Barnsley will look to avoid setting a club record of 12 successive home matches without winning when they host Bristol City tomorrow from 3pm.
The Reds have not won at home in 11 matches since beating Birmingham City 2-0 on November 4.In the 2012/13 season, they avoided a 12th successive winless home game by beating a side managed by an ex-Red in Neil Warnock's Leeds United 2-0 with a brace from Chris Dagnall.
They will look to do so again against their former head coach Lee Johnson who was in charge of 51 Barnsley games in just less than a year from February 2015 to the same month in 2016 when he left for former club Bristol City. The Robins are now seventh, a place and a point outside the play-offs.
Reds head coach Jose Morais said: "I believe that my players go out to home games with the intention to win and that they have the quality to win. I just want them to have the same belief as me. If they won once at home, they can always win at home.
"If we work as a team, we have the capacity to win anywhere. Bristol City is a good team, and we are a good team as well and we are a better team today than we were before."
Johnson had taken Barnsley to and off the bottom of League One in late 2015 but won his last six league matches and reached the Johnstone's Paint Trophy final which he attended as a guest of then owner Patrick Cryne. In his first full season at Ashton Gate last season, he fought a long relegation battle but eventually kept the Robins in the division by three points thanks partly to a 3-2 April win against Barnsley in which the Reds led twice.
Johnson began this season with another home success over his former club, this time 3-1 as City scored three goals between 16 and 30 minutes before Ryan Hedges pulled one back in injury-time. That started a good season for the Robins who reached the League Cup semi-finals but their form since Boxing Day, when they were in the second automatic promotion place, has fallen away badly. They have just three wins in 17 matches in all competitions but two of them have come in the last four games.
Their away form has been particularly poor of late as – since a December win at Sheffield United – they are winless in seven on the road having previously been unbeaten in ten on their travels with six victories and four draws.
Johnson has managed to keep a settled team all season with eight players having played at least 34 of their 38 games and ten playing at least 28.
As well as their head coach, Bristol have several players who will be familiar to Reds fans. Midfielder Josh Brownhill – brought to Oakwell by Johnson and then part of the Barnsley team which won promotion in 2016 before joining Bristol two days later – has been nearly ever-present this season with four goals and five assists in 37 Championship appearances.
Liverpool winger Ryan Kent – who spent last season on loan at Oakwell – returned to English football in January after a loan to German club Freiburg earlier this season. But he has started just five games for the Robins so far with three substitute appearances while he has stayed on the bench for the last two fixtures.
Korey Smith, who played 12 games for the Reds on loan from Norwich City in 2012, is a regular in the Robins midfield while his former Oakwell team-mate Luke Steele is the back-up goalkeeper.
Barnsley and Bristol City last met on Good Friday in 1913 when the Reds recorded a 7-1 victory. The last 14 meetings between the clubs since 2009 have brought 62 goals while the most recent six have seen three draws and three wins for the Robins. The last time Barnsley beat or kept a clean sheet against City was on September 1 2012 when Jacob Mellis' header secured the points despite Bobby Hassell being sent off on 52 minutes.
That was the last game before the club record 11-match winless run home which the current Reds side have equalled. The following two games between the sides at Oakwell have seen October 2-2 draws in both 2014 and last season when Adam Hammill – who Johnson had tried to sign for Bristol City months earlier – netted a 90th-minute equaliser which remains his most recent league goal 17 months later.
