Goals from Carlos Mendes Gomes, Jayden Wareham and Timur Tutierov piled more misery on Vale on a day when the club were celebrating their 150th anniversary.

The result, which made it 13 points from the last 15 available, moved the Grecians up to 10th place in the table, but Caldwell thinks there is still room for improvement.

“It was a great day,” he said.

“It was always a difficult game. I think whenever you play a team bottom of the league, fighting for their life, manager’s first home (league) game, club’s 150th anniversary, I was worried all week that this was a game that was going to be more difficult than the league suggests.

“We spoke about complacency all week. I still think it took us 10 to 15 minutes to get over that complacency and really get into the game, but some of our attacking play, the way we played through the thirds and the goals that we scored, I thought were exceptional.

“But I still think we can play better and I still demand more and more from the team.

“I think what we’ve done well this year is frame the game and, even every training session, we’ve tried to kind of frame that for the players and give them real clarity on what the game looks like, so we guarded against that all week.

“We knew what was coming. I thought it didn’t feel like a team that was bottom of the league at the start of the game. It felt like a crowd that was really behind the team.”

Vale boss Jon Brady, who was appointed following the sacking of Darren Moore last month, was left to rue a missed opportunity in the early stages when Ryan Croasdale’s shot was well saved by Joe Whitworth.

“We stepped on to them, we had the territory and we had a really good chance after about two or three minutes,” said Brady, whose side grabbed a consolation through Cameron Humphreys.

“We should really score with that chance. Their keeper ends up making a really good save in the end.

“And you can’t give those goals away. They’re too soft, absolutely way too soft.

“And we’re again not clinical early on in the game and, if we put that to bed, it’s a different story.

“You score the first goal in League One and 70 to 75 per cent of the time you come out with points in the game.

“You either win the game or you draw the game and we had some really good chances there in the first half.

“But that one especially in that second or third minute, I feel we should put that away.”