Town boss Kieran McKenna felt his table-topping side were “bang at it” as they comprehensively defeated Shrewsbury 3-0 at Montgomery Waters Meadow, despite a week in which they’ve had two lengthy away trips.
Goals from Tyreece John-Jules, Conor Chaplin and Kayden Jackson saw Town to their fourth win on the spin.
"A good performance, especially I thought from a mentality and a physical point of view,” he said. "From a tactical point of a view I thought it was a really good performance.
"I thought we were bang at it considering the travel that we’ve had this week. A great effort from the squad, concentration was really good.
"I thought our running and our energy right through the game was really good and I thought tactically we had the game in and out of possession right where we wanted it from the first minute really.
"I do think we can play better. In the first half, the level wasn’t where we wanted it to be, there were too many early turnovers when we got into their half of the pitch.
"We spoke about that at half-time and we improved in the second half, to be fair, and that gave us a new level of control and we certainly created more chances off the back of some good play.”
McKenna made five changes but the performance shown no signs of disjointedness as a result.
"That’s credit to the boys and how we train and how we prepare,” the Northern Irishman said. "Everyone knows their roles within the side and within the different ways that we can play and how they can slot into that.
"I think if you prepare well and you train how we train, then there’s no excuses, you should be ready to step into the team.”
He says the players are all aware that it’s a squad game and that no one will play every week.
"There’s definitely that and that’s the most important thing I’m seeing at the moment,” he said.
"Points at this stage of the season are nice to get, you’ve got to accumulate them. Performances, obviously we want and we want to keep improving, but the main thing I’m seeing is a group with really strong leadership and a group of players who are prepared to fight and work for each other every day at training and in matches.
"And if we do that, even when we don’t play well, we give ourselves a good chance to pick up points.”
Regarding John-Jules, who was making his first league start since joining the Blues on loan from Arsenal in the summer, he added: "He was ready for it. We wanted to be patient with him.
"We’ve had to hold the reins back a little bit because he’s been doing really well when he’s come on, but we were determined that we weren’t going to push him too fast too soon and increase the chances of him having an issue after the second half of a season he had last year.
"He’s been patient, we’ve been patient with him, he’s worked hard behind the scenes, he deserved his start today and he deserved the reward of the goal and his all-round performance was very good.”
Is he comfortable playing in that central striking role? "Yes, that was where he was more natural as a young player. We have a lot of players [like that], Conor Chaplin was obviously a striker right through his career and he still tells me he’s a number nine.
"Tyreece I think would still tell you he’s a number nine and obviously we have Freddie [Ladapo] and Jacko [Jackson] who both consider themselves number nines.
"Versatility is very important. We know Tyreece can play in different roles, he’s very good between the lines but he’s also capable of playing with his back to goal and playing a bit higher up.
"We thought today, with the way they’re set up defensively, having a number nine who dropped in a little bit more, who played a little bit deeper and took the ball between the lines would suit the game plan well, and I thought he did that bit of it very well but also showed that he could compete physically with the centre-halves, so a good step forward for him.”
He says the changes were no reflection on the performances of those who dropped to the bench.
"No, it’s all things considered,” he continued. "We pick the team off of freshness, training, who’s training well, what’s going on behind the scenes, game plan, what we want from each different position, like I said with Tyreece in the striker role today, for example.
"So we pick it off a number of factors. We’re happy with what we have in the squad and are confident going into any game at the moment that the boys all know they’re jobs and they’re all ready to work for the team.”
McKenna says the players were conscious of last year’s corresponding fixture when Town were comfortable and 1-0 ahead before allowing the lead to slip and the game ultimately ended in a draw.
"The boys were very aware of what happened here last year,” he said. "To be fair, at half-time they were leading that conversation about getting the second goal, ‘No taking the foot off the gas’.
"And we did that from the start. Obviously we got the goal very early, so that was pleasing.
"There are bits still to improve on in the second half, but we finished really strongly in the last five or 10 minutes and got the last goal and probably if it had run a little bit more there might have been a few more for us.”
He says improving on results and performances from individual fixtures last season is something which is spoken about before games.
"We do make those sort of references,” he said. "One of our key principles is to look for continuous improvement. That might come in a lot of different areas, not just on matchdays but when you have a match where there’s something that you could have done better previously, especially at the back end of last season like the Shrewsbury one was, it’s an easy reference for us to make.
"It’s not something we overemphasise, but the players are aware of those little things and it was them at half-time who were making clear that 1-0 wasn’t enough, that we couldn’t sit on the 1-0 lead, we had to push hard and keep our concentration and go for the second goal, and they managed to do that.”
McKenna was also pleased with a third successive clean sheet, one which he felt was an improvement on the previous two.
"I thought that was much better today on the clean sheet front,” he reflected. "I thought the way that we controlled the game with the ball was more like us than Tuesday night, which was obviously very, very difficult, as we spoke about.
"If you control it as well with the ball as we did today, then it’s going to be hard for the other team to get chances, and I thought defensively our concentration was better than it has been in recent games, so that was a good step forward.”
Regarding the penalty claim Town had early on when Kane Vincent-Young was felled by Tom Flanagan, he added: "It looked it to me, I haven’t seen it back, to be fair, but it was a really good bit of play. If it’s a penalty it’s possibly a red as well.
"It is what it is, obviously that would have made the game a little bit more comfortable. But we go the first goal not too long after it, so thankfully it didn’t have a big impact on the flow of the game.”
McKenna thanked the fans for their contribution with another big following having made the trip to Shropshire.
"A great turnout again, big appreciation from our point of view and credit to them for travelling on Tuesday and Saturday,” he said.
Wes Burns and Dominic Ball remained absent but seem likely to be back ahead of next week’s home game against Barnsley.
"Dominic, it’s just training sharpness now,” he said. "He’s trained for the last two days with no problems but he’s missed quite a few weeks now, so we want him to have a full training week next week.
"And Wes is still feeling the effects, he wasn’t able to train with us on Friday due to his slight groin strain, so we’ll have to see how he is next week.”
McKenna is pleased to have a free midweek in which to work with the squad at Playford Road.
"That’s good, that’s important, especially after two away games,” he said. "We should benefit from that. Again, we have to keep improving, there were bits today and certainly on Tuesday night, that we need to improve.
"It’s not easy to get on the training pitch when you have the two-game weeks, so now it gives us a nice clear run to keep improving because it’s early in the season so a lot of it is still laying the foundations for what’s going to make us successful and a lot of that work comes on the training pitch.”
Shrews boss Steve Cotterill admitted his were bested by the Blues.
"They were better than us,” he told his club's official website. "That's the bottom line. They have better players and squad. When you come up against them, you hope they have an off day or something goes wrong and we have to play above ourselves.
"I'm not sure we were physically capable of doing that today. I think we looked a yard off everything from the start of the game. They were sharper with every loose ball and more crisp with their passing.
"Obviously, when they get the first goal, it becomes even more difficult as they can change their team around and make substitutions as they don't get any weaker, they don't let up, and they have a really strong squad for this division.”
He added: "We are disappointed with the goals today as the goals have come from areas where we defended so well the other night.
"I don't know if we had the legs or energy for the game today. It has been a long, demanding month. Today is the first time I looked at the team about 15 minutes in and it looked like the month had caught up with us.
"I think we had a really demanding week with Wycombe and Derby and today; it's a really tough run for this division. It looked like it caught up with us today.”