Barry Nicholson felt aggrieved and frustrated that Fleetwood Town didn’t claim all three points at Southend, having led throughout the majority of the match to end up drawing 1-1.
By Manvir Singh RaiBarry Nicholson felt aggrieved and frustrated that Fleetwood Town didn’t claim all three points at Southend, having led throughout the majority of the match to end up drawing 1-1.
Alan Goodall had given Town an early lead but Southend replied through Barry Corr’s late header which snatched a point for the hosts at Roots Hall Stadium. Amidst all this, Gareth Evans had a penalty saved which at the time, would have doubled Town’s advantage.
“It was a great start for us and to score first was important because lately, we have been conceding goals first. We’ve been working on our set pieces in training and it was good to see Goody (Goodall) score a goal from one and then we controlled the rest of the first half.”
Despite controlling the first half, Town failed to score a second decisive goal and Nicholson reflected on Gareth Evans’ first half penalty miss which in the end, proved costly. “It was unfortunate that Gareth missed the penalty, if we had scored that, then we probably would have seen the game out. We knew that they were going to come out with some intent in the second half and we just got under too much pressure which made us go deeper and deeper and unfortunately, paid the price.”
With just minutes to go, Nicholson had a great chance to win the game but his effort was saved by Southend goalkeeper Paul Smith and the midfielder was left disappointed that he didn’t score it. “It was a good save and it was a great little move to create the chance. I just made a run through the middle and Jamie McGuire has picked me out with a great pass. The goalkeeper has got a great hand to it but the dressing room is disappointed because we only picked up a point.”
Subsequently, two draws in two days leaves Town’s play-off ambitions in doubtful with just four games remaining and the Scottish midfielder believes Town need to win every game from here, starting with Rochdale on Saturday. “We have a full week to prepare; we will work hard and will be ready for Saturday. We have four massive games coming up. We don’t want the season to fizzle out and we have 12 points to play for. It’s not mathematically done yet and we’ll certainly keep going.
