Cod Army manager happy with the manner of victory against Rovers
Graham Alexander believes Fleetwood Town repaid the fans after they kept up their challenge for promotion with a 3-1 victory over Bristol Rovers on Tuesday evening.
Antoni Sarcevic struck his third goal in four games to give Fleetwood the lead after 20 minutes, before Town captain, Mark Roberts, doubled their lead five minutes before the half time interval.
David Ball, who made his first start since the beginning of February, added a third in the opening exchanges of the second half to give Fleetwood a commanding 3-0 lead before Rovers claimed a consolation goal through an Ellis Harrison header.
After the game, Town’s manager felt his side scored their goals at crucial stages in the game and was pleased with the professional performance Fleetwood produced to complete the double over John Ward’s side this season.
Speaking to the club’s official website after the game, Alexander said: “I thought, performance wise, we were really strong and played some really good football.
“We got the goals at good times, which you have to when you’re on top, and we are really happy to get the three points.
“The lads really played some excellent football throughout the game, we come under a bit of pressure in the final 15-20 minutes as we expected.
“Apart from the one moment, we saw it out and we are really pleased to get the three points.
“The lads played with freedom, created movement and we zipped the ball about on a great surface, which helped us.
“You need to score just to cement that good feeling and we did, we got the second shortly after and that gave us the base to go on and win the game.
“We could have scored maybe one or two more but we did enough to win the game and that’s the most pleasing thing.”
Alexander made four changes to the side that lost 3-0 to Exeter City at the weekend as he partnered Ball with Iain Hume up front in what was the Canadian international’s first start for Fleetwood since joining on loan until the end of the season from Preston North End.
Alexander was pleased with how the strikers linked up together before going on to praise the efforts of the rest of his squad by claiming it was a ‘good all round team performance’ on Tuesday night.
“I thought Bally (David Ball) and Humey (Iain Hume) were excellent. Their movement brought others into play and they linked up well together.
“We know Bally is a goalscorer, we just need to give him the right ammunition and get him into good scoring positions and he will put it away.
“We thought they would cause anyone’s problems because they are both very good players.
“I thought the midfielder players behind the attacking ones, like Goody (Alan Goodall), protected the back four tremendously well and passed it as good as I have seen from him.
“It was a good all round team performance and the lads that came on supported that as well.
“We just took Bally and Humey off to protect them, they haven’t played a lot of football at late and they will be stronger for the 70 minutes they did get.”
Town will play their second home game in the space of four days when they host current league leaders Rochdale at Highbury and after giving the fans something to smile about, Alexander wants his side to complete another double to close the gap further on the top three.
“It will be a good game, two good teams and we go into it happy with the result tonight.
“We owed the supporters one from Saturday, we let them down against Exeter, but I thought we gave them something to smile about tonight and we have to take that into Saturday’s game.
“There will be a great atmosphere inside Highbury and it is a game that we are looking to win because we want to hunt those top three sides down and Saturday is an opportunity to do that.”
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