Jamille Matt triggered his scoring tally in Fleetwood colours on Saturday as Town brushed aside an unimpressive Oxford United at Highbury.
By Mike McGoughJamille Matt triggered his scoring tally in Fleetwood colours on Saturday as Town brushed aside an unimpressive Oxford United at Highbury.
The recent record signing was in the right place at the right time when a desperate clearance was struck against him, rebounding into the net and setting the Cod Army on their way to a convincing victory.
Gladly, they all count and the towering forward made no effort of hiding the fact that it wasn’t the prettiest of goals for his first.
He said: “It was a lucky goal today and I will be the first to admit it. It was one of those that I didn’t think I could really celebrate, but I will take it and it will put a bit of confidence in me because now I have got that weight off my shoulders of getting the first goal. So I’ll look now to try and carry on and get a few more.
“As a striker, the first thing that you could look for is goals. When I was at Kidderminster, I went on a run of scoring goals and that is what I have been signed up to do here and as long as I am here, I will be looking to do that.”
The win puts Town back in the play-off hunt and boosts the morale again after falling to Bristol Rovers a fortnight ago at home, in which Matt played his debut for Fleetwood.
He continued: “The lads said we had to bounce back after the Bristol Rovers game because I don’t think we had a very good performance, but I think we did it justice today. We’ve come out and the performance we have put in was convincing; I don’t think there was any doubt we’d win and it was good to get the three goals to win convincingly.
“We want to be pushing up again and hopefully looking to get into the play offs or the outside chance of maybe getting automatic promotion. If we can go on another run then obviously that is a realistic possibility.”
Graham Alexander included a number of changes from the defeat to the league’s then-bottom club and the forward claimed that the team failed to put in any kind of performance in that game and said that the players expected that there would be some changes ahead of the Oxford clash.
“After the last game it was kind of expected because we knew we didn’t perform in the last game and it could have been anyone that were changed. It was four or five, but it could have been more with the size of this squad and the quality we have. Anyone can come in and do a job and I thought that everybody did their job today and reacted well to the last result, which has pushed us forward to get the win today.”
One of those changes included a start and a man of the match performance for young striker Jamie Allen, who scored on his debut as a substitute at Northampton Town last month, with Matt giving him lots of credit, along with Ryan Crowther who netted Town’s second, in his first appearance this season after returning from a loan to Hyde United.
He said: “I can’t speak highly enough of Jamie (Allen). I think as a young lad he has made my job easy today with him playing off me and it is the same with Ryan (Crowther); he has come on at half time, made a great impact and grabbed himself a great goal. I thought they both played very well today.”
Matt also expressed his delight at getting off the mark so early for his new club and expressed that it helps to relieve any pressure to score that a striker may have lying on his shoulders. The goal follows a
prolific scoring run he went on for Kidderminster, which grabbed the attention of Graham Alexander.
“You have always got that pressure as a striker. You might be playing well but not scoring, but people sometimes don’t look at it like that; they look at it like ‘they should be scoring’, so as a forward you have to live with that pressure and the expectation of scoring from the fans and everyone around you, so I just see it as something you have got to deal with as a striker.”
With last week’s match postponed at Barnet, it gave the manager some extra time to prepare and the ex- Harriers goal scorer believes it helped towards the victory.
He concluded: “The gaffer got to look at different areas that he wanted to work on a bit more with the game being called off last week. It was probably a bit of a blessing because we got to do a little bit more work on shape and what he wanted us to do, how he wanted us to close down and all that stuff and you could see that everyone was up for it from the off. We came out straight away at Oxford and I don’t think they could really handle it and in the end we got what we deserved.”
The win moves Fleetwood up to 8th position, level on points with Southend United who currently lie in the playoff positions.
