Alex Neil praised his Sunderland players for carrying out their gameplan to the letter as the Black Cats earned a deserved win at promotion-chasing Wigan Athletic.
The Black Cats have slipped out of the automatic promotion race since the turn of the year but are still fighting for a play-off place.
And their win at the DW Stadium - their first under Neil, in what was his fourth game in charge - lifted them to fifth in the table and equally importantly gave them a much-needed morale boost.
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Neil said: "There have always been a lot of challenges since day one but it's really nice when we come away from home against a good team, win 3-0, keep a clean sheet, and most importantly send the fans home happy - I thought they were terrific throughout the game, they backed us throughout the match and it was a nice feeling to reward them with a win, because we hadn't done that since I've been here.
"We employed a different strategy today because we knew they would want to turn the ball and they are really effective getting down the sides, so we needed to stop crosses coming into the box which we did in the main.
"We knew we would always be a threat on the counter-attack and in transition, and we were.
"I'm really pleased. Everything we spoke about in the week, the lads carried out to a tee really, and I thought we thoroughly deserved our win.
"The players have done their jobs to a really high level and that's why we won the game, however the next game will be different again and it will put different demands on us.
"I'm certainly not naive enough to think that we can go out and play that way every week because different opponents pose different problems, but I thought we got the gameplan spot on today and the lads carried it out very well.
"Football is a simple game - we complicate it sometimes by talking a lot of cr*p.
"The fact is that we need to make sure we do the simple things well, which we did today - we competed, we won our headers, we picked up second balls, we had moments of quality at the top end of the pitch - and if you do that really well, and if you've got quality within your group which we have, then it comes to the fore.
"Today is a really good platform for us to have a bit of belief and confidence going into the remaining games.
"I said to the players before the game that we need to prove to ourselves, and to prove to everybody else, that we can stand up to these types of physical challenges.
"Even at half-time, the discussion was 'now you've done it for 45 minutes, have you got the steel to see it through?'
"I think players like challenges like that."
Bailey Wright headed the Black Cats in front inside the first two minutes, before Ross Stewart added the second from the penalty spot shortly before half-time.
And Stewart scored his second goal, and Sunderland's third, from the penalty spot a couple of minutes from the end.
Sunderland also kept a clean sheet, with centre-back Arbenit Xhemajli making his League One debut despite having played only one EFL Trophy game since recovering from the serious knee ligament injury that kept him out for more than a year.
Xhemajli played in the absence of Callum Doyle, who was rested, and Danny Batth who missed out due to injury.
"It's not been easy, and even today we lost two centre-backs before the game," said Neil.
"Arby hasn't played in a long, long, time, so I was delighted for him that he got an opportunity and he put in a really solid performance.
"He was really, really hungry to play, but like anyone else who hasn't been playing he tired and he went down towards the latter part of the game and that's always the concern.
"I think he should be OK, but it's just a case of trying to get people up to speed.
"What I would say is that because we didn't deploy a man-for-man system like we have done in one or two of the other games, that back line didn't get dragged about.
"We were really solid, played narrow, played tight, and the wide players and the forwards did the bulk of the running in the game, so we demanded a lot of their legs today.
"We just had one moment where their guy got slipped in and Patto [goalkeeper Anthony Patterson] made a really good save and that moment changed the dynamic of the game.
"In recent weeks those moments have damaged us, but today it didn't."
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