Bristol City go into the international break flying off the back of a home win, that if wasn't won in dazzling fashion, may be just as brilliant in the final reckoning come May 2020.
Reading pushed all the way on Saturday but obstinate City held firm - with the Robins now having kept three clean sheets in their last four home games.
Afterwards the head coach was asked how he felt about regaining a place in the top six of the table, even at this early juncture of the season.
"It’s massive, how many key players have we got out?" asked Johnson.
"Jay Dasilva, Korey Smith, Tomas Kalas, Adam Nagy, we’ve got Afobe but that’s almost gone so to be in this position with the players like for example Taylor Moore, having played as many as he has and playing as well as he is, I think is massive credit to him and the staff and the collective.
"Two points off the top, scrapping and dogging for every point, every time the ball goes up in the air we’ve got three or four guys around it and that sums up what has put us in a good position.
"We’ve got ability but I still think we’re in fourth gear and we’ve got another gear left and as time goes on, everything comes together and we’ll have that," he added.
Meanwhile, on last weekend's opposition there were kind words for the Royals boss.
The Reading manager Jose Gomes said in his post-match press conference that if he didn’t have the team behind him, he’d walk straight into the boardroom and ask to go, but Johnson is still backing his Portuguese adversary.
"I think he’s a brilliant manager, a fantastic fella, you saw the problems, it actually - as a tactical battle - was really interesting today, when I go back to review my performance, I know I came up against a top manager today and the way he made the changes, the way he made the tweaks caused us a problem in the second half," he said.
"We had to deal with it and you saw I had to change the shape to deal with it, then I had to change personnel to give us a bit of energy and we had to hang on in there and credit to the boys for doing that," said the Bristol City boss.
Johnson now heads to Spain to watch England U19s take on France U19s in Marbella. A game that may see Han-Noah Massengo play for his country.
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