Barnsley 2 Leicester City 0: Barnsley lift themselves out of drop zone in great style

Michael Keane’s own goal and one from Sheffield Wednesday loanee Chris O’Grady ensured the Tykes climbed back out of the bottom three at the first attempt.

Veteran striker Jason Scotland also saw his second-half penalty saved by Kasper Schmeichel and Flitcroft insisted the margin of victory could have been a lot greater.

“It could have been four, five, six. The two goals, I’d love to see them again. The passing, the intricacy, wow. I wish we were watching them on telly (last night),” he said. “We could have been talking about a huge scoreline because that’s how much we dominated Leicester. We were brilliant.

“The top teams want to play you, they’ve got great players. Leicester are a team of superb individuals, but we didn’t let them play.

“I’ve talked a lot about the fight and the spirit in recent weeks but (last night) I’m talking about the football. It was a relentless approach. It’s an honour to be a manager on a day like this. Our football was just exhilarating.

“If I’m being honest I didn’t expect us to get up to those kind of levels after being bombarded on Saturday.”

Flitcroft reserved special praise for O’Grady, who made it three goals in nine appearances since joining the club back in February.

“Chris O’Grady gave an absolute masterclass up front. If we’d have seen that in a more fashionable team we’d have been raving about it for a couple of weeks. It was just a pure masterclass,” he said.

Disappointed Foxes manager Nigel Pearson agreed with his counterpart after hearing Flitcroft’s view on the final score.

“I think he would be quite correct in that. We were way off the mark, the entirety of the first half was very poor.

“We remain a side that has too many players out of form at the moment. Collectively you can still negotiate these types of games, but we’re not doing that.

“I don’t feel that we are making enough good decisions during the game. It was not a very good performance at all.

“We’re at that stage of the season where we’ve worked hard to get into a position and over the last two months, not always through playing badly, but we’ve had too many days where we’ve simply not done enough.

“It’s the same group of players that have put in some outstanding performances this season and yet (yesterday) for long periods the performance was unacceptable.”

He added: “There’s no point bemoaning things that don’t happen. It’s my team and I’ll take responsibility for this performance.

Barnsley: Steele, Wiseman, Hassell, Cranie (Foster 68), Kennedy, Mellis (O’Brien 81), Etuhu, Dawson, Perkins, O’Grady, Scotland (Dagnall 63). Unused substitutes: Alnwick, Harewood, Cywka, Rose.

Leicester City: Schmeichel, De Laet (Moore 32), Keane, Whitbread, Konchesky, Knockaert (Marshall 56), James, King, Dyer, Wood (Schlupp 60), Nugent. Unused substitutes: Logan, Vardy, Wellens, Kane.

Referee: Andy D’Urso (Essex).