Walsall boss Mat Sadler has praised his team after they secured a bonus point victory against Birmingham City in their opening Bristol Street Motors Trophy outing of the season on Tuesday evening.
Joined in Southern Group A by Shrewsbury Town and Fulham's Under-21s, the Saddlers took two points from the game as Charlie Lakin's opener was cancelled out by Christoph Klarer with five-minutes of normal time remaining.
With the Saddlers triumphing in the post-match shoot-out, the gaffer looked back through the game before praising the 1,000-strong travelling support.
Speaking to George Bennett of the Express & Star, Sadler said: "They're a hell of a team, a hell of a squad but we knew coming here that it was going to be really difficult.
"We've got a load of players who weren't able to play tonight. So we knew even more that we were going to be heavily reliant on the core there that did.
"We had to be incredibly organised and very good out of possession. Then when we got our opportunities, we had to take them.
"I thought the first half was maybe tried a little bit too soon to beat them on the counter and our first pass wasn't quite as it needed to be to hurt them.
"And in the second half, something we spoke about was getting down that left-hand side and Connor did incredibly well and Dave plays a fantastic ball into him.
"We get our rewards from that hard work. It was an incredibly good performance. Different from what we've seen in the league and we're going to have to do that in many games this season.
"Just delighted to give the supporters the evening that they had there because to have over one-thousand fans on a Tuesday night in the Bristol Street Motors Trophy is unbelievable support."