Dundalk manager Ciaran Kilduff said his team were "on a good trajectory" after their 3-2 win over Shelbourne at Tolka Park.
With one quarter of the league completed, the newly promoted Dundalk have lost just once in nine games, their win over the 2024 champions propelling them to fourth in the table.
Kilduff's side have dug out impressive draws away to both Shamrock Rovers and Bohemians, with their only major setback coming in a 4-0 loss to St Patrick's Athletic in Inchicore.
Friday's victory means they've taken 10 points from their last four games but the Dundalk boss is maintaining a cautious outlook.
"It's fairly early. We're 25% of the way through," Kilduff told RTÉ Sport.
"At the end of the year, we'll look back and maybe some of those people who wrote us off as relegation fodder, they might still be right.
"We're in a good run. You can go through a bad run too.
"But I think I have a great dressing room. I have a great staff. I think the club's really in a good place right now.
"Obviously our owner, Chris [Clinton], has come in at a time and he's backed us and allowed us to bring in some of these players.
"We're on a good trajectory right now. But we're going to play a team on Monday that beat us 4-0.
"There's a reality to these things too. We're on the crest of a wave right now. We just hope we can keep on it for as long as we can."
Dundalk secured their first away win of the season in an anarchic encounter in Drumcondra, in which the Drumcondra Stand over the tunnel was reopened to spectators once again.
The visitors led 2-0 at the break thanks to Gbemi Arubi's backwards nodded header and Bobby Burns' strike from just inside the box.
They surrendered that advantage midway through the second half, Zeno Rossi turning home Sean Gannon's cross to pull one back, minutes before John Martin slid in at the back post to level the game from a Dan Kelly delivery.
Eoin Kenny, back from Northern Ireland duty, helped manufacture the winner for Dundalk, flashing over a cross which Rossi proceeded to divert past Wessel Speel and into the roof of his own net.
"I think a lot of our games this year have been a bit like that, where we've gone after teams. We give up chances but we create a lot too," said Kilduff.
"We punished them in the first half. I obviously felt we had a load of chances in the second half, maybe even to put the game to bed.
"But then obviously the quality they possess, the changes they made, they came back into it really, really strongly.
"Either team could have won it there at the end but I felt that maybe we had that little bit of magic.
"I think we've had some really good performances this year.I thought second half in Tallaght we were really, really good.
"I thought for a lot of the game in Dalymount last week we were good.
"I just think when we play with that energy and we're on the front foot, we can impose ourselves fairly strongly on games and I thought we did. I thought we were impressive in a lot of our play tonight."
