Barnsley boss Poya Asbaghi believes his struggling side are making significant progress, even though they are still to deliver the first win of his reign.
The hosts came from behind to draw 1-1 with Yorkshire rivals Huddersfield on Saturday, Carlton Morris’ equaliser cancelling out Lewis O’Brien’s opener.
Second-bottom Barnsley have now won just once in 19 Championship games, but Asbaghi felt there were “big improvements” against the Terriers.
He said: Asbaghi said: “A little bit of mixed feelings. I am not sitting here being super-happy because you want to win, especially at home, but I think as a coach what is important is to see progress.
“We don’t have time to wait four or five weeks for players to start understanding what we mean.
“There’s a lot of progress and, if they can keep responding like that, we will improve.
“We showed that we can develop fast and we need to develop fast. My job is to give a clear role about how we want to play.
“I think there are things we can learn from this game. We can improve in our patterns. We need to keep improving our defence and offence.”
The visitors went in front in the 33rd minute when Fraizer Campbell released O’Brien with a neat pass and the Huddersfield skipper produced a fine finish, slotting the ball just inside goalkeeper Brad Collins’ left-hand post.
Josh Koroma smashed a shot against the bar as the visitors threatened a second, but on the stroke of half-time Michal Helik’s ball into the area found Morris, who fired low past Lee Nicholls to equalise.
Huddersfield boss Carlos Corberan admitted his side did not do enough to deserve the victory.
He said: “We wanted to change two dynamics – the lack of wins and the away form.
“We did not use our chances well in the first half and lost concentration for a minute with their goal.
“But we had enough opportunities to score a second goal. In the last moment of the first half we conceded a goal we could have avoided.
“In the second half Barnsley were pressing higher and we struggled to beat the press.
“There are things we are doing well, but lots of things we can do better too. We gave them too many chances if we want to be a competitive team.
“The feeling at the end was a draw was a fair result because we didn’t take our chances well enough.”
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