Victory at Barnsley is a must - anything but and Alex Neil is back to square one

Norwich City travel to South Yorkshire on Saturday afternoon to face newly-promoted Barnsley at Oakwell. Whilst last weekend’s 5-0 win over Brentford served to alleviate some pressure off Alex Neil’s back, it is hugely important that City follow up it up with a positive result and performance this weekend. A high proportion of Norwich fans remain in the ‘Neil Out’ camp and it will take more than one victory over a mediocre Brentford side for the Scot to win them back. A win tomorrow, however, and the momentum will surely begin to shift back in his favour.

One of my major criticisms of Alex Neil this season has been his insistence on meddling with winning line-ups and sticking with losing line-ups. Tomorrow, there is absolutely no justification for doing the former. The eleven that defeated Brentford so comprehensively last weekend went a long way to saving Neil’s job and as a reward for this the very least they deserve is to retain their places in Saturday’s starting eleven. Very rarely will you ever see me push for a Ryan Bennett and Sebastien Bassong centre-back pairing (especially when Timm Klose, far their superior, is sitting on the bench) but they put in a faultless display last weekend and what sort of message would Neil be giving to his players if he drops them after a good performance? Clean sheets have proven extremely hard to come by this season (we have kept just 3 in 19 games so far) and thus, having finally found a back four which is capable of keeping one, then we must stick with it. Until they have an absolute mare and we lose 3-0 at Barnsley, at least…

Barnsley have won just 3 home games this season - all 3 of which came in consecutive matches in their opening 3 home games of the season. With no win at Oakwell since August, resulting in a winless streak of 7 games (including heavy 5-2 and 4-2 defeats to Nottingham Forest and Fulham, respectively), the game is perfectly set for Norwich to try and exploit Barnsley’s vulnerability. It is essential that City get off to a quick start and take advantage of the inevitable nerves amongst the home supporters - a fast start and an early goal will likely lead to a frustrated Oakwell crowd and set us up perfectly to dictate the rest of the game at our own pace, just like we did against Brentford last weekend.

This being said, Barnsley are by no means pushovers and despite a downturn in form of late their 3-0 victory at 5th-placed Birmingham last weekend demonstrated their ability to compete with the best in the division. Considering Norwich got turned over by the reverse scoreline at St Andrews back in August, it is clearly a result that is not to be sniffed at. In Sam Winnall the Tykes have a striker that has been more prolific than any of ours, whilst the likes of Conor Hourihane (who City have incidentally been linked with in recent weeks), Adam Hammill and Ryan Kent are all impressive talents that will undoubtedly cause us some problems.

With Cameron Jerome still carrying a slight injury, it will be over to Nelson Oliveira to lead the line and City will be relying on him to deliver a similar performance to last weekend if we are to earn a positive result. Jerome, with his relentless work-rate, pace and ability to stretch defences, is crucial to our style of play away from home and it will be up to the Portuguese - who impressed and scored his first league goal for the club against Brentford - to try and do the same in the lone-striker role. With the likes of Jacob Murphy, Steven Naismith, Alex Pritchard and Jonny Howson behind him, there is no doubting that Oliveira will get chances - whether he is the prolific goalscorer that will consistently take such chances remains to be seen. Nottingham Forest fans, whilst they rated Oliveira, suggested that he was more of a link-up, second striker than an out-and-out goalscorer and his goal-scoring record throughout his career seems to support this. Nonetheless, he took his goal last weekend with tremendous composure and he has certainly shown enough within his brief cameos to suggest that he is more than capable of scoring plenty of goals.

It is a slightly different situation to last weekend - in the sense that we aren’t going into it having suffered five straight defeats - but you can’t help but feel that Saturday it is just as, if not more, important. Win, and fans will start to believe that both the players and Neil have turned a corner. Lose, and we are back to square one and fans will once again be calling for the Scot’s removal. That’s how clear-cut it is. No pressure.