Declan Devine believes his Bohemians side remain in a great place despite a chastening derby defeat to Shamrock Rovers in front of the home support at Dalymount Park on Friday night.
Bohs made an excellent start to the SSE Airtricity League Premier Division clash but succumbed to goals from Neil Farrugia and Rory Gaffney in each half to slip to a 2-0 loss against the reigning champions.
But the Phibsboro-based side are still top of the league with the season passing the quarter mark after their next match at Devine's former club Derry City on Monday night.
It was not a position many would have expected Bohs to occupy at this stage of the season and the club's manager was keen to accentuate the positives about their situation despite a disappointing night on the pitch.
"We're in a very good place. If you'd have offered me the wins that we have at the start of the season, I'd have bit your hand off," Devine told RTÉ Sport.
"We've started the season superbly well but we go onto one more game in this round of games and if we don't get any points in that, we'll still have started really well.
"But we'll get ourselves ready now for Monday. If you had offered this (points haul) at the start with a brand new group of players, 14 players coming in, Dublin derby losing it (I'm) not happy but we have to accept that and tonight probably a better team won.
"But at the same time, whenever we're in a really strong position for the opening 35, 40 minutes, you've got to take your chances in these games and make sure that you punish the opposition the way they did with the chances they had tonight."
Shamrock Rovers' opener came on 44 minutes via Farrugia whose run into the box was not tracked, while Gaffney profited from space at the far post to double that lead in the second half.
Devine rued those defensive mistakes from his Bohs side and feels lessons will need to be learned.
"We didn't stamp any authority on the game in the second half. I think it's something to look back on and we have to assess," he said.
"You can concede the goal when we did but we've got to look at the bigger picture and say you've got to put that at the back of your mind and you've got to go out and start the second half the way we started the first half and then you probably get back in the game.
"But the two goals we gave away were very disappointing and we have to learn from that and move on."
Shamrock Rovers manager Stephen Bradley was delighted with his side who have now won two on the trot, after failing to win any of their first six games.
The Hoops boss was especially pleased having lost a host of players to illness prior to kick-off, with Gary O'Neill, Richie Towell, Aaron Greene and Ronan Finn unavailable and Johnny Kenny unable to start.
"Sean Hoare was struggling as well. Richie dropped out yesterday. Gary dropped out late today. Sean Kavanagh was struggling early in the week, it spread to other players. It seemed to be just a bug, a 48 hour thing," he said, before touching on how they weathered the storm as Bohs dominated the first 20 minutes before the tide shifted towards Rovers.
"We knew they'd come like that, being at home we knew they'd try and get the crowd involved. We spoke about using our experience and managing the game, be ready for that wave and deal with it and play our way into the game.
"We did that really well, after 15 minutes we took control of the game and from that point on I felt we looked really strong."
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