Southend United manager Phil Brown's weekly Echo column: We need to dig out a result at Barnsley

The last few games have been disappointing but we need to put that behind us on Saturday.

Barnsley have had quite some season and when we played them earlier on in the campaign they were in the middle of a bad spell where they didn’t win for seven or eight league games.

Blues will be battling with Barnsley again this weekend

But they then went on a good run which resulted in their manager Lee Johnson moving on to Bristol City.

However, their impressive results have continued and I think they’ve now only lost once since the turn of the year which is quite some going.

We’ve had reports on them and they’re a very young side with plenty of energy.

I’m not sure they have anyone over the age of 25 in their team right now but it’s a game we’re looking forward to because it’s an opportunity for us to get our season going again.

I’ve watched the Chesterfield game back on the DVD looking to try and find some positives.

And the main one I could find was the respect they showed us in how they decided to line-up.

They came with a game-plan of frustrating us by putting men behind the ball and, up until the goal they scored right at the end, the only efforts they had were from long range.

We had a couple of great opportunities and if David Worrall’s early effort had gone in it would have completely changed the course of the game.

It would have meant Chesterfield would have to have opened up more but the bottom line was we lost the game because we didn’t take the excellent opportunities that came our way.

SHAME TO SEE WORRALL FORCED OFF

IT was such a shame to see David Worrall go off injured at the weekend because I really felt as though he was taking his chance well in that opening 30 minutes.

He was a real nuisance for them before he picked up what was a really nasty injury.

He needed 10 stitches behind his knee which is an awkward place to get an injury like that because he’s in pain every time he has to flex his leg.

It’s one we need to be careful with and there was no way he would have been able to carry on.

When he went off I decided to give Noel Hunt a go down the middle because he’s been chomping at the bit to be given another opportunity.

Going off injured - David Worrall suffered a nasty cut against Chesterfield

With Jack Payne out there as well I thought it would be good to get our most creative players down the centre of the pitch.

Stephen McLaughlin is still working his way back to full fitness and I think we’re seeing that Sam McQueen is probably better down the middle than he is out wide so that also led to me bringing Noel on.

We made a few little alterations at half-time and the second 45 minutes was certainly better than the final 15 of the first half.

But we couldn’t get the goal we needed unfortunately and we’ll need to do better when opportunities came our way against Barnsley.

NO PENALTY CALL IS STILL BOTHERING ME

I’M still struggling to understand quite how we didn’t get a penalty against Chesterfield.

It was the same referee (Darren Drysdale) who also didn’t give us a penalty when David Worrall was brought down in the box against Bury last season.

After that incident he gave me a ring to apologise about not giving it but I’ve had no contact from him this time.

Jack Payne screams for a penalty after David Mooney is brought down

I’ve been trying to think about why this one wasn’t given and all I can think of is that he went into the game with a pre-conceived idea that David Mooney was somebody who went down too easily in the box.

But as a referee you just can’t do that and it was a big call for us and our season.

It should have been a penalty and that could have been the moment which got us back on an upward trend again.

CHERRIES TEST WAS USEFUL

THE under 21 game with Bournemouth made for interesting viewing on Tuesday.

Bournemouth played the same passing style as their first team and it made for quite a good game.

Back in action - Blues' striker Myles Weston

From our point of view it was great to see Myles Weston back in action for the first time in four months.

He lasted 65 minutes which was great and so did Stephen McLaughlin.

One or two others got the full 90 which they needed, including Jamar Loza who got himself a goal, so I certainly have selection headaches again on Saturday.