Burnley boss Scott Parker praised his side’s ruthlessness as they thrashed relegation-haunted Plymouth 5-0 at Home Park.
Braces from Zian Flemming and Josh Laurent plus a Josh Cullen effort put the Clarets out of sight by half-time.
And their biggest away win of the season kept them within three points of leaders Leeds ahead of Monday’s meeting at Turf Moor.
“I thought we were superb tonight,” Parker said.
“The players were absolutely first class.
“We were just ruthless tonight.
“I thought first half, everything about us really was good. We came here with a real idea and gameplan and obviously we set it up as coaches and it’s down to players to then execute it.
“We needed to come here with a mentality and a mindset about us. This is a tough place to come.
“I know people look at league tables and may see it very differently but (I see) new manager in, and an aggressive team.
“I played against this coach once in Belgium and had some struggles in the sense of how he sets up teams so knew the challenge here.
“But I was pleased tonight we have come away with a few goals as well.
“Every game is going to big for us from now on.
“We now go into a massive game (against Leeds).”
Plymouth are now six points adrift of safety and have by far the worst goal difference in the league.
Argyle’s new head coach Miron Muslic said: “A tough one for sure. I take full responsibility for the performance and full responsibility for the result.
“Again very similar to QPR, we gave the first goal away on a silver plate to the opponent due to an individual mistake.
“OK, that’s football and this can happen but then the reaction was the team gave up in this moment by not really showing the desire to fight until the end and (then) you go into half-time with a five goal difference.
“It takes a lot of courage to get out of the locker room and continue playing for the next 45 minutes and I demanded this courage. Not to change the result, because that was impossible, but to face this tough and harsh reality and this might help us for the next time, for the next couple of weeks.
“We have to be brave. We need to get another mentality, another energy inside.
“What happened today has happened a couple of times already this season.
“The most important thing is to support the squad we have here with reinforcements and then we can start the challenge again.
“Hopefully we have some positive news with this.
“As soon as we get reinforcements in we can start to be competitive again.”
