Clarke Oduor keeps Barnsley up and condemns Brentford to play-offs

Where to start? Perhaps with how it finished. Barnsley will remain a Championship club next season, or at least the scale of their celebrations suggested they fully expect to.

Fittingly for this most perplexing of second-tier campaigns, it went to the wire and may yet go beyond. Clarke Oduor, their substitute, may never score an easier goal than the injury-time tap-in that opened his professional account but he will do well to surpass its importance.

That is provided Wigan Athletic do not win their appeal against a 12-point deduction, without which Gerhard Struber’s team would have to endure a fate that on this evidence seems well beneath them.

At least somebody went home happy. Struber refused to countenance the idea that the rug might still be swept from under Barnsley and afterwards was primarily concerned with extricating himself from conversation to enjoy a “big party”.

Brentford had been prepared for something similar but instead, for the second time in four days, they blew their chance and Thomas Frank faces a considerable task to raise them for the play-offs.

It turned out a win would have taken them straight to the Premier League and what a story that could yet be, given the approach to club building that has led them from mundanity to the vanguard of football innovation. But here, despite going excruciatingly close during a basketball-style final 20 minutes, they could have few complaints.

“Football is brutal,” Frank said. “When you have that opportunity then it hurts of course, that’s the emotional part of it. Barnsley did a good job to put pressure on us, especially in the first half.”

The last sentence was the key. Struber is a Red Bull Salzburg alumnus and you can certainly tell: Barnsley pressed ferociously, covering a prodigious amount of ground and rarely allowing Brentford to break into their usual fluidity.

Their goalkeeper, Jack Walton, saved well from Saïd Benrahma and Bryan Mbeumo but most of the play occurred in the home team’s half. When Callum Styles rapped low past David Raya in the 41st minute after a deep cross from the right had not been cleared, scoring the first goal of his own career in the process, it felt a fair reflection.

Brentford livened up only when Frank introduced Sergi Canos and Tariqe Fosu after the second-half drinks break. The prize was still there for them, thanks to West Brom’s skittishness, and they promptly equalised when Josh Dasilva whipped an excellent left-footed finish around Walton.

Dasilva, easily Brentford’s best player on the night, then missed a much clearer chance at the far post and at that point an historic winner seemed likely.

Brentford’s Saïd Benrahma shows his disappointment at the final whistle. Photograph: Nigel Keene/ProSports/Rex/Shutterstock

The tension during those final exchanges was hard to bear. Results were going Barnsley’s way but they still needed a victory of their own; by the time Oduor caught Brentford cold all sense of decorum had long since been abandoned among the clubs’ delegates in Griffin Park’s stands, which will now gaze out over one last fixture, against Swansea.

“Even if you think you deserved to do it, you are not always getting that achievement,” Frank continued. “That is the beauty of sport, or the bruising side of sport. We still have a very good chance.”

But it had been painful to watch Barnsley take theirs. Struber’s party was in full swing an hour after the end, judging by the volume of the music pulsating from the away dressing room. Brentford must hope theirs has simply been postponed.