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Wed 26 Aug - Posted in Breaking News Time to read: 3mins Sam Griffiths lauded Derby County Women’s confidence in an ‘excellent’ FA WNL Cup performance against Barnsley Women’s FC on Wednesday night. Derby netted four in the second half as returning summer recruit Eleanor Ashton reopened her Ewes account with a second-half brace, while Georgia Stevens’ first of the season was sandwiched in between. The visitors got one back from a corner before Maddie Norton got her first goal in black and white. Griffiths spoke after her side earned their first win of the new season. It was nice to be able to rotate the squad and give playing time to some that haven't had many yet. And I thought the whole squad was excellent. We probably would have liked to have scored a few more, but we created some really good opportunities. It took us a while to get into the game; we seemed to start a little bit nervous. That might have been because there were quite a lot of players who had not played together. In the first half we played our game in terms of letting them have the ball where we're comfortable with them having it. And then in the second half we came out and got a little bit higher up the pitch, and we were better all round. We were finding better spaces, better pockets and got a great result. We just had to be patient; we knew chances would keep coming and opportunities to score would come. Once that first goal came, it settled the group and built confidence. And I think there are probably a few players that are a little bit disappointed that they've not got on the score sheet tonight with some of the chances that we had. I thought she was excellent. Again, I spoke to Sparkesy at training and said that she had absolutely set the standards on Sunday; I thought she was outstanding against Rugby. So, she's got to build on that. And, yeah, even as we were playing Tier 4 opposition, I thought she was excellent tonight. And fair play to Barnsley, they really came at us in the first ten minutes, and I'm not sure we've been pressed like that for some time. We knew the performance was there Sunday. Obviously, the result wasn't. So, tonight was definitely about the result and probably not so much about the performance, for us. I think the players needed that to increase that belief that we can score and we are a threat. This game will give the girls, especially someone like Eleanor Ashton, bags of confidence going into the weekend. I thought she was outstanding tonight. It will be another tough match. Middlesbrough were tough opponents last season and got a decent result against West Brom at the weekend. They are a really hard-working team who can really mix it up; they can play football, or they can be direct, which is always tough to play against. But the thing for us this season is we really want to concentrate on our strengths and what we can bring to the game – and that's what we'll be doing this week.