“More satisfying than a 5-0” Sheffield Wednesday boss delivers rousing message after ‘resilient’ Port Vale win

The Potteries pitch was something of a mess and cut up as the afternoon went on, causing Wednesday problems in getting the ball down and playing the way they have in some of their more fluent performances this season.

But the Owls found a different gear and were able to scrap out an impressive win thanks to Will Vaulks’ stunning long-range effort on the hour mark. The win included Wednesday’s sixth clean sheet in 11 matches.

“We’re really pleased again,” Moore said on the effort his players showed.

“We spoke about having to build on a solid performance against Wycombe and we built on it today by being dogged, by being resilient, by doing stuff in parts of the game we associate as being the ugly parts of the game. The boys did all of that today.

“We spoke at half-time when we came in about starting the game solid and keeping that solidity. We had to keep to that and maintain it and we needed everyone to do their jobs.

“We believed a chance would fall for us in the second half, we needed to take it and it obviously came to Will Vaulks.

Wednesday have won games more fluently this season and last, but a member of the Owls coaching staff stood up to suggest it was efforts such at theirs at Vale Park that makes a season above rampant thrashing of sides to have rolled over in the face of their stacked attack.

Moore said: “My assistant manager Jamie Smith said afterwards that he got more satisfaction from a game like that as opposed to beating Forest Green at home by five.

“We get more from it, it shows a different approach to our game and it also shows the approach we have to have in this league.

“It’s all so different. We’ll go down to Plymouth on Tuesday and it’ll be completely different.

“Sometimes you have to dig in, be dogged, you have to fight and I think the boys did that today.”