Town boss Paul Cook felt his side’s 4-0 demolition of his former club Portsmouth was as complete a performance as the Blues have put in this season.
Macauley Bonne, scoring his 10th goal of the campaign, Conor Chaplin, Sone Aluko and Wes Burns scored the goals as Town romped to their first win at Fratton Park since 2012 and their first 4-0 away victory since beating Reading at the Madejski Stadium in April 2018.
Asked whether the game could have gone much better, Cook was keeping his feet very much on the ground.
"It’s keep going, it’s boring,” he insisted. "I said to you the other day, you’ve got to go away, you’ve got to analyse, you’ve got to look at what you do and what you can do to get better.
"Tonight, I think we’ve seen at probably a really tough place to go as complete a performance as we’ve had this season, and that’s really pleasing.
"I’m so pleased for our supporters who travel. We see the support behind that goal, no different than Cambridge on Saturday, we said at half-time ‘You have to score in front of those fans, you have have to give them that momentum that they want to give you to carry you home’.
"And we did that in abundance tonight and I’m delighted for the supporters and I’m delighted for the players.”
Town have now netted 27 goals in 13 league matches, more than anyone else in the division.
"We’ve got goals in the team, I think that’s apparent to everyone,” Cook continued. "We’ve got a striker [Bonne] at the minute who’s red hot. We’ve got a number 10 in Chaplin, who is so infectious in everything he does, and around that lads are growing.
"We made a few changes tonight and we’ll keep doing that when we think that’s right. But tonight it was a really good team performance, it was a good squad performance, it was everything that I like about coming away from home.
"If you look at our subs on Saturday, we’ve made similar subs today with the seven, 10 and 11 coming on. But on Saturday when it goes wrong you get absolutely slaughtered and tonight you don’t, and that’s football. Three days in football is a long time.”
He added: "Our lads were excellent, I’m just pleased. [Toto] Nsiala came in and Nsiala’s an absolutely man mountain at times. [George] Edmundson moved to the left.
"It’s just a good night and the important thing is whether we can follow it up at Portman Road on Saturday as supporters will turn out again.
‘We’ve given them a taste now again that we could be on the road. What we can’t do is continually take a step forward and two back. We’ve taken one forward tonight, we’ll make sure we’ll try and take another one on Saturday.
"Listen, we just keep going, you know me. My messages are the same, I said the other day, you don’t get medals in October, there’s no promotions, there’s no relegations, you just stay focus and work.
"Tonight we’ve shown we can go to probably one of the toughest away grounds in the country and we can win. We’ve got to make sure we keep that going.”
Asked how pleasing the clean sheet was, Cook said: "If you’d have said to me before the game if you win 4-3 would you be happy, I’d be doing handstands.
"The reality is we’ve got goals in us, we’re the highest scorers in the division. The goals against hurts, and it hurts us all.
"You leave Cambridge on Saturday and we’re all devastated because if we’d seen that out, our league position now would look very, very healthy.
"And your league position changes very quickly when you win. It doesn’t when you lose. The reality for us now 13 games in is just keep going.”
Quizzed on whether it was good to have keeper Christian Walton back in the side, Cook said: "I won’t single people out, I don’t do things like that. Tonight we had a lot of good performances in the team and if you go away from home you have to have men on the pitch, and tonight we had a lot of good men.”
He added: "We’ve been so much better since we played Accrington. We just didn’t turn up and our supporters, probably 1200 of them travelled home on the floor.
"Since then we turned up at Cambridge but we made some individual mistakes and made those individual mistakes at crucial times. The goal before half-time at Cambridge absolutely changed the game, changed the whole atmosphere in the stadium.
"Tonight, everything that’s supposed to go your way as a visiting team went our way, and we made that happen. We didn’t wait for Portsmouth, we went on to them in the second half and I’m delighted for the players and I’m more than happy for the supporters, that’s for sure.
"A lot gets written and a lot gets said and for managers now, we’ve got so many new staff and players come in. How long does it take to change cultures at football clubs? You can’t do it in a short space of time.
"Unfortunately, for all football managers now, we get judged that quick it’s not right. Whether it’s good or bad, it’s not right. So for me, I just stay level-headed, I just keep going.
"Now all my attention will be on Fleetwood travelling back tonight and we’ve got to do our best to win. Because if we beat Fleetwood on Saturday, all of a sudden the table looks different, we’re probably be in the first half for the first time, which I’ll get excited about, and our supporters get a little bit happy.
"And that’s the most important thing, our owners and our supporters, that’s for sure.”
Town have now been in front at half-time in each of their last six away games in all competitions with today the third that they have won.
"I told our players in the dressing room, we’ve got a habit of taking the lead away and the whole country will be watching you now, 2-0 up, 3-0 up and you’ll give it up.
"All of a sudden you can change your habits by changing what you do on the pitch, and that’s the most important thing.
"Our lads are watching videos, clips, repetition, habits and tonight I’m just happy after a really strong team performance.
"If you manage big clubs and you play for big clubs, you have to put up with pressure. I get you lads [the media] asking me different questions every week and my answers are quite similar. I’m as good as the players.
"When you leave grounds like Accrington you’re on the floor as a manager. You leave Fratton Park on a high.
"The brutal reality is that in my world you’ll only be judged over a period of time. If our lads’ habits stay consistent like they are getting now and get better, the reality is we’ll grow and get better as a team.”
Pompey boss Danny Cowley admitted that his side, who have won just one of their last 10 in the league, losing six, has a tendency to wilt when things go against them.
"It was unacceptable, we were shamed — and I will take complete responsibility for it,” Cowley told the Portsmouth News.
"It’s my job to make sure the players are in the right place to perform at their best and they were well short.
"There’s a weakness in our group when things go against us. For 40 minutes it was a competitive League One game, there’s very little in it, then we make a mistake which leads to a goal.
"It’s not the goal which cost us the game, it’s the way we responded. We didn’t show anywhere near the qualities in that moment.
"Every single person within our group has the responsibility of going away, looking at themselves and seeing what more they can give to help this team.
"In the moment of difficulty and adversity we don't have anywhere near the solutions that we need. Sometimes it’s hard to put in what God left out.
"We were well short in terms of the qualities I would expect from my players.
"Until the opening goal it was a competitive League One game with very little in it against a very good team. But as soon as anything goes against us, we fold.”
Regarding his club’s fans, he added: "We as a football club let them down, we let them down.
"It’s really hard for me to stand here and say that. It’s not through the want of trying, but we let them down.”