JOHN McAtee was happy to net his first home goal for Barnsley and the best of his seven so far but is hoping to be more prolific in the second half of the campaign.
The striker, who is on loan from Luton Town, lobbed the goalkeeper from the edge of the box to equalise in a 2-1 win over Stevenage on Saturday.
McAtee told the Chronicle: “It was nice to score in front of the home fans. It’s something I wanted to do since I came in. I really enjoyed it and hopefully I can get more.
“I am not happy with seven goals. I could have had more, but I will build on it and hopefully get more.”
On his goal, McAtee said: “I worked on it in training quite a bit, finding space behind the defence. I made the run, got the touch alright, had a little glance and saw he was off his line so I went for it. It’s definitely my best goal for Barnsley.”
McAtee missed the win at Reading with an injury picked up while scoring at Blackpool earlier this month. He came off the bench last week against Charlton then returned to the starting line-up against Stevenage.
“I hate being on the sidelines. It get very frustrated. Thankfully it was not too serious when we had the scan. I said to Vikki (Stevens, club physio) ‘get me back training ASAP' and I did. I got a couple of minutes last week then started.”
Barnsley go into Christmas seventh, two points off the top six in League One with games in hand on some of those above them.
“We are content with it but, looking around our squad, we have a lot of quality and depth. I really do think we will be there or thereabouts come the end of the year.”
Stevenage took an early lead but McAtee and Herbie Kane won it for the hosts.
“It was difficult because we’ve been speaking about starting better then we concede a goal like that. The lads are buzzing to bounce back but we do need to work on starting better.
“Every team is going to come and try to stop us playing. It was an ugly game and tough to get the ball down. But we battled, and our quality won us the game in the end.”
