It might not have been the performance - or the result - he wanted, but Nottingham Forest boss Steve Cooper was pleased with the dressing room reaction of his players on Tuesday night.
A flat display saw the Reds struggle to get into the game at Preston North End, after a bright opening 10 minutes.
Still, they soaked up long spells of pressure and came away with a point in a 0-0 draw.
And Cooper says his squad are eager to prove they are better than they showed in midweek, when Bristol City come to the City Ground on Saturday.
“I don’t want to dwell on Tuesday night. It wasn’t a disaster. We don’t want to be negative about things when a lot of positive things are going on,” he said.
“We just want to strive to improve all the time.
“We could have nicked it in the last minute when Djed (Spence) got in down the side, and I still would have been saying the same thing.
“It’s not always about the result. We look at the performances as well, because I believe performances, and playing the way we want to play, if you get it right, earns you enough points to be where you want to be.
“We will always analyse performances, regardless of results, because we have a way of playing, so we’ve got something to compare it to.
“There were lots of things that we looked at that we liked, and there were certainly things we didn’t like.
“We’ve gone through it with the players, they always feed back and give their views as well. They care.
“I’m really pleased that some players have come off the pitch thinking, ‘I’m a better player than that’. They will want to play better in the next game.
“That’s a sign that reassures me. It shows we’re trying to set the right standards.
“I don’t want to paint a negative picture. We’re doing alright. We’ve just got to keep going.”
The midweek stalemate made it successive draws for Forest, leaving them five points below the play-off places ahead of this weekend’s clash.
Cooper says he has set his squad a clear challenge when it comes to taking on the Robins.
“I don’t like it when we don’t play well. Even if we win, it still doesn’t sit right with me if we don’t play at the level I want us to play, because I really believe in this set of players,” he said.
“We can play some excellent stuff when we’re at it.
“Okay, we didn’t play well, but we still kept a clean-sheet, we’ve still got a point and some players played well.
“We will always take the positives out of things. But we will always look at how we should do better as well.
“It’s a good sign that the players were slightly downbeat after the game on Tuesday, because they probably looked at themselves and thought, ‘I’m a better player than that’. That’s good, I like that.
“Obviously don’t try to do that again!”
He added: “It was a good reminder for me to tell the players that the reason we want to play a certain way is because I’m a believer that performances get you the results you deserve over the course of the season.
“That was an example of not playing to our level and not getting the result we wanted. We need to learn from that. But we’re over it now.
“I’ve been very clear with the players that the challenge for Saturday is simple, we’ve just got to play better.”
