Gerhard Struber was ‘very happy and proud’ after Barnsley secured a third straight win with a 1-0 success at Hull City on Wednesday. 

The Reds moved off the bottom of the division and are now three points adrift of safety in the Championship.  Head coach Struber said: “It is a good moment right now. I am very happy and proud of my boys. In the last few weeks, we do the right things and we have the right attitude, energy and game plan. The situation for Hull was not so easy and we had the right plan for them, with very good positioning, discipline and conviction. That was the key that we win.  “Every single player was on fire. It was not so easy to defend because there were a lot of long balls but my boys got another clean sheet which is good for the soul.”

Struber thought the Reds could have had a penalty at 0-0 for a foul on Cauley Woodrow. He said: “I think so. I must see in the TV but, for me at the time, I thought there was a contact in the penalty area and normally this is a penalty.”

Woodrow notched his 15th of the season just before the break. Struber said: “It is good for us. Many players can score, Cauley can score and also he can win second balls. The whole team works very hard and in the end it is not important who scores.”

Struber took left-back Clarke Oduor off at half-time. He said: “I was not so happy with him today. For him it is not so easy to play two games in a short time and in the last game he ran many many metres and it was not so easy for to reproduce the performance today.”  

Struber praised captain Alex Mowatt, saying: “Alex is a leader. He helps the whole team with his performance. He is a very important player for us and he was in Barnsley style tonight.”

Mowatt said: “We had to grind it out in the second half but you have to win ugly sometimes. We had a lot of the ball in the first half and could have killed the game with the chances we had. We knew they would have more of the ball in the second half because you can’t have that little possession as a home team. 

“In the first half I had loads of time on the ball then in the second half I had none. We have been in good form and they haven’t so we had to play on the front foot on a good pitch in front of some good away fans. We could have won by more goals but all that matters is that we won.”