NEIL Lennon gave a thumbs-up to his “breathtaking” Wanderers after their three-goal destruction of Cardiff City.

Two goals from Liam Feeney and a second-half strike from Matt Mills left the Whites boss clutching for superlatives.

“It was exactly the style of performance I was looking for,” he said. “We matched Cardiff for tempo over the course of the game but the quality of our football going forward was at times breathtaking.

“It’s hard to pick out individuals because I think more or less everyone was at the top of their game tonight.”

After defeat at Norwich on Friday, Lennon had challenged his side to get back on track and they did so in style, racking up their biggest home win since the derby demolition job on Blackburn Rovers in March.

“I knew we could play better and they showed that tonight,” the manager said. “The standard is that – I’m not expecting us to play that well every single week but I’m definitely not expecting us to play as disappointingly as we did against Norwich.

“We can’t go win-loss-win-loss-win, I want to find some consistency, but that was really the reaction I was looking for.”

Lennon made three changes, bringing Feeney back on the wing, putting Craig Davies up front and Josh Vela at right-back for his first start of the campaign.

Feeney nearly took home the match-ball, missing two decent chances to complete his hat-trick.

And the Wanderers boss dished out special praise for Davies and Vela, two of the outstanding performers on the night.

“I was delighted for both of them,” he said. “Craig gave everything and his quality on the ball is improving all the time. He wants to get better so he’s giving us a lot of food for thought going forward.

“Josh is a good footballer. He just got the nod over Oscar (Threlkeld) in terms of maturity. Oscar may be slightly better defensively but I felt we needed something more from our full-backs in an attacking sense.”

One note of worry for the Whites going into Friday’s derby against Wigan Athletic was the second-half withdrawal of Mark Davies, who was complaining of double vision.

Captain Jay Spearing, who had been dropped to the bench, has also been suffering from a minor hamstring problem.