Move over Roberto Carlos, here comes the Thunderbolt Kid

A PAIR from Sao Paulo, a kid with a kick like Roberto Carlos ... next thing you know and they'll be re-claiming it's 'just like watching Brazil'.

Except manager Simon Davey, the man behind the South American state of Barnsley, knows he has far from the finished article on his hands.

He does have Brazilian pair Dennis Souza and Anderson de Silva and, in Dominik Werling, a lad who can thump a dead ball harder than Davey says he has ever seen before.

And with an hour gone, they all had a 3-0 lead.

It didn't last.

Plymouth, who were never dead or buried, came back.

At the end, Davey watched his team hang on grimly. With 70 minutes gone and Plymouth breathing hard down their necks, the heat was on and Copacabana beach it wasn't.

You didn't want to be there, at least Davey didn't.

"For 60 minutes we probably dominated the game, we went 3-0 up and they got the goal," he said.

"They had three forwards and that put us under a bit of pressure, as they kept putting balls in our box. It got to 3-2 and you start getting a bit of a squeaky bum. You're looking at the clock a little bit more often and it doesn't go very fast."

Still a win is a win, and against Plymouth, whose previous showed undefeated, there was plenty to like and some to admire.

You couldn't have scripted the start. For the first 10 minutes Plymouth camped in Barnsley's half. Handy with his fists, keeper Heinz Muller was punching away left and right centres.

A long ball reached Kayode Odejayi, he took it right side into the box and, with perfect timing and precision, squared to Istvan Ferenczi who won't score a simpler goal this season.

It was exactly the tonic Barnsley needed; they fizzed forward, looking a slick 3-5-2 operation. New boy Steve Foster settled in well at centre-back and de Silva grew into the game.

Still, they needed more on the scoresheet and, amazingly, Werling obliged with a 30-yard free-kick.

Barnsley's Andy Johnson has been around more than a bit, and in the Premiership. He wasn't the only one uber impressed by the German.

"I said to Dom 'just hit it' because he's got an absolute thunderbolt. In training he does everything at that speed!

"He really is like a little explosion," Johnson reckoned. "I'm chuffed, absolutely chuffed, for the lad. That will give him a real boost in confidence.

"We just fancied it, they only put two in the wall and we knew that's what he could do. It was a little bit like a Roberto Carlos free-kick, it moved all over the place. I was behind it, the keeper really had no chance. Even if he caught it, it would probably have broken a few ribs."

Davey agreed: "Dom can do that, we've seen him do it at Morecambe in pre-season. He can strike a ball harder than anybody I've ever seen.

"At times we're getting Brian Howard, Rohan Ricketts and Andy Johnson around the ball, all wanting to take it, but to be fair to him he's struck it, the ball's moved and it's a great finish."

After quarter of an hour into the second half, 3-0. de Silva's cross was almost as classy as Werling's thump and from the opposite end of the skills' range. Comfortable on the ball, approaching the danger zone, his release onto Brian Howard's head was ideal. Howard went in to score his fourth of the season, his first which wasn't a penalty.

Plymouth had to do something drastic. Three subs on an once was the biggest influence manager Ian Holloway could have.

The second after that it was 3-1. Peter Halmosi delivered a free-kick deep from the left and Barry Hayles nipped in smartly to score from close in.

Barnsley were rocked again and inside six minutes had leaked a second goal. A sub created it, another sub scored it. Sylvan Ebanks-Blake drew a rare mistake from Souza and left him stranded inside the box.

A low cross-shot from left to right evaded Muller's grasp and Nick Chadwick had a simple tap-in.

Plymouth threw everything they had at Barnsley from then on. It wasn't pretty but a third breakthrough was resisted and Kim Christensen or Ferenczi could well have added late goals.

Johnson knows he is in a team still learning their game. "They (Plymouth) made a couple of changes and they went very direct and that made things difficult for us, which is what we expected, but we need to know how to kill games off.

"At 3-0, we really should have killed the game off better than we did." he conceded. "It showed we've got potential when we went 3-0 up, we played some great stuff. All three goals were good and we dominated until the last 15 minutes."

Manager's View

Plymouth put three strikers up and just put it in our box and the first goal they got made the lads nervous.

But for 60 minutes we played very well. We've got a lot of new players and it does take time for them to settle in and know exactly what each other's attributes are.

But I'm pleased. They stood strong and they got the points that they deserved.

We've got a group of players together now that we feel are a lot more competitive in this division and they've shown that today.

It's starting to come together nicely.