Fleetwood Town midfielder Jeff Hughes feels it is absolutely vital to stop committing avoidable mistakes in games if the club want to achieve promotion this season. Hughes, 28, scored Town's first goal in the 3-2 defeat to Burton Albion on Saturday and believes the Cod Army have the ability to perform a lot better in future games.
“We need to stamp out the silly mistakes and as a team we need to defend a lot better. If we can avoid conceding cheap goals to our opponents then we will have every chance of coming away with three points in future fixtures.”
Town nearly completed what would have been a fantastic comeback after trailing 3-0 at the half time interval and Hughes has said the side did take some positives from the game.
“We have taken a lot of positives from our performance in the second half. The boss had a word with us at half time to help us kick after the break. We needed to follow instructions and stick to our game plan a lot better and we got our rewards in the two goals we scored.”
The Northern Ireland international has scored 2 goals so far in his Highbury début season but insists his individual performances do not bare any significance in comparison to the team's progress. He insisted:
“Individual performances don't really matter to me. I would have rather not scored today and won instead of getting on the score sheet and still suffering a defeat. We would much rather win with a scrappy performance than play fantastic and still come away with no points.”
Next up for the Cod Army is a trip to Victoria Park to take on Hartlepool United and even after their 100% start to the league campaign has ended, Hughes insists that the players' heads haven't dropped and that the squad are itching to get back to winning ways.
“Our mentality will be fine as always. We have a great bunch of players and a good management team so getting back into good form won’t be an issue for us.”
Hartlepool United ticket and travel information can be found here.