Barnsley manager Simon Davey claimed his team never doubted they would survive in the Coca-Cola Championship after a 3-0 win over Charlton guaranteed their status in the second tier for another season.

Former Charlton player Jamal Campbell-Ryce gave the Tykes a dream start, scoring after only 11 minutes. Centre-back Lewin Nyatanga made it 2-0 before half-time and Jon Macken made the point absolutely safe with a goal five minutes before the end after Bobby Hassell had hit the Charlton crossbar with a free-kick.

Davey 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.

"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."

Barnsley go to Cardiff, who beat them in that FA Cup semi, now safe from relegation, but Davey insisted: "We've still got a job to do to get 58 points. Just because we're safe doesn't mean we rest on our laurels. We go to Cardiff aiming to make sure another three points.

"When I took over I said we would try to improve year on year. Even before today's game we had a higher points tally, more clean sheets, and our goals against were better than last year. We have better players now, everything looks healthy.

"If by some freak accident we had gone down I would have been very disappointed. Now we need to move on again."

Charlton manager Alan Pardew gave a debut to Jonjo Shelvey, making him the club's youngest player at just 16.

Pardew said: "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."

Pardew blamed the fact that Charlton had no incentive in the game for the defeat.

"I thought it was always going to be difficult. There was no real focus for us," he said.

"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.

"In this division we have lost too many games in that area and I think that is something I will address next year."