The smiles were back on the faces of Bluebirds fans as I walked out of Cardiff City Stadium on Saturday afternoon.
It wasn't so much that the derby jinx had finally been banished, or that Cardiff City have suddenly soared up the table.
Despite a third win in four matches, the Bluebirds still languish in 21st place - just one position above the drop zone and with much work still to do in order to definitively erase the prospect of a disastrous dip into League One.
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But the happy faces are there - and quite rightly so - because in the short space of a few weeks the entire mindset at Wales' capital city football club has changed.
Cardiff fans will tell you that they have, if you'll pardon the phrase, what they dub a 'proper manager' in charge at last, possibly for the first time since Neil Warnock departed, Mick McCarthy's very brief initial spell as boss aside, I guess.
Sabri Lamouchi, aided by Bluebirds fans' idol Sol Bamba who just gets this club and what it means to the people, have completely altered the dynamic, on and off the field.
Where back on January 21 it was doom and gloom after a 0-1 home loss to Millwall pre-Lamouchi, these days there is genuine hope and belief for the future.
Early days or not, it already seems like chalk and cheese compared to the doubts and despondency that previously followed the team around for pretty much most of the 2022/23 campaign.
How have they done it? There are lots of strands, but here are a few...
The appointments
Rightly or wrongly, there was a sense of dread among Cardiff fans about who the new manager would be with none of the post-Warnock appointments - Mark Hudson, Steve Morison, Mick McCarthy, Neil Harris - exactly proving to be roaring successes.
To be fair, some of them were tasked with pruning the budget and clearing up something of a mess Warnock left behind, a squad full of high-earners, some of whose best days were behind them.
But ultimately it's about results and each of the above managers received the axe from Vincent Tan because the results had become incredibly poor.
Enter Lamouchi. As Cardiff chairman Mehmet Dalman said upon unveiling him as the new man, 'he talks like a manager, he acts like a manager.'
That's not intended to denigrate the others, but you just had an inner sense that Lamouchi he would command instant respect, inside the dressing room and from the majority of the Bluebirds fan base.
Under him, these players give absolutely every last drop for the shirt - a Cardiff City pre-requisite.
They are defensively resolute again - another Cardiff City must.
The interaction and special bond between team and fans is back. The passion Lamouchi shows runs through his players and culminates with triumphant Warnock-style fist pumps in front of the Canton End at the end of games.
Lamouchi doesn't make predictable, like-for-like substitutions. This is a guy who is clearly incredibly astute tactically and who you feel will always be pro-active during games, rather than reactive. He appears to be a step ahead.
In his very first match, away to Luton, he sent on Rubin Colwill and Jaden Philogene for Joe Ralls and Mark Harris with the score at 0-0. They were bold moves, the easy option was to go defensive and hang on for a point. As it happens, Lamouchi's changes didn't work that day and Cardiff lost, but it demonstrated an offensive mindset that should hold the Bluebirds in good stead moving forward.
Against Middlesbrough, with Cardiff over-run in midfield, he sent on Ryan Wintle and Andy Rinomhota in advanced roles to try to stop Boro playing out from the back. No shielding anchor role for Wintle, that went to Romaine Sawyers, who we will come on to. Cardiff still lost, but the tactics changed the character of the match and again were the actions of a manager prepared to do things out of the box.
The results
Lamouchi inherited a team in a mess, devoid of confidence; he didn't even know the players.
With games coming thick and fast, thus affording little time on the training ground, it was always going to take the new man a while to familiarise himself with the strengths and weaknesses of his squad. As he had to learn on the hoof the hard way during games, things would probably get worse before they got better.
And so it was, defeats to Luton, Hull and Middlesbrough hardly an inspiring start. But Lamouchi wasn't making excuses, claiming Cardiff were brilliant up to the final third, dominated stats, shots on goal, or anything like that. He openly admitted there were issues and that is why you had confidence he would fix them.
Because of those issues, Cardiff were never going to be easy on the eye to begin with as Lamouchi sought a solid platform defensively. But they beat Birmingham and Reading back-to-back, lost in disappointing fashion at Norwich, and dominated the Bristol City match.
With more time between matches, the work Lamouchi and Bamba are putting in on the training ground, the way they are changing the mindset, is starting to pay off.
It's very early days, no-one should get too carried away just yet, not least yours truly! But there is clearly a different attitude already, including among the supporter base.
Sol's role and banishing those derby day woes
I've always argued there is a good young manager in the making in Sol Bamba, but for the time being he is an essential back-up to Lamouchi.
This is a guy who has an incredible passion for Cardiff City FC and who understands exactly what the fans want.
I'm told within the dressing room his pre-Bristol message to the players was on the lines of 'You don't play derby games, you WIN them' - with the emphasis upon that word.
What a pleasant change that will make for Cardiff fans, who've heard lines like it's just another three points, or just another game and we have to look at the bigger picture of the whole season, down the years.
The above is true, of course, but derby matches are treated as.... well as derby matches by Cardiff's opponents. As such, unless you treat them that way too and match the intensity from the opposition, how can you win?
This time, Cardiff did.
Super cool Sawyers
If there is one player, more than any other, who has benefitted from Lamouchi's arrival it is Romaine Sawyers.
We knew there was a damn good footballer in him, we just weren't seeing it.
Lamouchi came up with the masterful idea to put Sawyers right at the base of the midfield; a questionable decision really, given that role tends to go to a dogs-of-war-type tackler, which Sawyers most certainly isn't.
Sawyers, though, has been a revelation sitting deeper thus far. He keeps hold of the ball as seamlessly as Peter Whittingham and Stephen McPhail once used to do in that Cardiff midfield. He gets the side ticking, doesn't just lump away possession.
The blend of that Cardiff midfield is still a work on for Lamouchi, but Sawyers is among the first names on the team-sheet and pretty much plays every minute of every game.
For differing reasons, Sawyers had previously disappointed. Suddenly, Cardiff appear to have a real asset on their hands.
The new system
Lamouchi's preferred tactics are 4-3-3, but he feels a different approach is required at the moment to make the most of the players at his disposal.
Call it 5-3-2, 3-4-3, what you will, but it's started to work.
Perry Ng looks much more solid at the back in a three with Mark McGuinness there as well as Cedric Kipre, while choosing Jaden Philogene and one of Callum O'Dowda or Joe Ralls as his wing-backs shows real creative intent from the manager. Neither of those can remotely be called orthodox full-backs.
If truth be known, Lamouchi's team selection in defeat to Norwich the previous week appeared negative. Against Bristol City it was hugely positive and the Bluebirds reaped the rewards.
The target man - or men
Steve Morison did a very decent job reshaping this Cardiff squad. He should take credit for that, even if the jury was out - at best - on whether he could actually deliver results.
But one fundamental error I felt Morison made was in saying people had become too hung up with the need for a big man up front. It was to do with Morison's wish to get everyone moving away from Route One.
Commendable in theory. However, whatever the style of play, it's in Cardiff's DNA to have a big man leading the line. That stems back from when a teenage John Toshack was centre-forward through to the likes of Kieffer Moore, Ken Zohore and Jay Bothroyd in more recent times.
You need a big man just to be the focal point of a side - to hold up the ball, link play, win the free kicks, take pressure off the defence, win headers, offer set-piece threat - and to score goals.
Lamouchi has gone with two of them, it was Sory Kaba and Connor Wickham against Bristol City. The opening goal came from a cross into the box which Kaba splendidly headed in - the type of effort you can't imagine Cardiff scoring a few weeks back.
In time, that Cardiff front three could evolve into Wickham, Callum Robinson and Rubin Colwill, which is a trio that would greatly excite many Cardiff fans.
But Lamouchi is going for more of a bludgeon approach at the moment and with three wins from four, it is working.
Sudden strength in depth
This is something we couldn't have envisaged earlier in the season.
Yet on Saturday Cardiff had Rubin Colwill, Isaak Davies, Callum O'Dowda, Andy Rinomhota, Mahlon Romeo and Kion Etete on the bench - most of whom Bluebirds fans would be more than happy to see in the starting XI, let alone offering good back-up from the bench.
That's quite a bit of strength in depth, you know, and has been created as a result of the imaginative roles handed to Sawyers and Philogene and the captures of Wickham and Kaba.
Callum Robinson, perhaps Cardiff's best player, is still to come back in the mix after injury, while the likes of Mark Harris and Joel Bagan are also on the fringes if required.
That's not a bad little squad to head into the final throes of the season with, as the games start to come thick and fast again.
Lot of room for improvement still
This is the beauty of it, whatever the change in results and mindset, you just know there remains lots of room for improvement.
Cardiff do need greater creativity, they have to start scoring first-half goals, how does Lamouchi work the craft of Colwill and the direct running and blinding pace of Davies into the mix?
Lamouchi has only been there a while, remember, and is still getting to know his players, get his own methods across.
But from the base they are starting to have, these are good things to ponder over.
Planning for next season is part of that improvement, of course, and dealing with those transfer issues in the summer.
Time to make CCS a fortress again
Whether Wales or Cardiff City are playing, there are few grounds quite as rocking as Cardiff City Stadium when the fans are in full voice. We know what effect the Canton End can have, but that energises the entire crowd.
The team and the fans need to be as one, many is the time those supporters have driven the Bluebirds - and Wales - over the line at the CCS.
But Cardiff had lost their home fortress, with supporters understandably losing belief in the side and in successive managers.
Back-to-back home wins and clean sheets indicate change is in the wind. The Bluebirds are a fair bit away from what the ground was when Neil Warnock, Malky Mackay and Dave Jones were in charge, a venue where opponents almost feared to tread, but it's a major step in the right direction again under Lamouchi.
Saturday was a fantastic vibe.
The relegation picture
Let's just say it's looking a lot more rosy for Cardiff, even though they are still very much down at the wrong end of the table.
The Bluebirds have created a six-point buffer between themselves and the bottom three of Blackpool, Wigan and Huddersfield. Just a couple of weeks or so back, the gap was negligible - and those teams each had games in hand.
It looked ominous. The Bluebirds could so easily have been rock bottom, with an entirely different mentality. Suddenly a crucial gap has appeared and Cardiff have also closed in on teams above like QPR. Birmingham, and even Swansea City, Stoke and Reading, sides Lamouchi will be eyeing as he looks to climb the table.
But first things first. There are massive games coming up away to Rotherham and Blackpool, which Cardiff cannot afford to lose, otherwise the pressure comes back on.
Their last home game is against Neil Warnock's Huddersfield, which many have viewed as a likely relegation six-pointer.
Hopefully, by then, Cardiff's worries will actually have eased significantly and the fingernails can be rescued.
It's very early days, but already Lamouchi and Bamba are starting to provide that belief.
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