Dave Challinor hailed match-winner Louie Barry after his superb strike earned Stockport a 1-0 victory at home to top-six rivals Wrexham.
The two sides have been locked together through the climb from non-League football to League One. But it took a brilliant curling effort midway through the first half to settle matters at Edgeley Park.
And manager Challinor was quick to praise his leading scorer, who made it 11 goals in the league this season.
“That’s a Louie Barry goal, he does that with very pleasing regularity from my perspective,” he said.
“I go back to my first day at the football club when he came in and flipped one to his right foot and smashed it in that far side. And that’s his goal, his finish. He can go both ways and it causes defenders real problems. You might know he’s going to do it but stopping him is another matter.
“Yeah, if you’re ever going to pick a Louie Barry goal, it would look like that.
“We were a little bit deep early on and a bit pointless in our possession rather than purposeful for 10 or 15 minutes. Once Louie scored the goal, that 20 or 40 minutes was as good as we’ve been and we made a very good team struggle to deal with us. We played some really good stuff in the second half.
“That’s what I want us to look like all the time, I thought we did really well to limit a good side – that asks you to defend for the whole 90 minutes – to very few opportunities, which were few and far between, so that’s a massive pat on the back for our defence.”
Wrexham boss Phil Parkinson felt his side were too passive as their five-game unbeaten run ended in an electric atmosphere.
“In the first half I thought we were too far off them in the midfield and we let their central midfield players dictate the game, which is disappointing,” Parkinson said.
“We’d spoken about that and we just couldn’t get up to them quick enough. And we lacked composure in that first half, in a real Derby atmosphere.
“We’d spoken about competing and being physical and playing our way to get a foot in the game but we need to have more composure in terms of our clearances, and just in our quality and our decision-making as a whole.
“There just wasn’t enough quality and composure from us in that first half. In the second half we were a lot better.
“There was one unbelievable moment that separated the two teams, that was a top-class finish. I don’t think there was too much to separate the teams apart from that. I thought in the second half we had a period where we were going to get back in it.
“It’s been a good run and it’s frustrating that it’s ended because this game means a lot to both teams, the way we have competed over the years. Unfortunately it wasn’t to be today, so we move on.”
