Joey Barton hails impact of Dean Marney

Fleetwood boss Joey Barton hailed Dean Marney as a “different player” after the midfielder scored his first goal to fire them to a 3-0 win over Coventry.

Barton played with Marney at Burnley in the Championship and Premier League and the 36-year-old was one of his first signings.

But after missing a chunk of pre-season and struggling with a groin injury Marney has not been a permanent fixture in recent weeks.

But Barton says now that he is up to full fitness he is a different player

His 54th-minute effort was followed by goals from Wes Burns in the 72nd minute and Ched Evans in the 74th minute.

Conor Chaplin missed a late penalty and Barton was full of praise for his midfielder.

He said: “I played with Marns.

“I played with him in the season we won the Championship at Burnley and in the Premier League with him.

“He’s an outstanding footballer.

“The difficulty for him when he came in was that he was a little bit behind in terms of when he came in missing part of pre-season.

“He came in, played in lots of the games but I felt he could make more of an impact.

“He has had a few things rumbling on away from football but they have sorted themselves out for the better which is fantastic.

“Family stuff.

“He just looks a different player now.

“(He was) A huge part of why we won the game.”

Coventry boss Mark Robins was not happy with his side’s defending.

Looking at the goals he said: “Jordan Willis came out in the second half and looked injured and his knee was obviously sore, to the point where he had to come off.

“And as he’s doing that we concede the first goal. We were out of position and there wasn’t a great deal of movement in terms of trying to stop that one.

“Jordy Hiwula has not moved his body and there is no pressure on the ball and they get the ball out to Marney who has blasted one into the net.

“The second one is the same, it’s poor, poor defensively. What you don’t do is give the jerseys away, you don’t sell the jerseys when you are a goal down. You try to stay in it and get back in the game and try to build the pressure again.

“But we didn’t do that and came out of the slot, one ball through broke us down and we didn’t defend it right so within two moments we were two goals down and then they added a third.”