Skipper Steve McNulty has hailed Fleetwood Town’s start to the season, but has insisted that nothing is going to be taken for granted.
By Tom BestwickSkipper Steve McNulty has hailed Fleetwood Town’s start to the season, but has insisted that nothing is going to be taken for granted.
Andy Mangan’s last gasp winner against the 10 men of Northampton Town made it four straight league wins for the Cod Army, and more importantly, it has seen Fleetwood climb in to the automatic promotion places for the first time this campaign.
Northampton Town played for over an hour with 10 men, after Daniel East received a second yellow card for a foul on Jamie McGuire, and McNulty admitted that Northampton were still a threat in the game, despite their numerical disadvantage.
Steve McNulty said: “It’s been a fantastic start, one which we’re happy with. I think when they went down to 10 men it sort of killed the game a little bit, they had two banks of four, and we found it a little bit difficult to break down, but I think we played controlled football and we waited till the 94
th minute to get a goal, and sometimes you have to do that.”
“They’re going to put the 10 men behind the ball. There’s not much you can do about that, and you have to dig in a bit more when you’re down to 10 men. You always seem to get a bit of a lift, it’s a bit mad, but we carried on going and kept plugging away and got the goal in the end.”
“You can over commit sometimes, and our two full backs bombed on, both at the same time. Sometimes it was three against two, but you’re always going to get that, and you we expect that, and we want to play good attractive football. You can go down to 10 men, and you always see teams get sucker punched, but gladly we didn’t this weekend.”
Last week’s hat trick hero, Jon Parkin also had to be withdrawn after 30 minutes. The big striker was walking on thin ice with the referee, and although McNulty was disappointed to see Parkin depart the game early, he said that Parkin will take it on the chin and will understand Micky Mellon’s decision to withdraw him.
“It was a bit disappointing, he (the referee) did say to me one more foul and he was going off, the message got through to the gaffer and the gaffer had to make that decision to bring him off, but it’s all worked out in the end, It’s disappointing to see Jon go off, but he is a good pro and he’ll understand.”
Fleetwood go into Tuesday’s game against Port Vale, knowing they hold the best defensive record in the league, having only conceded two goals in the first six games. It’s a record that McNulty, and the rest of the squad are proud to be a part of the defensive unit. He was quick, however, to say that the whole of the club are not getting carried away with how they have started the season, and that they are taking each game as it comes.
“There’s no point in getting too carried away, it’s a long old season, and we know it’s going to be tough, we will have our ups and downs and it’s not always going to go as smoothly as this, but obviously we are going to take this start. The league needs to settle down a bit, everyone is beating each other, and we can start to assess after 15 games, and start setting targets, no targets are being set yet. We are a good group of players, and as a group of players, and as management team we know where we want to be at the end of the season, and we are going to do our best to get there.”
“We shipped too many goals as a back four last season, and we spoke at the start of the season with the gaffer about tightening up. Thankfully we have done that so far. There is no point getting too carried away.
McNulty has also been named in the npower League 2
Team of the Weekfor his defensive and leadership show against Port Vale.