Conor Hourihane was “relieved” to earn a first victory since taking interim charge of Barnsley as his side recorded a convincing 4-1 win against play-off hopefuls Bolton.
Fabio Jalo and Jonathan Russell scored two goals apiece, with Aaron Collins’ second-half goal a consolation for Bolton, who dropped to eighth.
Hourihane said: “Full credit to the players, I thought they were outstanding and I could feel it coming. I’ve seen it in training over the last couple of days. I thought their energy was really good.
“I’m really proud of them for sticking to their work, as well as everyone else in the building. We haven’t come away from what we want to do.
“To do it at home against a good team was special. It all just came together, which was nice.
“We forced them into three changes after half an hour and it shows how good we were. I’ve just said to the lads that that is how good we can be.
“I want to bring that excitement back to playing at home. Dribbling with fast wingers is what I was used to when I was a player. When you have fast and direct players, the fans love that.”
Bolton head coach Steven Schumacher was disappointed after losing further ground on the play-offs.
He said: “We weren’t good enough. I’ve always been honest since I’ve been here. The games we’ve lost previously we haven’t deserved to and haven’t taken our chances, but here we were miles off it.
“I was forced into making three changes after 35 minutes – which is very rare – because of how bad the performance was.
“If you don’t take your chances then you don’t win, that’s a fact, but that’s not the point today, Barnsley were better than us. They were better in every department, certainly for the first 35 minutes.
“We have lost four out of six. Three of them we didn’t deserve to lose, two of them we managed to win. It’s the first time since I’ve been here where I’ve had to question a poor performance.
“It’s three points to make up plus goal difference, so it’s going to have to be a big turnaround now, whatever we are playing for.
“We have to play better than that and have to show in the next four games what we are about. I feel as though, if possible, we might need to shake things up a bit.
“They are soft, not great goals at all. It’s poor decision-making and a lack of urgency. When you’ve bad days they are really bad, and today was one of them.”
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