Town boss Kieran McKenna says Vaclav Hladky’s form this season has come as little surprise to him, the Czech having started every Championship game after last season’s first-choice Christian Walton suffered a plantar fascia tear in pre-season.
Hladky, 32, has helped the Blues to six wins from their first seven games and to third in the table, behind second-placed Leicester on goal difference and leaders Preston by a point, keeping four clean sheets, including two in the last two at Sheffield Wednesday and Southampton.
"He's been excellent,” McKenna said. "It's easy to say, but I think we showed it in our decision when Christian had the injury, we had every confidence in Vaz because we've seen, certainly I've seen, how he's worked over the last 18 months.
‘We’ve seen how he's worked with [head of goalkeeping] Rene [Gilmartin] and the fantastic mentality he has to training every day, his performances in training every day, his performances in the cup competitions, his performance in my first game when I arrived [the 1-0 victory over Wycombe], gave us every indication that we had a very good goalkeeper there.
"Christian's been terrific for us and been a massive part of the team, but we knew that we had two very, very good senior goalkeepers in the building.
"So there was certainly no undue panic when Christian was injured. Vaz has come into the team, he brings his own slant to it, he brings his own qualities to the position as well and he's certainly brought that to the team.
"He's been an important player for us and it's great to have such quality in that position with two excellent senior goalkeepers and two really good young goalkeepers beneath that as well.”
Despite Town’s hugely impressive start to the season, McKenna has no problem keeping his players’ feet on the ground.
"We like to hope so,” he said. "Of course, you can't take that for granted, you have to keep giving the right messages, making sure that the leaders in the group are also spreading the right messages and that's what we continually try to do.
"We know it's such a long season, such a tough division and tough games come so thick and fast.
"We've got another massive one tomorrow [at home to Blackburn], a really, really good opponent, so that sharpens the mind very, very quickly after a night like Tuesday night, where we enjoyed the win and we enjoyed the performance.
"You don't have too much time to relax on it because by Wednesday, we're here and we're preparing for Blackburn, and you can see their strengths and the threats they're going to pose.
"We really quickly turn our minds to making sure that we're ready for the next game, and that's what we focused on last season, and that's how we continue to focus this season.”
At Southampton, McKenna made four changes, the first time he has dipped deeper into his squad this season, and those coming into the side didn’t let him down.
"I think the players realise that squad depth is going to be even more important to us this year because they feel how hard the games are, they feel how hard we're having to work,” he continued.
"We know what the calendar is. We know this period between the international breaks, we have seven games in 21 days and all high-level games.
"So at the moment, it's a very unified squad and everyone knows that the players who are on the pitch on that particular game are representing the rest of the squad, but that people are going to be needed at different times.
"And when you have a game like Tuesday night where other players come into the team for their first starts in the league or people come off the bench who haven't been involved in the few games beforehand and they contribute, I think that always unifies your bonds in the squad, and even enhances the feeling that everyone's going to have their part to play over the course of the year.”