Blues boss Paul Lambert hailed his team’s 1-0 victory at Burton Albion as a great start their League One campaign.
"It's great, we started well, looked lively,” Lambert said. "We were doing everything we could at what’s a really tough place to come.
"As I said, Nigel [Clough] has a good team, they had a good cup run last year, so they’re a strong team to play at home.
"First day of the season, it doesn’t matter if you’ve just come down, it can go any way. I’m happy, I’m really happy.”
Lambert was pleased to get off the mark points-wise with the Blues, who beat Leeds on the final day of last season, recording back-to-back wins for the first time since February 2018 and for the first time under the Scot's management.
"Very good," he added. "The support, dear oh dear, the support is unbelievable, that was worth the admission money alone just to watch the support. A great start for us."
Reflecting on the number of players currently injured, he added: "There are too many and Andre Dozzell hurt his knee against Cambridge, so he couldn’t play either. Hopefully we should get a few back and then let’s see where we go.
"It was just his knee, he had a clash of knees last Saturday and we’ll see how he is during the week.”
Jon Nolan (calf) and Gwion Edwards (groin) are both closing in on a return, although next week may be too soon for the duo.
Lambert was pleased with the way his 4-4-2 system worked: "We looked lively, there were a load of good things there. James Wilson hasn’t trained hardly at all through pre-season, has just come in and played the games for us. He did really well.
"I thought Luke Woolfenden did well. I don’t think there was one failure in that team.”
"[Wilson] had cramp, which we knew would happen, fatigue was always going to happen because the lad hasn’t done much.He did really, really well for us.”""
Lambert also had praise for widemen Danny Rowe and Luke Garbutt, who netted the decisive goal on his debut.
"I thought he was excellent, Danny Rowe,” the Blues boss enthused. "He’s playing with a lot of confidence at the minute.
"Great bit of play [for the goal], Flynn did really well and then Norwood lays it off, I think, and Garbutt has a helluva left foot.
"His set plays and his passing’s very, very good. I’m delighted for him as well because he came in and joined us very late.”
Lambert felt striker James Norwood wasn’t overly helped by some of the refereeing: "Some of the fouls were a bit strange, it was happening the other end as well. Norwood, you’d hate to play against him, put it like that. I thought he and Jackson did well together.”
He added: "I think he’ll get a lot of fouls. I think today, there were some where he wasn’t even looking for the foul, every time he used his body, he’s a strong, strong lad. Hopefully it evens itself out.”
Lambert admitted his heart was in his mouth when keeper Tomas Holy’s clearance cannoned off Liam Boyce towards goal.
"It was and Holy was excellent throughout the game,” he said. "I don’t think he had a save really, he was commanding, comes for crosses, his kicking is really, really good.
"The one that happened, we spoke about it at the end of the game, he has to speed it up a little bit.”
First-team coach Matt Gill was red-carded and sent to the stand following that incident for kicking a cool box.
"I just saw the box,” Lambert recalled. "I think it was that incident, he got involved with it and he kicked the thing and the thing wasn’t secure. I think if there’s any fines he can pay it!”
The Blues boss felt the pre-season preparations had an impact on the Blues showing few signs of a hangover from last year’s disastrous campaign.
"We worked really hard in Germany when we were over in Germany, we worked really well, we had some really tough games in Germany we played Fortuna Dusseldorf and Paderborn, who are Bundesliga sides who were excellent,” he said.
"We played Colchester and we were really good then, Notts County I mixed and matched, Cambridge I mixed and matched.
"The young lads are really good, they need time. We’ll lose games, no two ways about it, but we’ll be a big scalp for any team to play against us. But if we keep playing the way we are, then we’ve got a chance.”
Burton manager Nigel Clough felt there was little in the game and that the Blues got the rub of the green.
"We didn't do a lot wrong today - one piece of outrageous bad luck, good fortune for them, and that's the difference between the two teams today," he told Derbyshire Live.
"There wasn't an awful lot in it apart from that. The goal is something you can't do anything about.
"Our performance was probably good enough to beat a lot of teams in League One today. I think it would be fair to say that the run of the ball didn't go our way, from having one headed off the line in the last minute, a few in the first half.
"There weren't many chances created today. I think it was two very good teams, it was difficult to create.
"As I say, we're quite happy with our performance and we should've come away with at least a point without the deflection."
He added: "I thought it was nous, it was a little bit of experience and things like that, game management at times.
"When we went down to 10 men, I thought for five minutes they kept the ball very well and stopped any momentum that we'd been getting going.
"Then we still came back. We had long periods of the game where we did very well today, from the second half of the first half, I thought we were good and picked it up, start of the second half again we were going at them.
"We just couldn't find that breakthrough. A couple of wasted crosses, things like that, and losing the ball in the final third - but that's always going to be the case.
"I can't pinpoint much we did wrong today. We've been beaten by a deflection, that's it. At 0-0, the longer the game goes, the more you fancy us. But you're chasing the game against a good team, it's difficult."