Saturday 22 November 2014 18:42, UK
Nottingham Forest manager Stuart Pearce hailed his players for the way that they have kick-started their season after a clinical display against Wolves put their promotion hopes back on course.
Second-half goals from Britt Assombalonga, Matty Fryatt and Henri Lansbury made it a 3-0 win at Molineux and saw Forest complete back to back victories after a run of nine Championship games without a win.
Pearce said: "Both defensively and offensively we did very well. We had seen that in training over the last couple of weeks.
"That attitude of the players has been very good. They have had their tails up. We have taken our training performance into the game.
"We have seen first hand how the confidence and the mood of the camp has lifted. Confidence is a real commodity in professional sport we know that.
"It becomes a bit more fragile when you drop away from the real top end of the game - the top end of the Premiership and international football.
"But they have shown me over the last couple of weeks that their tails have been up.
"They have been really focused and we are just pleased with the result and performance and we need to keep edging forward.
"It will chop and change right to the death and the teams that have been most consistent will be the ones who are in the top six."
Lansbury starred for Forest but Pearce admitted he had not been due to start the game until he impressed in training.
Pearce added: "Thursday he wasn't in the team. His performances in training and his mentality got better and I changed my team selection on Thursday afternoon on what I saw in training.
"If we are to be a successful side, Lansbury has to contribute with performances and goals."
Before Assombalonga scored his 11th goal of the season following his 5.5m summer switch from Peterborough United, Wolves goalkeeper Carl Ikeme had kept Forest at bay.
But once Assombalonga converted Fryatt's cross in the 65th minute the result was never in doubt. Fryatt doubled their advantage when he headed home Lansbury's corner three minutes later and then Lansbury netted seven minutes from time.
That made it 10 goals conceded in three games and three successive defeats for Wolves and manager Kenny Jackett admitted he needs to quickly find a way to plug the gaps in his side's defence.
"We didn't have enough to get back in the game," he said. "That is now 10 goals against in three games which is poor and only one scored and that is a big swing.
"It is obviously something we need to address and very quickly.
"It is not a one off situation. As a defence and and a team we need to defend better and if we have periods of defending be resolute and not concede and have a threat coming out the other way and we didn't have enough of that today.
"We have to adjust to the division. We didn't have the players to get the strikes in the other end and then at the other end Forest made it very difficult for us.
"We have gone from being a compact unit to conceding some poor goals.
"For us we have to look to defend better. The goals against column is poor and you look at the stats of the last three games and they do tell their own story and we do need to improve.
"For the home side our goalkeeper had to work too much. We need to find an equation at the back that stops these goals going in and then going the other way be a threat.
"Both areas have to be addressed very quickly and we need to come out with a more pacey and competitive performance that can disturb the opposition which we didn't do enough today."
