Barnsley head coach Valerien Ismael was “delighted” to see his transfer strategy in the January window pay dividends in their win over Blackburn Rovers.
The Reds earned a second successive success on Wednesday night, overcoming Blackburn 2-1 at Oakwell to move up to tenth in the Championship table.
After two fantastic efforts in the previous six days, in an FA Cup defeat to Chelsea and then a brilliant league win at Brentford, they were far from their best.
But they had the strength in depth from the bench to find another level and turn things around, with Carlton Morris in particular excelling as a sub.
The forward, signed last month from Norwich City, scored his second goal in as many games with a stylish strike from outside the box which went in off the post.
READ: Alex Mowatt puts timeline on contract talks with Barnsley
Skipper Alex Mowatt finished the job in the final minute with a goal assisted by Morris, who had a clear impact along with another January addition in Daryl Dike, on loan from Orlando City until the end of the season.
Their signings helped bring the Barnsley squad closer to the liking of boss Ismael, especially up front where he can rotate his entire three-man strikeforce as he has in each of the past two matches.
“I’m very delighted about that,” he told The72 of the impact of their transfer window. “First because we have more quality, more depth in the squad, and secondly we kept all the very important players.
“We can change the full front three, it depends what you need. If you need to fight, if you need to keep the ball, you can rotate the players as well.
“We have a lot of possibility and you see if everything goes in the right direction like we worked (for) in the transfer window, now we are more adaptable to the Championship.”
Those options were of particular help on a wet Wednesday night at Oakwell when Barnsley were able to find an extra gear thanks to their bench, having made all five of their permitted substitutions within 20 minutes of the second half.
“We knew that with the schedule and with our squad depth now, we have more possibilities to do something,” Ismael said.
“I think that the first half was a good balance between the chances of Blackburn and our chances. We can score, Blackburn can score.
“We knew at half-time that the bench will win the game tonight. I told the guys we have to stay in the game, change some situations, but we have to make more pressure and that’s exactly what happened with a big impact from all the five players who came in.
“We score in the right moment and maybe after (going ahead) 1-0 we have a lot of (scoring) situations, we need to finish the job. We were too sloppy in the last pass.
“After finally Alex scored an important goal in that moment, the conceded (Adam Armstrong) goal was completely unnecessary with two minutes to play.
“We made a big mistake but it’s not a big deal tonight because we won, we got the three points, we keep moving on the table, we keep the momentum on our side.
“We have 40 points, it’s a great situation, but we need eight points to reach our first purpose (survival) and we need this as quickly as possible.”
