Simon Davey never doubted that his side would avoid the drop as they are 'too good a side' to be relegated.
Barnsley boss beams at survival; Pardew rues lack of incentive
Barnsley manager Simon Davey never doubted that his side would avoid the drop as they are 'too good a side' to be relegated.
The Tykes ensured they will be playing Championship football next season as they claimed a 3-0 success over Charlton at Oakwell on Saturday.
Jamal Campbell-Ryce opened the scoring, with Lewin Nyatanga and Jon Macken making the points safe.
And Davey has hailed his players' efforts throughout the 2007/08 campaign.
He said: "I don't think we ever believed we would go down. Like last year we have taken it to the penultimate game but when you look over the season we are too good a side to have to be doing that. We need to make sure we don't repeat it again.
Fantastic
"The players have worked very, very hard. To get to an FA Cup semi-final was fantastic, but after that to go into the bottom three we then faced six cup finals. We've won three out of five now. The players have come up trumps.
"If by some freak accident we had gone down I would have been very disappointed. Now we need to move on again."
Charlton boss Alan Pardew, whose side lie 12th in the table, felt a lack of incentive affected his side's display.
"I thought it was always going to be difficult. There was no real focus for us," he said.
Pardew
"I thought the difference between the two sides was that little edge Barnsley had on the game, especially the things that we failed to deal with on the edge of the box. We lost headers and aerial stuff and that was the difference."
Pardew handed Jonjo Shelvey his debut, making the midfielder the club's youngest player at just 16-years-old.
Pardew added: "Jonjo's performance was certainly a major highlight. We felt he would play well and he didn't disappoint.
"He could have scored. We now need to make sure we protect him. No way is he going to play all next season, but I do feel even at his tender age he'll have a big part to play for us. Today he made us look more attractive."
