the team after they opened their season with a 4-0 win over Oxford.

The Tykes started with a convincing win thanks to a brace from France-born forward Mamadou Thiam and goals from Brad Potts and Victor Adeboyejo.

Winkler said: “It was a brilliant first match, a good start to the season; the whole squad, also the substitutes, did very well.

“If you have such a good first half like that maybe you can lay back and think, ‘OK you’ve won already’, but we kept on pressing and everybody who came in, including the substitutes, were very good.

“I would like to see football like that for the fans of Barnsley. Football like that is brilliant, but they have to know we can’t play every match like this, but we try to.

“I’m very happy with him (Mamadou Thiam). We can’t imagine how hard it is to come from another country at that age and have a good first season so it’s a big step for him.

“Kiefer Moore and Tom Bradshaw worked very well together for the squad and I would also be happy for them if they scored, but we want to have success as a squad and I don’t care who it is.”

Oxford boss Karl Robinson said: “The people in the stand showed more commitment than the players on the pitch.

“In some ways I’d rather get beat like that than get beat and everyone say we were unlucky.

“I know where we are weak, we lost the midfield. I had to go to four in midfield because our two couldn’t cope with their two.

“Losing Samir Carruthers early in the game (was key). He’s going to be out for nearly three months, we think. It’s a knee ligament problem and it doesn’t seem very stable.

“They scored where Samir should’ve been, it happened when we were down to 10 men.”