Jones left alarmed by Town's efforts

The visitors were trailing 2-0 early on before James Collins’ penalty on the stroke of half time got them back into it.

Early in the second half, the experienced Alan McCormack was brought on for attacking midfielder Jorge Grant to help steady the ship, as when quizzed about his introduction, Jones said: “We just felt we needed a bit of nous in there, a bit of know-how, because we were giving the ball away far too cheaply.

“The turnovers were alarming for me, the way that people skipped past people was alarming, because that doesn’t happen to us normally.

“It was a big scene, we’ve come to a good club, Sky TV, maybe a couple might have froze, I don’t know.

“But we’ll have a look. We’ve been in real good form and come to as probably as good a side there is, as no side has dominated against us for about two and a half years, but they did and they showed they’re a good side.

“They showed that they’re aggressive, showed that they had good players, but we need to be better.

“We have processes that we work on, when people are in wide areas, show them the line, they don’t come inside, they did today.

“(Brad) Potts came inside for a little counter attack, past JJ (James Justin) and (Dan) Potts, we’ve got to be better than that.

“We work religiously on those kind of things and we just weren’t really at it and that was the most disappointing thing.

“But Barnsley must have done something to do that, because we don’t just turn up and not play well normally, and today, we were just a little short.”

Despite not being at their best against an excellent Tykes side, Town could still consider themselves a little unlucky not to come away with a point, Collins having a goal ruled out for a contentious offside decision and then Danny Hylton pulled to the ground in the area late on, with no penalty awarded.

Jones added: “We’re going to have these games.

“These are a good side and as I said, they’ve just come down from the Championship with a real strong, strong squad.

“We need to be right at it to compete and we almost did, and we were nowhere near.

“So at least there’s a positive there, if we actually do turn up and play anywhere near we can, we might be able to compete a little bit more.”