PHIL Brown felt Southend United’s 4-0 win at Chesterfield sent out a message to the rest of League One.

Blues bounced back from two successive defeats to secure all three points at the Proact Stadium.

And Brown believes the Shrimpers’ play-off rivals would have taken note of the emphatic victory.

“I think this is a result which will have sent a message out,” said the Blues chief.

“My job is to get this club promoted and with a performance like that we have a chance.

“You can say we beat them when they were down to 10 men but we were 1-0 up before their player was shown the red card.

“We’ve also won a match 3-0 when down to 10 men quite recently so it’s not easy to play 10 men and I thought we did well.

“But I wouldn’t say it was a big win, it was just another win and we’ve done what we needed to do.”

The victory kept the Shrimpers seventh in the League One table, a point below sixth placed Millwall who currently occupy the final play-off place.