The Belgian delivered a first Carrow Road league win of the season for those long-suffering supporters in an uplifting 3-1 home victory against QPR.

Oxford’s stoppage time leveller a few days earlier denied Clement all three points, but the new City head coach led the celebrations at the full-time whistle on Saturday with players and staff.

“It’s a massive positive that it was teamwork to get this result, and it was not only teamwork among the players and staff, but also with the fans,” he said. “From the beginning they were behind the team. This ’synergy’ to feel this is back is a massive thing, I think, for everybody in the club, for players, for staff and for fans. Unity.

“From the first second you felt also the confidence again. On Tuesday it started quietly in the stadium, where maybe everybody was with doubts, and you felt already during the Oxford game they started to see more and more what they wanted to see.

“Now it’s about confirmation, and that was one of my major points after Oxford. It’s about confirmation every time. It’s now very important that we don’t start to think we’re there. There’s still a lot of work to be done.

“There’s a massive job to be done still these next weeks and months to come, we’re by far not there yet where we want to be, where I want to be with the group, where the club want to be. So it’s about pushing the story and not losing things and not settling for a state of satisfaction.”

Clement hailed the resilience of his new side after QPR had cancelled out Emi Marcondes’ ninth minute strike.

“The team played really well in the first half, we found the spaces that we were trying to find we had trained on. We were comfortable on the ball. We were good on the ball. We were good also when we lost the ball,” he said. “A pity that we get a goal directly against us after we score the first goal.

“The positive on that side is that the players didn’t become nervous like it was in the past and they started to do other things. They just kept on going and doing what we’ve been pointing out this last week. That’s very important in football to stick to the plan, and we deserved to go in with that advantage at half-time.”