Liam Buckley hailed St Pat's best display of the season after their 4-0 destruction of Wexford Youths on Friday night, and warned the Saints' rivals they have the scope to keep getting better.
A Conan Byrne brace, added to strikes from Mark Timlin and Christy Fagan, moved Pat's up to third place in the SSE Airtricity League Premier Division table.
They dug out a 1-0 win at Finn Harps last Monday night and with champions Dundalk up next, Buckley is confident his team is starting to gel.
“It’s probably the best we’ve played this season," he said. "We linked it in really well, created loads of chances and got some great goals.
“It’s back to the way we play. That has to be a benchmark for us going on. We controlled the tempo of the game because we had the ball for the bulk of it. The movement was really good off the ball for the guys who were on it. I thought overall our play was really really good.
“It was a difficult game up in Finn Harps, it always is up there, but to pick up six points is great. We can look forward to Dundalk on Monday.
"We’ve got quite a few new players into the group, they're all bedding in well. We’ve a lot of top players on the group. Just collectively we have to get better and I’ve no doubt we will. There’s plenty of positives."
Wexford Youths boss Shane Keegan lamented an "awful" first-half performance from the visitors, and said they simply cannot afford to sleepwalk out of the traps like they did at Richmond Park.
"It was down to us being awful for the first 30 minutes of the game. You can't come to a team like this and not be seen to compete for 30 minutes.
"It was a very good response in the second half but it's all pointless by that stage. That's the first time that things have gone really really wrong.
"We need to look at ourselves and make sure we don;t put in another 30 minutes like that again."
