Blues boss Gary O’Neil felt he saw lots of good signs but also learned a lot from his side’s 3-2 victory over 10-man Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park.
Zian Flemming netted his first goal for he club in the final scheduled minute to see Town to victory in a topsy-turvy match they really should have put to bed earlier having come from behind to lead at half-time after the Eagles were reduced in number in the first half following Axel Disasi’s dismissal for a high boot on Jack Clarke.
"Winning away in the Premier League is tough, against teams playing in Europe this season, that won in Europe last season, so really pleased,” O’Neil said.
"To have two wins on the board after four matches is a big plus for us. Really pleased with the group, what they gave. Lots of emotion, lots of having to respond to setbacks, respond to positives.
"And it wasn’t perfect, of course, it wasn’t perfect, but we won. We found a way to win. We deserved to win as well, which is important and we happily take the three points and send the fans back up the A12 happy and then get ready for a big week.
"Obviously, Arsenal and Everton coming next, so the focus switches to them quickly. Can we recover the group for what is a big week for us.”
O’Neil was pleased that his side came from behind to win, even if he’d prefer that they hadn’t had to do so.
"Obviously I’d rather not,” he admitted. "I thought we started the game OK, a couple of nervy bits from individuals, some sloppy turnovers, but structure-wise the game looked as we expected, so the players took confidence from that, that everything was where it was supposed to be.
"And then we conceded a goal not too dissimilar to the Liverpool one, where we got a bit out of shape, but then we scored a fantastic equaliser, an excellent goal.
"If you think of all the joy we had against Liverpool, getting Leif Davis in behind, similar today, but today he managed to produce a top-quality cross. So, we were a threat.
"I think it’s difficult to defend and to keep clean sheets in the Premier League and to try and hang on 0-0 and nick a goal.
"I think it’s tough nowadays with the quality that the league has, the amount of time that the ball is in play with all the changes that the referees and the lawmakers have made, the ball is in play much more than it was. You have to be able to attack and you have to be a threat and I like my teams playing that way.
"Sometimes it means it’s 3-2 instead of 1-0 or, as you saw, 5-2 at United. But we do look a threat and that does still give us a chance. Even if we concede one, you know there’s a goal in us.
"And even at the end, once it goes to 2-2, the lads just jumped straight back on, took the ball from kick-off and started probing again.
"So pleased. It takes a lot to win away in the Premier League. I saw lots of good signs and also learned a lot.
"I think we have a lot that we need to get better at and normally you have to take a defeat to learn that much, but I feel like we managed to learn a lot today while we still managed to take three points, which is a big positive for us.”
Regarding striker Emersonn, who bagged his second Premier League goal in only his fourth appearance and impressed in general before coming off in the second half feeling his thigh.
"He’s got a tight quad,” O’Neil explained. "No one thinks he’s too bad, but with just quick checks after the game it’s hard for me to be too accurate with you. But we don’t see there being a problem for Everton.
"I’ll probably rest him in the week [for the Carabao Cup tie against Arsenal on Tuesday], I would think. I would have probably rested him anyway without his tight quad.
"I thought he was excellent. I’d hate to play against him. He must be tough to play against. He bashes people around, he runs in behind, he looks after the ball, he’s a threat, so I’m really pleased with how quickly he’s taken to the level and the league.
"The coaching staff work really hard on him on his technical stuff because it was a problem for him before and he’s getting better very, very quickly, so I’m delighted with the progress he’s made.
"I thought it was another excellent number nine performance from him today.”
Asked how his team managed to change the momentum of the game at 2-2 when the Eagles were on top having equalised, O’Neil reflected: "I think it forced Palace to come off the gas a bit. When you’re 2-1 down at home, you have no choice but to go, so they were taking risks. They took a lot of risks, which means it should have been 3-1 or 4-1 during that moment after half-time where we were getting straight in on their goal. Three or four times it should be 3-1.
"Obviously, we don’t take those opportunities. And they have good players, they can still take their moment. We got out of shape for the goal and they punished us for it.
"But now they have a choice to make - whether they take the same amount of risk or whether they start to play in a more sensible, structured way, and they did.
"But our lads’ response to it, you could easily have gone, ’2-2 is fine away from home, forget the fact that Palace have gone down to 10 men, we’ve come away from home, take a point’.
"But they didn’t. They started probing straight away. We put Abdoul Ouattara on, took Jacob Greaves off, so an extra attacker on the pitch.
"And it gave us our moment where Leif Davis arrives in the back of the goal, which we work on a lot, and Zian comes on and gets a fantastic goal for us, a big goal for him.
"Delighted that we have three number nines that can all score at the level, Chuba [Akpom], Zian and Emmy [Emersonn] have now all scored Premier League goals this year, which is going to be big for us. Eleven players is never going to be enough over the course of a season, so we need everybody.”
Quizzed on how good a start he believes his side have made to the season, having taken six points from 12 and sitting in eighth in the table, O’Neil said: "I don’t think we should get too carried away. Keen not to try and dampen everything down, but it’s a long season.
"Our wins both could have gone either way. The Premier League is a ruthless league. Against Sunderland, we were right in the game when we managed to take it. Against Crystal Palace, the same.
"To be fair, we were competitive in the main against Manchester United and Liverpool, but we need to improve, we still need to improve to be successful this year.
"I think the level of performance today still needs to increase. I think I learned a lot today.
"It’s tough to learn when you play against United and Liverpool, sometimes you have to give a little bit of slack for some errors or some things that happen because they have world-class players all over the place.
"Today, I thought was a good day for us to learn against a side that will be middle-ish in the league, probably. It was a good base for us to figure out where we’re going to be at. And there were some bits that I still think we need to do much better.”
Asked about the spell in which Palace levelled and whether the Blues were looking to consolidate rather than push for a further goal at that point, O’Neil said: "I’d love to have control over the whole game, but from the sideline it’s very, very difficult. They can’t really hear much. If they can, they can hear the odd word.
"So the game plan didn’t change at all. The plan was still to be aggressive, maybe some tiredness, which is why we tried to change the two wide players.
"They had a big job today, the wide players, pressing up on the side of their three. So we tried to change both to inject some energy and Palace had a couple of moments in that little spell that we struggled with.
"And we need to make sure we get better at that because we could easily have been punished more in that small spell.
"But I think if you look at the game as a whole, there’s only really one team that deserved to win and thankfully we did.”
O’Neil’s son plays for the Palace academy and he said it was good to see some of those he usually sees on a Sunday on what he was reminded was his first victorious visit to Selhurst Park as a manager.
"I don’t care where I win, as long as I win,” the Blues boss laughed. "It was nice to see some friendly faces. Obviously, my little boy’s in the academy, so loads of staff here, security staff, that I’m going to see tomorrow morning when I go and watch him play. They were all friendly and said hello.
"Also some people here as well that I’ve worked with before, [Palace sporting director] Matt Hobbs was at Wolves. Lots of friendly faces, which is nice.
"It’s nice for them to see me working, because normally they just see me chilled out. I wasn’t chilled out today, they saw a different version of me.
"I love managing this football club, it’s been the best four months of my career, playing or managing. I’ve loved it every minute of it. It’s a top club, top supporters, top values. The people supporting me behind the scenes are incredible. The playing group’s just gives everything.
"We’ll lose some, we will, but we’ll give everything when we lose. So really enjoying it, really pleased and we get ourselves ready for the best team in Europe, probably, or the best team in England, definitely, on Tuesday in the Carabao Cup.”