It was a great night, all the more welcome because Blues fans have been so starved of success at home. As we all know, it was our first league win on home turf in this calendar year. That’s a long, painful wait.

Hopefully it will signal take-off for our season. The signs are certainly there. The performance was several levels above what we had seen previously.

There are only two questions which really matter during this rebuilding process. The first is how long will it take this group of individuals to gel? On the evidence of a Friday night, that process is well underway.

The second question is, once the team has knitted together, how good can they be? In all honesty, no-one knows the answer to that. Not even Kieran McKenna. But the performance against Sheffield United definitely leaves us full of hope!

Jaden Philogene was superb(Image: Steve Waller)

There were so many positives to take from that game. Let’s start with the obvious one, and hat-trick hero Jaden Philogene.

The winger has, frankly, been underwhelming since arriving at the start of the year, but on Friday night he was absolutely brilliant. A player transformed.

All three goals were terrific, each one better than the one before. I really hope it is the start of something big for a clearly talented player, and the beginning of a really good relationship between him and the Portman Road faithful.

I loved the way he was persuaded to do the celebratory fist-pumps at the end, although they definitely need a bit more practice!

While Philogene deservedly grabbed the headlines, there was another, less high profile performance which pleased me almost as much.

Darnell Furlong looked solid(Image: Ross Halls)

Darnell Furlong had a really solid debut at right-back, and he will be an important player for us. How good it will be to have a proper, genuine right-back, as opposed to our usual trick of converting a centre-half, like Luke Chambers and Axel Tuanzebe, or a right-winger, like Carlos Edwards.

Another encouraging aspect of the game was the continuing improvement of the crucial midfield partnership of Jens Cajuste and Azor Matusiwa.

I’m so pleased we managed to keep Cajuste. He is a real Rolls-Royce of a footballer, with mightily impressive, silky skills. Certainly one of our most important players.

George Hirst got an important goal for his confidence(Image: Steve Waller)

It was also good to see George Hirst back on the scoresheet. He’s been looking a little short of confidence in recent games and hopefully that slightly bizarre goal will lift him. They all count!

Of course, we saw no fewer than three league debuts. As well as Furlong, Marcelino Núñez and Sindre Walle Egeli also saw their first action for Town.

Naturally, Núñez was given a hero’s welcome after his controversial move down the A140 from our friends at Carrow Road. I know Sheffield United had collapsed by the time he came on, but nonetheless he was impressive, neat and tidy on the ball with good skills. Plus he has a useful-looking free-kick.

Egeli looked a little bit overwhelmed, if I’m honest. It might take him a little bit of time to acclimatise to the rough and tumble of the Championship.

Inevitably, there’s a cautionary note. Sheffield United attacked in numbers from kick-off. It made for a really entertaining game, but it also played right into our hands.

Marcelino Nunez enjoyed his debut(Image: Steve Waller)

I lost count of the number of times we caught them on the break, with attackers like Philogene being given acres of space to create havoc. Unfortunately, I can’t believe many (if any) teams will repeat Sheffield United’s mistake. More likely we’ll have to combat the kind of tactics we saw from Derby. Deep joy!

It was great to see us win at Portman Road at long last, especially with such an impressive performance under the lights.

Let’s hope we can really kick on now, with the confidence and hopefully the momentum we will gain from a very memorable Friday evening.