Michael Duff

The pair go head-to-head at Wembley on Monday when the two South Yorkshire rivals clash in the third tier’s winner-takes-all season finale.

Barnsley edged past Bolton 1-0 on aggregate in their semi-final, while Wednesday overcame the biggest first-leg deficit in play-off history before beating Peterborough on penalties.

Moore silenced the Owls fans who had called for him to be sacked after his side’s 4-0 first-leg defeat appeared to have left them dead and buried and Duff paid tribute to his rival manager.

Duff said: “Darren deserves loads of credit because one thing he’s done the whole season, when weirdly there’s been a bit of noise about him when they got 96 points this season, is keep his counsel because he’s a good fella.

“First and foremost, he’s a good fella. He’s obviously a football man, he’s been around it a long, long time.

“I don’t know what he’s like as a manager in terms of day-to-day stuff, but you take people as you find them and we’ve beaten them twice and he’s been humble, he’s taken it.

“He says ‘fair play to you’ and shakes your hand. No excuses afterwards that some managers come out with. He said ‘better team won’ and I think that goes a long way just as a human being.”

Barnsley completed the league double over the Owls this season for the first time since 2009, winning 2-0 at Hillsborough in September and 4-2 at Oakwell in March.

But they finished 10 points adrift of their local rivals in the table, with the Owls’ 96-point tally more than any other side not to finish in the top two of any league in English football’s history.

That did not stop the vitriol that came Moore’s way after his side’s 4-0 semi-final first-leg defeat at Peterborough.

Some fans called for his head before the return leg, while Wednesday were forced to issue a statement condemning a racist message directed at Moore on social media.

“It shows you the emotional state people can get into,” Duff said. “Darren’s a good manager, full stop.

“Was he a terrible manager when they got beaten 4-0? No. And he’s become an even better manager now because of the belief he gave them.

“Things he said in interviews and in the dressing room, things he showed the players. Good management. He managed to get the best out of it.”

Barnsley finished fourth in the table, one place below Wednesday, and their 86-point haul would have been enough for automatic promotion in three of the last 10 seasons.

Wednesday will start as the bookmakers’ favourites for Monday’s Wembley showdown against their local rivals after overturning a 4-0 first-leg deficit in their thrilling semi-final win against Peterborough.

Barnsley finished fourth in the table, 10 points behind Wednesday, but backed up their 2-0 league win at Hillsborough in September with a 4-2 victory over the Owls at Oakwell in March.

Duff, who took over last summer following the club’s relegation from the Championship, said: “I bet if you look at the odds we’ll be the underdogs. It’s not me trying to create a narrative of my own, they are the facts.

“They finished on 96 points, God knows how many goals they scored, loads of clean sheets, 23-game unbeaten run and they were 4-0 down after the (semi-final) first leg.

“But they’re in a one-off game with us now and the positive is that we know we can hurt them.

“We think we know what we’re going to get and hopefully someone can step up and be the hero.”

Barnsley’s first league double over their South Yorkshire rivals in March also halted the Owls’ club record 23-game unbeaten run.

But Duff, who will choose his starting line-up from a fully-fit squad, said that would have little bearing on Monday’s winner-takes-all encounter.

“Other than the fact that we know we can beat them,” Duff said. “You can dress it up which ever way you want. They’re older, much more experienced.

“Their players will have thousands more league appearances than we have and that might help them. It might not.

“Our youth and naivety might help us. We won’t know until the game pans out, but we know we can hurt them.

“We also know they’re a huge club with big players, and big players, a lot of the time, step up in big moments.

“So we’ll enjoy the day as much as we can, but we’re not going to Wembley for a day out, we’re going there to win.”

Duff acknowledged significant local bragging rights were at stake for both clubs’ fans, but does not feel that will be such a big factor for the players.

“There’s no point hiding away from it,” the former Cheltenham boss added. “But we’re not going to drum it up into something it isn’t.

“It’s a game of football. It’s 22 lads running around, there will be three blokes in black annoying everybody, probably, the pitch will be green and there will be white lines.

“Obviously the local derby element adds just a little bit of spice to what already will be a brilliant game.”

The Reds had just crashed into the third tier after winning only six Sky Bet Championship matches, but now stand on the brink of an immediate return.

They face local rivals Sheffield Wednesday in Monday’s League One play-off final, 11 months after Duff left Cheltenham to try and turn Barnsley’s fortunes around.

Disillusioned fans had lost count of the players who either departed or arrived at Oakwell following relegation and despite three defeats in their first five league games this season, Duff never had any regrets.

He said: “No because I back myself no matter what. I didn’t win a game for 10 games at Cheltenham and I didn’t doubt myself at that point.

“I learnt a lot, but I didn’t doubt myself. So a bit older, a bit wiser, a bit greyer, a lot fatter, but when I did my first interviews here and people asked where did I think we would finish, I never said anything.

“It wasn’t me being evasive, I just thought ‘we’ll see’. But I know I work hard, I believe in what I do and obviously now we’re in a shoot-out to get promoted.”

Duff led Cheltenham to League Two promotion and then 15th in League One, their highest English Football League finish, before replacing Poya Asbaghi in June to become Barnsley’s sixth manager in less than three years.

After an indifferent start, former Burnley defender Duff moulded a new-look team into automatic promotion contenders.

Barnsley halted Wednesday’s 23-game unbeaten league run in a thrilling 4-2 win at Oakwell in March to extend their own unbeaten streak to 12 matches.

That run included 10 wins and catapulted them into top-two contention, but Duff still publicly refused to set his side any targets.

“I think talk is cheap,” he said. “You can talk and talk about philosophy and all that sort of stuff. It’s nonsense in my opinion.

“It’s about can you get a group to work hard and stick together and find a way of playing and that’s what we’ve done as the season has gone on and we’ve proved to be good at it.”

Duff, whose side’s automatic promotion hopes were dashed in late April when they lost at home to Ipswich, said the players’ belief has grown steadily throughout the season.

“You get the players to set their own target, but how much they believed it I don’t know because sometimes they pay lip service,” he added.

“We’d just been relegated, what is the target? Is it the play-offs? The players almost feel they have to say, ‘yeah, we’ve got to get in the play-offs’, but I don’t know how much they believed it.

“But once you start working day-to-day with them, you break it down. The first 10 games we set a target of 16 points, because generally 1.6 points per game gets you in the play-offs.

“That was the group’s first target, to break it down. It’s those day-to-day, week-to-week habits.

“We’ve got to the point now where the players can look back and say, ‘we didn’t need to say that, but now we do believe’.

“Now, can they have that belief one more time?”