Blackpool players will have been training with a spring in their steps and a new sense of belief ahead of Saturday’s game at Bloomfield Road against Coventry City.

After a week in which the players learnt an awful lot about themselves, the key lesson has been that the team can win any league match this season if the preparation and application is right.

Last week’s depressing display at Turf Moor was swept aside when the Seasiders confounded everybody by winning 1-0 at the home of promotion favourites Birmingham City.

It was a result, backed up by a great performance, which sets a new standard for the club.

It surely ranks as the best result by a Blackpool team since the 1970s.

Simon Grayson’s thinking this week should be quite straightforward - he will not want to make any changes to his starting eleven for the visit of the Sky Blues on Saturday.

The Seasiders beat Coventry 4-0 at Bloomfield Road last season, aided by the sending off of Coventry striker Kevin Kyle.

With Simon Coleman now in charge, and strikers Freddy Eastwood, Clinton Morrison and Michael Mifsud to contend with, there is no room for complacency for Grayson’s players.

But the performances of Steve Kabba, who gets better with every game (he was missing at Burnley due to an injury), are raising the bar and enabling the Seasiders to really believe they can compete higher up the division than last season.

Indeed, they currently lie in what is nose bleed territory for the club - tenth place in the Championship.

David Vaughan, who started on the left of midfield in place of the dropped Adam Hammill, looks a fantastic signing too.

This makes the loss of Wes Hoolahan seem like no big deal - and the leadership and defending of captain Rob Edwards are enabling fans to forget all about ex-skipper Michael Jackson and Latvian Kaspars Gorkss.

Vaughan and Edwards have effectively replaced Hoolahan and Gorkss in last season’s line-up, and Kabba has added more quality and spice up front.

The side is otherwise much the same as before, meaning that continuity has been supplemented by a bit of extra quality up front, and a little extra tightness at the back in the shape of Edwards.

When you realise that Birmingham had not lost at home since January, when Chelsea won 1-0 at St Andrews, and in that time had played the likes of Arsenal, and Liverpool and had won their first three home games of this season without conceding a goal, you can understand the unusual odds - especially when you consider Blackpool’s away form last season.

The Birmingham squad from last season’s Premiership campaign has been kept almost intact, and they had started the season with six wins and a draw prior to Blackpool’s visit.

And the margin of the Seasiders’ victory could easily have been greater than the single goal, scored by Gary Taylor-Fletcher just after half time.