Darren Moore hails Port Vale’s ‘perfect away day performance’ after Barnsley win

Port Vale manager Darren Moore described his side’s 2-0 League One win at Barnsley as the “perfect away day performance” – and admitted there was still more to come from his players.

Despite having less of the ball, Vale were the better of the two sides and took a deserved lead after 65 minutes as Jordan Lawrence-Gabriel turned in a Dajaune Brown cross to send the away end wild.

They secured the three points in the 89th minute thanks to a wonderful strike from Ryan Croasdale to earn a third-successive league win after a tough start to the season.

Moore said: “It’s probably the almost perfect away day performance.

“To come here and perform the way we did, we were able to execute a gameplay to perfection.

“I’m really pleased with the players and to put in a performance like that and get the two goals in the manner that we did was really, really pleasing.”

It was The Valiants’ fourth clean sheet of the league campaign and it was something the Moore wanted his side to build upon.

He added: “With a clean sheet, you’ve always got a platform to build from.

“The group understand the performance of them and they’ve gone to work today.

“It’s not just the ‘keeper or the back three, back four or back five – it’s everybody.”

The result capped off a disappointing week for Barnsley, having lost late on to Blackpool last weekend, followed by a 6-0 drubbing at the hands of Brighton in the third round of the Carabao Cup.

It was Barnsley’s first loss in the league at Oakwell this season and head coach Conor Hourihane thought the performance was their most disappointing so far.

He said: “Obviously it’s disappointing. We don’t like losing games of football.

“It’s been a disappointing week for us in general. Seven days in football is a long time – you have three games in a week.

“I think it’s probably a bit of a reality check for everyone in terms of what we did at the start of the season.

“I always said that, not to get too high and not to get too low.”

Hourihane’s side did not register a shot on target at all in the 90 minutes – but he admitted he was not too concerned just yet.

He added: “I think the attackers have had lots of plaudits.

“We’ve got some very good attacking players and we can’t rely on them every single game.

“There’s some games where they’ll have off games and they’ll come alive in others.

“It’s an important couple of games now.

“Can we bounce back with a couple of good performances and hopefully that will lead into results as well.”