It was a good night's work for West Ham United as they ran out 3-0 winners against Rot-Weiss Erfurt.
Assistant manager Neil McDonald was satisfied with the performance after the team showed what they are capable of in the second half, but praised the Hammers' opponents for their steely first-half display.
"It was a good night for us and we took our chances," McDonald said. "I thought that Rot-Weiss did very well in the first half and I think for some of our players it was a bit hot, so we took a while to get going.
"The second half saw the chances come along for us and we took those chances. Even in pre-season, when these chances do come to you, you have to take them. All in all, it was very good for us. When the sun went down, it gave us a little breather and I then think we showed what we are capable of.
"Having said that Stephen Henderson made two fantastic saves in the first half and we had to defend really well early on but then found what we needed to do in the second half."
With a mix of young and more experienced professionals on the pitch, McDonald was pleased with how the Hammers linked up and explained the thinking behind the team selection.
"We rested some of our senior professionals. Kevin Nolan, our captain, badly bruised his toe in our last match at the weekend so he was not going to feature in the match anyway.
"For some of the other senior boys, they have been training really hard in the last few days and we decided to just rest them, but they should be ready for our match with Dresden on Friday."
McDonald has been impressed with everything since arriving in Dresden on Monday and hopes the week of training in the sun will hopefully reap the benefits come 18 August when life back in the Barclays Premier League begins.
"We have a real competitive start but a real chance of picking up points in these early games. We have just been promoted into a very tough league, so it was important we made a good start in pre-season, getting everyone very sharp.
"It is one of the reasons we came to Germany. We wanted to work a lot to improve fitness and now we need to do a bit more technical work, work on our movement play and to be ready for the start of the season which starts against Aston Villa at home.
"It is fantastic to be here, since we came here we have been really impressed with the set-up and the way we have been looked after. We are looking forward to be spending the next few days here."