Stoke City 2-2 Barnsley: 10-man Potters secure point against struggling Tykes
- Published
Nathan Collins' red card was Stoke City's first this season
Ten-man Stoke City came from behind twice to deny Barnsley a first league win of the season in an entertaining draw.
Elliot Simoes finished well from 12 yards to put the Tykes ahead after excellent build-up work by Cauley Woodrow.
Stoke levelled just before half-time thanks to Tyrese Campbell, but the visitors responded immediately through Dominik Frieser.
Stoke restored parity again when Tommy Smith punished Jack Walton's goalkeeping error, before having Nathan Collins sent off for an off-the-ball incident involving Frieser soon after.
Stoke had a number of chances in the final stages of the game to win it with 10 men, but Barnsley held on.
The point saw Barnsley move out of the relegation zone, while Stoke jump up to 10th place.
Stoke came into the game unbeaten in their last five games in all competitions, but Barnsley could have had an early opener had Woodrow's powerful effort from an angle at the far post not been blocked on the line by a defender.
Having gone ahead the Tykes were indebted to Walton 10 minutes before the break as he did well to save from Steven Fletcher before the goal-rush late in the half.
But it was Walton's mistake that ended up costing managerless Barnsley all three points as he dropped Jordan Thompson's easy-to-catch floated cross from the left and Smith calmly slotted home.
Adam Davies did well to block Callum Brittain's 77th-minute strike for Barnsley but it was Stoke who could have won late on as James Chester, Jacob Brown and Harry Souttar all went close.
Stoke City manager Michael O'Neill told BBC Radio Stoke:
"I thought the assistant was poor all night and the decision he gave, how he gives it, it was so instant, we could hear him shouting 'red card, red card' straight away, and having watched it back Nathan's just blocked the striker's run as you'd expect a centre-back to do and the Barnsley player's thrown himself to the ground and held his face.
"It's not really the referee's fault as the referee has to take the information that he's given by the assistant, but having watched it back the assistant should never have been making that decision, I'm not sure he's in a great position - he's looking along the line but there's three bodies between him and Nathan as well.
"It's not a situation where someone would elbow someone in the face in all honesty, and Nathan's not that kind of a lad. He's devastated in there and it's a really, really poor decision.
"It took our momentum away, I think we were in a strong position to go on and win the game and the red card changed that."
Barnsley caretaker manager Adam Murray told BBC Radio Sheffield:
"Unbelievable frustration that we've not come away with a win, if you come to a place like Stoke in the Championship and score two goals away form home you expect to be winning the games.
"I'm really disappointed that a mistake's played a big part in the game, but it's something that we have to let go, Jack's been outstanding since we came back from lockdown and probably kept us in the league.
"We're creating a lot of very good opportunities, we've spoken to the boys a lot over the last few weeks about getting into certain areas and getting into the assist zones to make chances better chances, and we did that tonight but we're missing that ruthlessness and that killer touch."