LEEDS manager Dennis Wise did not mix his words after seeing his struggling side throw away the lead to lose to Barnsley at Oakwell yesterday. He knows he has a fight on his hands to keep the team in the Championship and admitted as much.

“There’s a lot of things wrong with this team and Gus (Poyet) and I know we’ve got to give them confidence,” was his frank assessment of the mountainous task facing him. “Now is the time to bring in new faces. We don’t have competition in enough places. Too many players are complacent, living in a comfort zone.”

His adversary, Andy Ritchie, formerly a Leeds man himself, wore an ear-to-ear smile and said: “In the first half there had been nothing in it, but then we had our happy hour where it was two goals for the price of one.”

Whether or not this was a reference to the generosity of the visitors’ defence or the ebullient performance of his close-season signing, Michael McIndoe, was not clear. Few could argue with his assertion that “we were by far the better side in the second half and lady luck shone down upon us”.

The visitors ran the show for the first half hour but had nothing tangible to show for it. In a rare Barnsley attack, goalkeeper Graham Stack punched where he should have caught, and Martin Devaney snapped up the loose ball and rifled it home.

Then, just when it seemed that Antony Kay and Paul Reid had marshalled the home defence against the threat created largely by Robbie Blake and Jonathon Douglas, up popped Shaun Derry to head home Blake’s corner.

Blake himself then touched home Eddie Lewis’s centre on the cusp of half-time. But the real work here was David Healy’s superb pass inside Neil Austin that created the space.

It was when McIndoe offered Barnsley a vision that matched Blake’s inspirational performance for Leeds that the game really came to life.

His stylish equaliser, after a one-man charge through the right-hand side of the Leeds defence before unleashing an unstoppable shot, was what set the revival in motion.

Then the root of Wise’s problems was exposed in the 76th minute. Brian Howard was allowed to run half the length of the Leeds penalty area, virtually unchallenged, before discharging a cannon of a shot that Stack must have heard whistle past him.

Substitute Adam Johnson was the man in the last chance saloon for Leeds, but his shot was over the bar.

It all left a desperate Leeds side without a point for their efforts, and manager Wise was left fuming.

Star Man: Michael McIndoe (Barnsley)

Barnsley: Colgan 8, Heckingbottom 6, Reid 7, Togwell 6, McIndoe 9, Howard 7 (Rowe 80min, 6), Austin 6, Kay 7, Richards 6 (Nardiello 56min, 7), Devaney 7, Wright 6 (Hayes 90min, 6)

Leeds: Stack 5, Kelly 5, Douglas 8 (Einarsson 87min, 6), Butler 6, Westlake 6 (Johnson 80min, 6), Healy 7, Horsfield 4 (Cresswell 61min, 6), Lewis 7, Derry 7, Kilgallon 7, Blake 8

Scorers: Barnsley: Devaney 30, McIndoe 62, Howard 76

Leeds: Derry 44, Blake 45

Referee: P Crossley

Attendance: 16,943