Port Vale’s Carabao Cup progress is reward for a lot of things – Andy Crosby

Port Vale boss Andy Crosby feels his side’s place in the fourth round of the Carabao Cup is “reward for a lot of things”.

Vale reached the last 16 for the first time since 2006-07 with a 2-1 victory over Sky Bet League Two strugglers Sutton, with Funso Ojo coming off the bench to fire home a superb winner.

Swansea loanee Josh Thomas had earlier opened the scoring before his effort was cancelled out by Sutton substitute Hisham Kasimu.

Crosby said: “When you start in the first round of the Carabao Cup you want to go as far as you can.

“Every time you get through to the next round, you want to get through to the next one.

“That’s what we’ve done. We’re in the fourth round for the first time in a long time for the football club.

“It’s reward for a lot of things. It’s reward for Carol and Kevin (Shanahan) for investing the amount of money they do into the football club.

“It’s brilliant for our supporters, who haven’t seen the club in the fourth round for a long time. They keep turning up and I thank them a lot for the support.

“I think we have to preach to them what we’re trying to do. It might be different from what they’ve seen before. There may be some frustration at times with what we’re trying to do, but we have to play a way that suits our team.

“That’s going to take time, but when we get to utopia and we’re playing incredible football with and without the ball. We’re making progress.”

Sutton boss Matt Gray was left with mixed emotions after his spirited side were sucker-punched by the late winner.

He said: “There were so many things I was happy with, apart from the result sadly.

“It’s a result I don’t think we deserved.

“They couldn’t break us down when we were in our shape, so to concede a goal from a counter-attack from a corner is a hard one to take.

“It’s something we’ll be looking at, it’s really frustrating.

“It was a great response from their goal. We had some great chances. We had to bide our time and eventually got the goal.

“It felt a little bit similar to the first goal. We were pushing forward and got done on the break which was very disappointing.

“We’ve not had some good league results, we’re working tirelessly to get things right and we saw some positives on the pitch.

“We need to keep working on that, building on that and I’m sure the results will turn soon.

“You can see that from the fans’ reaction at the end. They’re completely with us.”