Jan Poortvliet hailed new signing Jan-Paul Saeijs after he led his new team to a clean sheet and a vital win at Barnsley.

The Dutchman may have been forgiven for wondering what all the fuss was about as he won header after header in the heart of the Saints defence.

But his presence did make a big difference to Saints and suddenly an inexperienced backline was transformed as Saeijs played alongside Chris Perry.

Poortvliet said: “You saw with set-pieces and crosses he wins everything in the air.

“He’s also a bit of a leader in the defence with his personality.

“I think it’s the right moment for him to be here.”

Poortvliet rang the changes for the game at Barnsley and with Rudi Skacel injured there was another debutant in left back Lee Molyneux.

“At the end I think he was tired but he did a reasonable job for a first game,” said Poortvliet.

“I think it’s normal to be tired at the end.”

Even though the game saw the return of striker Marek Saganowski, it is David McGoldrick who will grab the headlines for his header which brought Saints the massive result.

“I think David was very useful in the hole,” reflected Poortvliet.

“He did a lot of work for the boys because it was not easy to play because there weren’t a lot of balls there.

“I’m very happy for him because you know when David scores more goals will follow.”

Unusually for Saints they didn’t actually play very well but did get a result.

Poortvliet is just pleased his team did what he asked for in the build-up to the game and dug in and fought to get a result however it came.

“What we need at the moment is wins,” said the head coach.

“I think the game was not so good but I respect the way we fought, we fought for each other and we won.

“We scored at the right moment and then we fought to keep the win and bring it home.

“I’m very happy with that because we’ve had a lot of games where we’ve played very well, got a lot of compliments but not points.

“This time maybe we don’t have the compliments for the way we played football but we have the points and that’s the most important thing.

“For me the football will come when you win games because that’s confidence - people believe in it and you go up the table.”

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