Captain Alan Browne wants his Preston North End teammates to take confidence from the victory at Huddersfield Town ahead of a busy run of festive fixtures.
The skipper opened the scoring for his side in West Yorkshire as North End came out 3-1 winners to secure a first three-point haul since the November international break.
There’s now plenty of games just around the corner, with Watford at home this Saturday, before a four-match period around Christmas and New Year.
Browney said: “I think especially over the last few weeks, things haven’t gone our way.
“We’ve been unfortunate in certain aspects and in other aspects we just haven’t been good enough so the last two results now are looking really good for us.
“It’s a busy period where you can really make a statement or you can go the other way. Hopefully for us it’s about making a statement.
“We can take a lot of confidence from the win tonight having played some really good stuff and we did the dirty work when needed as well.
“We’ll be going into Saturday with a lot of confidence.”
The victory at the John Smith’s Stadium followed a goalless draw in East Anglia which saw the Lilywhites bring a three-match losing streak to a halt.
That was always the main target for Ryan Lowe in his gameplan for the clash with Norwich, and the three points gained against the Terriers helps that point at Carrow Road look even better.
“I think we needed it,” said Browney, about the win at Huddersfield.
“Over the last few weeks we’ve been really disappointed with results. I think performances have been up and down.
“Going to Norwich the other day, it was just about getting a result because off the back of three in a row that we lost, you need to just grind it out.
“You need to get something from the game and that’s what we went and did.
“Coming here tonight, we wanted to take all three points so we set out to do that and thankfully we came up trumps.”
North End looked pretty comfortable from the off, helped by the captain’s opener inside three minutes, before Will Keane sent the visitors into the break two to the good.
The home side responded, though, and were level early in the second half, but Ben Whiteman restored the two-goal lead and helped PNE regain control of the match.
“I think their goal rocked us a bit and they were on top at that stage of the game,” Browney admitted.
“It didn’t just come from luck. They changed things and came at us with real intent and got their goal, so to get that third one was a bit of a relief because having gone a few games without a win you’re just desperate to get the win.
“Sometimes you can make decisions that you wouldn’t normally make, so to get the third one was really important and we knew we’d see it out from there.”