Mark Robins praised the “spirit, desire and commitment” his side showed in their 1-0 win against Derby County on Saturday afternoon at St Andrew’s.
Max Biamou scored what proved to be the winning goal in an excellent display by the Sky Blues against the Rams moving them level on points with Derby in the table.
The manager felt it was a massive win for his side and was pleased with the performance City put in following their midweek defeat against Middlesbrough.
Robins said: “It’s a massive win, it’s huge, the performance is always paramount, the other night Middlesbrough are a tough team to play against, we went away from what we did to some degree and we played into their hands so we had a little bit of a reset.
“There’s pressure around games, you’ve got to accept that, and I thought we did brilliantly today, first and foremost the clean sheet is outstanding, and the play for the goal and the pressure we put on them to force them into a mistake.
“Max had a lot to do to get in the other side of their defenders and he did it brilliantly and then finished really well which gave us a little bit of a settler in the first half.
“In terms of what we did and performance levels, the spirit is there, the desire is there, the commitment is there, some of the quality at times is lacking but the same is happening in other teams up and down the league.
“Credit to the players because they’ve been fantastic, if they continue to do that we’ll pick up results.”
Robins also explained the decision to play with one striker up front and praised the work rate his players showed from start to finish against the Rams.
“They’re a young side, they try to bring the youngsters through, they had three in the team today, they have some real experience in there as well, a lot of quality and Derby County are a big club and we’re on the same points as them, you look at that and it’s starting to look brighter.
“There seems to be a clamour for two strikers and sometimes the games aren’t set for that, it was probably a mistake the other day and we went away from what we are, that doesn’t mean to say that there won’t be two strikers in the team from now on, some games it warrants it.
“Today, everybody to a man ran their socks off, we worked hard, we closed them down and we ran out of legs, we tried to put that energy back in with the players we changed.”