Barnsley head coach Poya Asbaghi is 'now more disappointed and angry than sick' said his assistant Ferran Sibila following a 3-0 loss at Nottingham Forest on Tuesday.
Sibila confirmed that striker Carlton Morris has tested positive for Covid-19, while they were without six other players due to injury.
Asbaghi continues to test negative for Covid but is unwell. He was watching the game from his apartment and on the phone to coach Jo Laumann, as his team were dominated for long spells and could have lost by far more.
Sibila said: "He is more disappointed and angry than sick now. But I am sure he is working and trying to find solutions because he is a hard worker who never stops. He has been negative in every test so we think it is a normal cough.
"Poya is the head coach. We have done everything together with him, we prepared all the line-ups, game plan and the decisions with him."
Barnsley remain last in the Championship, eight points from safety, and winless in ten league games. Asked where they go from here, Sibila told the Chronicle: "Tomorrow we work again, then the next day and again and again. We will never stop. We are committed 100 per cent and we will spend all the hours we need to help us prepare as well as possible. If there is the possibility with the points, we fight for it."
Barnsley fell behind after 15 minutes when Mads Andersen lost the ball near his goal, then the hosts were 2-0 up at half-time and added another late on.
Sibila said: "We are not happy with the performance. The effort was there, we checked the running stats and every player did good running so the commitment and effort was there. But we have not been good enough, no way.
"Nottingham is one of the big teams in the Championship with a budget I expect is quite big. It will be difficult to create more chances than them.
"We knew coming here that it would be a tough game. We had a lot of players out of the squad, a lot out of position, two made their debut in the Championship. But still we had a belief and a plan to compete 100 per cent.
"In the first 16 minutes before they scored, we showed the belief was there and I was really pleased. We won the ball high up and had good situations for counter-attacks but we didn't create the chance.
"Then the goal happened. It is unfortunate. Mads is a player I admire every day in training, but today he has given a goal to them which changed the game. This normally happens to teams in the situation that we are in. Maybe he tried to do something and changed his mind at the last minute. This happens to every player in the world.
"The belief went down and Nottingham was better for the rest of the first half.
"The team fought again in the second half, no one gave up, but we were not good enough to make it 2-1."
Callum Styles had Barnsley's one clear chance at 1-0 but his shot was cleared off the line. Sibila said: "That was a moment that could change the game because it could put us back in the game. We work to find Styles in that situation. He is a reliable player in that situation but today he couldn't take it and that's football."
Striker Devante Cole added: "It was disappointing. We started well but then there was the mistake which was unlucky and we're out of the game before we've really got going. We created one chance but it was cleared off the line and that's our luck. We put pressure on for long spells, played some nice stuff but the final ball is just not quite right at the moment."
David Bremang made his professional debut off the bench, and fellow 21-year-old Matty Wolfe also came on, while Remy Vita made his league debut soon after.
Sibila said: "It was good experience for them. When you miss a lot of players, new players get a lot of opportunities. As coaches we like to give chances to players because of the performance they have in training and the skills that they have."
Will Hondermarck, usually an attacking midfielder, was an unused substitute. Sibila said: "We can just do three changes. With Will we are training him as a centre-back or full-back. In the midfield role, Wolfie was the player we chose."
