Barton lauds Fleetwood players for victory at Doncaster
Posted Sunday, October 07, 2018 by PA
Joey Barton praised the professionalism of his Fleetwood players as they ended a six game winless run with a comprehensive victory over Doncaster.
Fleetwood defended very well after taking an early lead and showed a ruthless side to go 4-0 up by 49 minutes through a Ched Evans penalty and strikes from James Wallace, Ashley Eastham and Ashley Hunter.
“Goals do change games,” Barton said. “We get the second goal with a fantastic header.
“The key for us is going on. The difficult thing in football is getting to 2-0 and we’ve not necessarily done that enough this season.
“In the second half we did defend properly. You’ve got to go and keep the back door closed which we did and that was really pleasing.”
Barton has pledged to work his players harder on the training ground this week after noticing lightening training has not eased up his side’s injury worries.
Both James Wallace and James Husband were withdrawn through injury.
Barton said: “We had a couple of niggles with injury which is becoming a bit annoying.
“It is part and parcel of football but we just want a steady stream of players fit to flow.
“I think the lads need more load on them. This is the lightest they’ve had it this week. Pre-season was the hardest and we had no injuries.
“We’ve come off them and the lads haven’t responded so it’s going to be a tough week ahead for them.”
Grant McCann said Doncaster were dealt a lesson in just how tough League One can be when a side are not on their game.
McCann pointed to mistakes at both ends of the field costing Rovers dearly, particularly with an uncharacteristic lack of ruthlessness in front of goal.
“We’ve had a tremendous start to the season but you saw today with other results just how tough this league is,” McCann said.
“If you want to step off it, and take your finger off the pulse, then you can get hurt. That is what we did. We made four mistakes that cost us the game really.
“I know this sounds really strange but we played well in the first half in terms of the chances we created.
“I just feel it was a tale of both boxes, conceding off two set plays, a couple of mistakes and then at the other end we didn’t take our chances.
“We got what we deserved from that. If you don’t take your chances and defend like that then you’re going to punished in this league.
“I said to the group afterwards that we’re all human. We all make mistakes. Unfortunately today we had four mistakes that cost us the game.”
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