Steve Morison waxed lyrical about his Cardiff City players after a bodies-on-the-line performance helped them beat Birmingham City on Saturday.
The Bluebirds were more than decent value for their 1-0 win, thanks to Jaden Philogene's first-half goal. In truth it should have been a lot more, but a number of big opportunities were missed against the Blues.
But defensively they were fantastic and no one embodied that more than Mahlon Romeo, the player who earned the star man accolade in WalesOnline's player ratings, which you can read here.
READ MORE : Cardiff player ratings as star puts in monster performance and winger is driving force in Birmingham win
"I thought he set the tone today," the Bluebirds boss said of Romeo. "That tackle in the first few minutes got everyone off their seats and I thought he was excellent.
"He's solid. He is a different player to the one I played with, he is a bit more defence-minded than he was previously. We are actually trying to bring out a bit of old Mahlon, the one who is galloping, and I thought he did that at the start of the game. He travelled with the ball really well.
"I thought he was excellent and I thought JC (Jamilu Collins) was excellent. Perry came back in, we saw how much we missed him when he didn't play.
"The pleasing thing is we didn't score the chances but we created them. If we keep creating chances like that I'm sure we will score more than we don't."
Cardiff displayed a swagger which was pleasing for both the manager and the 18,000-plus in attendance at Cardiff City Stadium. And Morison thought his side were good value for the win.
"The first half we were tremendous and the second half we started on fire and should have scored another one," he added.
"We went a bit flat, they got half a foothold in the game. But the changes worked in our favour, but we should have had a couple more, but on the whole I'm really pleased.
"I enjoyed the whole thing. I got more anxious as it went on, because we were so dominant but then I kept thinking, 'Oh, they're going to score here'.
"I just said to them in there, that's what it takes. It's no different to the Norwich game, we did the same thing and we created a few more chances. People are getting more confident. Fitter, stronger. And we have to limit other teams. We limited Norwich to a very small number of chances to score goals and we limited Birmingham to a small number of chances to score goals.
"I'm pleased as punch now sitting here. Because if I was sitting here with a draw now I'd have been devastated."
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