Valerien Ismael felt his side only had themselves to blame for not taking at least a point from their visit to Ewood Park.

Barnsley had 23 shots on goal, as well as 11 corners, but with what only turned out to be a consolation strike from Romal Palmer late on, Ismael was disappointed that return.

Ismael’s side pressed Rovers high up the pitch from the off, and were the better side in the first half, but went in trailing after Adam Armstrong scored against his former club.

Barnsley looked a threat all afternoon, not least from set plays where Thomas Kaminski pulled off one fine save to keep out a Mads Anderson header in the second half.

And Ismael felt set plays were a strong suit for his side throughout, but was disappointed they didn’t lead to a goal.

"When I came here we didn’t have enough time to work on all areas, but in any training session we work on one main focus,” he explained.

“For this game the set pieces, we worked hard on set pieces for this game.  

“We showed in this game we were very dangerous from set pieces, we have to keep working to stay that way.

“We have to score, this is the Championship. We can build from this performance for sure because we have consistency in our performance, but you need a reward." 

Ismael had won four of his six matches in charge since taking over from Gerhard Struber, and was pleased with the performance of his side, as he was in midweek against Brentford.

However, having come away with no points from those two matches, he feels his side need to develop more of a killer instinct when they are on top.

“We have two faces. The first face says the performance was exactly what we wanted, aggression, intensity winning the ball deep and trying to finish quick. But the other one says we had 23 attempts, 11 corners and we scored once,” Ismael added.

“We have to find the killer mentality. When you are in good shape in a game, you have to score because it is always the same, if you don't score the opponent will get one chance and score.

"We were very frustrated at half-time but we tried to stay focused. We were closer to 1-1 than the 2-0 then after 2-0 we had to recover for five minutes. In the end it was 2-1 and it was not enough.

"You have to analyse the opponent and the performance. We are good and stable, and we have the feeling that we improved our game. But I told the guys that we need the points and we need to punish the opponent by being killer on the pitch. We have to work on this."