Gary Johnson paid tribute to his new-look Yeovil Town side after the basement-dwellers held high-flying Preston North End to a 1-1 draw at Deepdale.
The Glovers, who led through Gozie Ugwu's first-half stoppage-time strike, were heading off the foot of the Sky Bet League 1 table until North End substitute Sylvan Ebanks-Blake scored his first goal in 21 months 14 minutes from time.It meant Yeovil are still propping up the division on goals scored but, following on from Saturday's win at Bradford City, Johnson sees encouraging signs from his patched-up squad.
"We came here to Preston with a team that has got two lads making their league debuts and two young, inexperienced centre-backs," said Johnson, who only named five substitutes, two of which were goalkeepers.
"I was really pleased with the first-half performance and I thought we deserved that goal.
"In the second half they showed their Championship qualities, getting in cross after cross. We dealt with most of them and didn't deal with one.
"A 1-1 we'd have taken at the start of the game; we're disappointed as we were 1-0 up but that new team in there has got four points in two games. That's what we need to get ourselves out of trouble."
The visitors were even dejected they only came away with a share of the spoils but Johnson saw the bigger picture.
"If we had gone 1-0 down and then scored a goal in the last minute it would be like we'd just won a cup final," he noted.
"I think it was because we were 1-0 up and ended up drawing that the lads were disappointed."