Shrewsbury Town boss Paul Hurst praised his sides fighting spirit as they came from a goal down to beat Rochdale 3-2.
Goals from Shaun Whalley, Carlton Morris and Stefan Payne gave Town the victory, their third in a row at the start of the League One season.
“I thought it would be our biggest test in terms of how they keep the ball”, admitted Paul.
“I thought they would commit men forward and certainly at the start of the second half that’s what they did and we were pushed back at that point.
“I thought we’d had enough chances to maybe make it a bit more comfortable, but it’s good because at 1-0 down I wrote ‘first test’ and that was answered emphatically by the players.
“I’m disappointed with the first goal because we gave the ball away in a silly area and I’ve got no complaints about the penalty. The second one is a penalty as well, but it was a day where we showed a bit of spirit, but also played some really good football.”
Stefan Payne made a dream return to the Montgomery Waters Meadow by scoring the winner, but Paul praised all his strikers for their efforts.
“He got the winner against Rochdale last year, so I’m sure it wasn’t the news they wanted to hear”, said Hurst.
“We knew he’d go on and put himself about. He took his goal extremely well and physically he’s an extremely strong lad, so a good second debut
“I thought our second goal was excellent. We spoke about playing out from the back. Junior feeds Alex, Alex did what we keep banging on at him to do, which is to be extremely direct.
“It’s a great ball in and Carlton’s followed his run on and got an excellent goal. They didn’t really get close to the football on that occasion and that’s very difficult to play against.”
Hurst was delighted to make it three out of three, but he doesn’t want the players to get ahead of themselves.
“Just to win three games of football at any stage in the season is difficult”, Paul said.
“To start the season we spoke about winning the first game and to follow that up with two more results is great.
“I said to the players that they are getting a lot of plaudits and there is a lot of optimism at the minute, but at the same time it can very quickly be knocked out of you.
“The challenge was to come up with another good performance, which they did for large parts. Rochdale certainly had their moments, but I thought we more than held our own and looked a good team ourselves.”