Blues boss Kieran McKenna was delighted to come out on top after a hard-fought game against Plymouth Argyle, Town eventually winning 3-2, but admitted that while his team did a lot of things well, there were aspects of the display which could be improved.
Argyle, who pipped the Blues to the League One title last season, coming from behind to win 2-1 at Home Park and draw 1-1 at Portman Road, again made it tough for Town with Morgan Whittaker putting the visitors ahead in only the seventh minute.
McKenna admitted that the Pilgrims pushed his side all the way: "Yes, they did. And that’s what I expected really. I think you could see why both teams did so well last year, two of the best teams maybe statistically ever in League One, so you could see why it was two such good teams.
"It was a hard-fought game, of course, a big challenge for us when they score such a wonderful goal so early in the game we had to fight really hard for the points.
"I think to come back from that position to be 3-1 up on 90 minutes, I think we did a lot of things well. But, of course, there were other bits to improve and that’s natural.
"A really tough game, I didn’t expect anything less and I’m really happy to have come out on top against them having not managed to do that last season.”
Too many chances conceded? "I think that’s fair to say. I didn’t love our out-of-possession game really in any phase. Certainly something to improve on and we’ve had maybe six clean sheets in the league this season, so we can defend well individually and as a team but we gave up too many chances today.
"Certainly things to learn, things to improve on, but that’s natural. We’re a newly-promoted team in the division. We’re winning most of our games, if we didn’t have any things to improve in the performance they’d be no point in coming in on Monday, we might as well just turn up for Fulham.
"That’s a positive. We’ll take a lot from today against a good team who tested us in different ways in a game which came really quickly off the back of a tough away trip on Wednesday.
"There’ll be lots that we can learn from today and it’s normal that we’re not going to deliver perfect performances every week and that’s the bit that we can really get our teeth into.”
Plymouth manager Steven Schumacher was disappointed not to have been given a free-kick just outside the area late in the first half when George Edmundson appeared to foul Mustapha Bundu, an incident he believed should have led to the Town defender receiving a yellow card.
"I thought from where I was it looked like a free-kick, to be fair, so you would be disappointed if you were them,” McKenna said.
"I think it’s that, it’s a free-kick and a yellow card if he hasn’t touched the ball. I’ve not seen it from behind. I don’t think it was a red card, I thought there were covering defenders around.
"I think we scored two or three minutes after that, so I’m not sure we can say that of all the incidents in the game today, I’m not sure that that was necessarily the decisive one.
"But certainly in the moment I could understand why they were frustrated because it looked like a free-kick.”
The Blues boss was full of praise for keeper Vaclav Hladky, who made a number of hugely important second-half stops.
"A couple of fantastic saves,” he said. "I have to say we needed him today. Again, his all-round game was very good but he produced a couple of big saves whenever we needed.
"That’s great, we have two fantastic goalkeepers at the club, everyone can see we’ve got two fantastic goalkeepers and that’s a massive asset to have and we’re going to need that right the way through the season.”
McKenna admitted the latter stages of the game were more nervous than he would have liked and wasn’t at all pleased with the way his team defended Plymouth’s second goal, which gave them some hope in injury time.
"We can’t be happy with the second goal, we can’t accept it,” he continued. "We were tired out there but at 3-1 up, so many phases of that goal that I didn’t like and that we can’t be happy with.
"Again, things to improve. It’s not going to be perfect. To come from 1-0 down five minutes in to be 3-1 up at that point, that’s a lot of positives. You’re not going to win a game in this division without doing a lot of things well, but the second goal and how we defended that situation wasn’t good enough.”
Did he feel his team didn’t manage the latter stages as well as they might and were perhaps still looking for another goal when they might have sought to calm the game down?
"I think we knew we were in a battle, I thought there were bits where the boys were trying to take the ball down the side and trying to manage the game well,” McKenna responded.
"I didn’t think it was necessarily a big game management issue, I thought there was a fatigue issue there for sure, for both teams, of course, but for us it’s the first Wednesday-Saturday in the league and to have had such a late night and a hard game at Bristol City on Wednesday, I think there was definitely a fatigue issue to the goal.
"But it’s something for us to improve. I think we’ll get fitter, we’ll get stronger. When we are tired, we still have to defend well. The game’s not done at any point, we learned that lesson very well last year not too many more than 365 days ago [the 4-4 draw at Charlton, a year ago tomorrow].
"The game’s never done and really at 3-1 we know we should have defended that situation better and we should have seen the last couple of minutes out in a calmer way.
"But it wasn’t to be, we got the game over the line, we did enough to win the game and to win two games in four days in the Championship is certainly not easy and we’ve done a lot of hard work and and lot of good things to do that, so we have to enjoy that.
"We’re not shying away from improving the bits of the performances that can improve.”
Marcus Harness again impressed from the bench and scored what proved to be the decisive goal.
"Delighted for him,” the Blues boss said. "I’ve said it before, I’ve saw his press yesterday and I thought he spoke really well and genuine to the person he is, he’s a top, top person and a really important member of the squad.
"Trains well every day, contributes well, every game he comes off the bench he’s ready to do exactly what the team requires and has done really well on some starts this season as well.
"I think he’s really enjoying the step up to the Championship for the first time, he’s another one who has adapted really well to it and is a really important player to us.”
McKenna swapped Cam Burgess for George Edmundson at the heart of the defence, a move which he says was largely tactical.
"Yes, a little bit tactical with Plymouth and their threats and I thought George did really well at times against that,” he added.
"A little bit of rotation, we have a lot of games in a short space of time coming up and we need everybody ready for the really busy fixture list ahead, especially come December, so we need enough players ready and match fit and ready to step into league games and in the rhythm to do so, because we’re not going to be able to pick the same team every week or every midweek as well.
"George did terrific against Hull, terrific against Wolves, has been excellent in training, I have to say, and deserved his chance to come into the team today and did some good things in the game as well.”
The Town boss included Axel Tuanzebe, who joined the club in early September after leaving Manchester United, as a sub and McKenna says the central defender will play a part during Wednesday’s Carabao Cup tie at home to Fulham.
"We just wanted to integrate him, he’s going to get minutes on Wednesday now against Fulham,” the Northern Irishman confirmed.
"He’s not been in a matchday squad, so we wanted him to be around it, be in the meetings, be in the dressing room, get a really good feel for it and hopefully that will help him on Wednesday night when he gets his first minutes.”
The victory means McKenna is now the Blues manager to have reached 50 league wins in the fewest number of games, 82, beating a record of 92 matches established by Sir Alf Ramsey.
Asked about the key reason behind the impressive way his side has settled into the division, McKenna considered: "I think there are so many things really, because you don’t have a start like we have just from one aspect.
"We’ve had a really consistent style of play that we’ve built and developed for coming up to two years now that was a really challenge to implement in League One but we thought it would ultimately help us to be successful at that level but more importantly we thought it would translate well upwards.
"We wanted to do well and get out of League One with a style of play that we felt that would help us to be successful in the Championship.
"We’ve had a lot of players on the journey with us. A lot of players you’ve seen out there today have been working with the staff now for a really good amount of time and in our methodology and we feel that they’ve made big, big strides individually and prepared really well to step up to the challenge.
"And we’ve brought in good players along the way. We’ve added quality to the group along the way but coming into a really consistent style, a way of working and group.
"So all those things help and, of course, the stability and the togetherness we have in the club is really important as well. It’s a club that’s really united from top to bottom.
"We’ve got full stadiums here with the crowd right behind us. There’s a great togetherness right through the football club and that helps you when you’re going through adversity and we’re going into adversity twice a week at the moment because the games are so tough, the step-up’s so big and that togetherness has been massive for us.
"I don’t think it’s one thing, it’s an accumulation of a lot of things but that adaptation, that’s an ongoing process because when you come into different phases of the season, other teams are going to improve, other teams are going to be more knowledgable about our strengths.
"And the weather changes, the pitches change, the challenge keeps changing, so we prepared well for the start of the season but there are a lot of big challenges ahead, so we need to stay really grounded in working to be ready for what’s coming.”