SINCE Michael Duff won 13 out of 14 home league games as Barnsley boss in 2023, they have won 13 out of 40 – with Oakwell going from fortress to bogey ground.
With the away wins which previously kept them just about in the top six race drying up, Barnsley have just a point from their last five games with the gap to the play-offs growing to six points. If things go badly against near neighbours Huddersfield Town on Saturday and familiar faces, with Duff now in the away dugout, the atmosphere at Oakwell could turn toxic with simmering tensions surrounding the transfer window and the ownership bubbling over at a stadium where they will have won four league games across a full year.
All that energy could flip into support of the team if they play well and take the lead but they would have to perform significantly better than in the worrying recent games.
It feels like a huge match in determining the direction of Barnsley’s frustrating season.
They have the 16th best home form in League One this season with four wins from 15 league games. After winning against Wrexham and Crawley at the start of 2025, they have taken just a point, and failed to score, in their last two matches against Stevenage and Burton.
The Reds travelled to Huddersfield twice in four days in October, losing 2-0 in both the league and the EFL Trophy as they were decidedly second best each time in their opinion-splitting bright pink third kit.
That was followed by two weeks on the training pitch during an international break, with days off cancelled, as Darrell Clarke seemed to finally alight on a formation and take players out of the team such as Sam Cosgrove, Matty Craig and Barry Cotter.
Performances generally improved after that but, other than the four-game winning run after Christmas, results have not consistently followed and now performance levels are dropping badly again. They are giving away silly goals, often looking toothless up front and lacking control in midfield. They desperately need to turn it around in these upcoming derbies with Huddersfield then mid-table Rotherham.
Visitors also going through rough patch
The Terriers are sixth, two points clear in the play-off places, while they are six points ahead of tenth-placed Barnsley.
Town were unbeaten in 16 league games – a run which started with a home win over Barnsley and included ten victories in total – and four points off second with a game in hand last month. But they have collected just a point from their last four games.
They lost 1-0 at home to Bolton Wanderers and Birmingham City then 3-2 at lowly Northampton Town having been 3-0 down. They then drew 0-0 at home to Reading on Saturday.
They ended a four-game losing run by beating Barnsley in October and will hope for another turning point against the Reds.
The Terriers have won the last four meetings of the clubs – all at home – but have not won in five matches at Oakwell since 2012, losing three.
Duff’s first Oakwell game since play-offs
The last time Duff was involved in a game at Oakwell, he was spraying champagne over his Wembley-bound Barnsley team following their play-off semi-final win over Bolton in front of a sell-out crowd.
A little less than two years later, he returns having lost at Wembley, moved to Swansea then been sacked before taking over at Huddersfield last summer after he had talks about a return to Oakwell as boss.
There were some unsavoury chants towards him from the away end when these teams met in October, which he said he probably deserved.
He and ex-Red Herbie Kane are likely to cop for some abuse again, especially if the Reds are competing well.
Duff has faced Clarke eight times in the league as a manager, winning seven and drawing once – at Oakwell when Barnsley boss and Clarke was Port Vale manager in 2022.
Both managers are under pressure to turn around poor sequences of results.
There will be plenty of connections between the dugouts as Martin Devaney, now Clarke’s assistant, played with Duff at Cheltenham and coached with him at Barnsley while Terriers assistant Martin Paterson was also at Oakwell under Duff.
