Gary Johnson described Bristol City's position in the Coca-Championship table as "fantastic" after watching his side beat Plymouth Argyle 3-1 at Ashton Gate.

Victory kept the Robins in ninth place, just one point off the play-off positions. But perhaps more significantly, they closed the gap on Newcastle United and West Bromwich Albion to just three points after the joint leaders and promotion favourites suffered shock defeats at the hands of Scunthorpe United and Swansea City respectively.

Bristol City fans may have been disappointed by Saturday's 1-1 draw at home to Peterborough, but their team has now taken four points out of Newcastle and Albion in the space of four days to cement their position among the front-runners.

"People have been moaning and groaning, but they should have a look at the table now and see where we are," said Johnson.

"We've closed the gap on the top two and find ourselves in a fantastic position with 12 games gone.

"This is a great result and, although we have not moved up the table, we've clawed back four points on the top two and are now only three points behind them. We're about where we wanted to be at this stage of the season."

Made to wait for 73 minutes, Bristol City ran riot after Danny Haynes – recalled to the starting line-up for the first time since August 29 – opened the scoring.

Jamie Mackie netted a stunning equaliser two minutes later, but Jamie McCombe restored City's lead within 60 seconds and Argyle were finally cowed when Nicky Maynard unleashed an unstoppable drive from 20 yards to register his eighth goal of the season.

Bristol City's biggest win of the campaign will surely serve to restore confidence and Johnson said: "The boys will take a lot from this result and performance.

"Scoring those goals will do us a power of good and set us up nicely for the games to come."

Criticised by a section of supporters for his tactics and team selection in recent weeks, Johnson rang the changes to inspire victory.

He made three changes from the side held 1-1 by Peterborough at the weekend, used all three substitutes and deployed three different formations during the 90 minutes to finally end Plymouth's stubborn resistance.

"It was like playing a game of chess," said Johnson. "I was not happy with the way we played in the first half, because I don't think we showed the quality to break them down.

"But we kept changing things to test them and we knew our runners would get in as Plymouth tired. I heard people moaning when I put a defender (Louis Carey) on for a striker (Alvaro Saborio) after half an hour, but that change made us more attacking and gave us greater width.

"I thought Ivan Sproule and Gavin Williams both affected the game when they came on and the switch to 4-4-2 eventually did the trick for us."