The run of 11 games in 44 days starting with the trip to Norwich City in their next match will be the toughest test of Barnsley's young squad this season, says head coach Paul Heckingbottom.
The Reds are currently 16th in the Championship with 19 points from 15 matches, leaving them seven away from the top six play-off places and seven clear of the three relegation places with a game in hand on most teams. They have won their last two matches, following a 4-2 success at fourth-bottom Burton Albion last week with a 2-0 home victory over third-bottom Birmingham City on Saturday. Those were the first back-to-back wins since January.
The Reds now face a gruelling run up to and including the Christmas and New Year period. Their first match after the current international break is a 320-mile round trip to Norwich followed ten days later, after home games against Cardiff and Leeds, by a 400-mile journey to Reading for a Tuesday evening match.After facing Bolton Wanderers and Derby County, Barnsley play in London on the two Saturdays before Christmas as they visit Brentford on December 16 and Fulham on December 23.
Heckingbottom told the Chronicle: "It's our biggest test so far. It's a brutal run of matches, and there are a lot of long trips which we will have to take into consideration and plan for. We have hard-working lads who are giving everything for the club but we need to look after them as best we can with rest and recovery. I have tried to ease the lads who are not used to this league in gently by chopping and changing the team but that is probably a luxury I can't afford during this run. The next international break is not until March so it is going to be a long time with a hell of a lot of games and plenty of challenges to overcome."
Heckingbottom is 'delighted' by the start to the season and, with the gap between the Reds and top six closing, he does not want to put any limits on what his side could achieve. He said: "I would 100 per cent have taken this position at the start of the season and I am very pleased with all the hard work the players and staff have done in the last two and a half months. We just want to keep pushing and see how far this group can go. It is exciting because I am learning things about these players every day and I honestly don't know how good they can be yet. We didn't recruit until very late in the summer transfer window, and that means it is taking a while to bed all the new players in, but I think it shows now that we recruited well."
Barnsley have won every game going into each of the three international breaks this season, beating Sunderland in August, Millwall in September and Birmingham on Saturday. The Reds have used the breaks to work on players' fitness and continue the transition into the Championship for a squad who had mostly never played at this level before August.
Heckingbottom said: "We know what a perfect performance looks like for us so it's always reflecting on that and seeing what we got wrong. We were still below 22 in terms of average age against Birmingham and it was 21 and a half against Burton. It's ridiculous really and, in four years, if you keep them all together, they will be 26 and still not at their peak so it would be good to keep them together for four years and still be working with them for that length of time."
