Climbing out of the relegation places will give Birmingham City a much-needed psychological boost, defender Martin Taylor believes.
The encouraging 1-1 draw at West Ham United on Saturday meant Blues' stay in the bottom three was a fleeting one after they slipped into the relegation zone following their disappointing stalemate against Derby County the previous week.
Taylor, who has started the last two games at the heart of the Birmingham defence after his Blues career appeared to be over, said the performance at the Boleyn Ground had given everyone at St Andrew's confidence ahead of the visit of league leaders Arsenal a week on Saturday.
"Psychologically, dropping into the relegation places last week was a bit of a downer for the lads, but now, with a bit of a break until our next league game, it is so much better to look at the table and see us not in the bottom three," he said.
"It was a hard working point earned and we knew beforehand that if we were going to get ourselves out of trouble we had to come to places like this and get a result.
"We could have done with three but we will take the one point."
Birmingham's tendency to concede soft early goals once again materialised as former Arsenal star Freddie Ljungberg opened the scoring after just seven minutes but Taylor said the way Blues bounced back had given every-one a lot of belief.
James McFadden earned the visitors the penalty that led to their equaliser, which the Scottish midfielder converted himself to register his first goal for the club since completing his £5 million move from Everton last month.
"They really came at us at the start and they had their best spell in the first five minutes," Taylor said.
"We had quite a few players away in the week on international duty and they were perhaps jaded from all the travelling.
"We found ourselves behind but we reacted very well and got ourselves back in the game. We deserved to be on level terms and we then rode it out for the rest of the game.
"We grew in confidence as the game went on. It is difficult when you are I the bottom three and you go a goal down, everyone starts looking around at each other, but we reacted well. They could have really given us a hard time but we dealt with it.
"We got our foot on the ball and used our outlets, like Gary McSheffrey on the left. He has put some decent balls in and the two lads up front did well to keep the ball up their end of the pitch against two decent centre halves.
"McFadden was obviously delighted to score the goal. He was desperate to grab the ball to take the penalty and he won the spot kick so no one was going to take it off him.
"It was a good finish and it is great for any player to get off the mark for your new club. Now we have to take confidence from this into the next game.
"We are a bit disappointed we didn't keep a clean sheet. When you don't concede for 84 minutes you think you could get a reward but it was just one mistake that led to the goal. I think I could have done better with the initial header and we didn't pick up their player in the box, but we improved after that.
"We felt comfortable, although they did put us under pressure. However, against some good players, we shut them out."
Meanwhile, West Ham have appealed against the red card shown to Lee Bowyer late on during Saturday's clash.
Referee Mark Clattenburg issued a straight red to the former Leeds United midfielder for an alleged two-footed challenge on Blues captain Damien Johnson. The case will be heard at Soho Square at 1pm today.
* Midfielder Borja Oubina has had his loan stint at Blues cancelled by mutual consent.
The Spaniard, who arrived at St Andrew's on a season-long loan spell from Celta Vigo in August, suffered a serious knee injury just 13 minutes into his full debut at Liverpool in September.
