Fleetwood Town’s Head Coach Joey Barton spoke to the media ahead of Saturday’s home match against Keith Hill’s Rochdale side.
Barton – who celebrated making history on being the first manager at the club to take a side into the second round of the Carabao Cup - spoke on Thursday morning at Poolfoot Farm and believes his side are only going to get better as the season goes on.
With two back to back wins against Oxford United and Crewe, Barton knows he will have a headache when it comes to selecting a team come 2pm, with many impressing this week in training.
Here are the key quotes from Joey Barton’s pre-match interview.
On selection problems ahead of Saturday…
“We are very happy with where the squad is at, and we know we are in a really good place. There’s a lot of competition for places for the tough game against Rochdale.
“The beauty of having the squad that we have is that when we look at our opposition, we can look at the players and see who would benefit more from playing against certain players.
“Every game and every battle is different and as much as we want to remain true to our principles, there are also some subtleties that we feel we can exploit because of our versatility, in especially our forward line.”
On the threats Rochdale could pose against his side…
“It will be another really tough game because Rochdale are a good side, and they have had a decent start to the campaign by beating Burton away.
“They play with a back three, sometimes a back five and that might mean Saturday will be an occasion where we have to be patient and stick to our processes to try and win a football match.
“Keith Hill’s side will come to Highbury and make it difficult for us and he is a manager who is a wily old fox who knows what he is doing. He has been in the trade for a long time now so we know it won’t be a walk in the park.
“We need to focus on what we can do and what we do really well and if do that, I will be more than confident we can go and get a result.
“We need to make Highbury a tough place to come for teams, and for us that starts again this Saturday”
On Kyle Dempsey potentially making his 100th appearance for Town this weekend…
“Kyle is a player who will bag goals and we saw that on Saturday where he probably should have scored, however he did pick up an assist and that just goes to show his ability.
“With the role we are asking him to play, there’s no doubt that he will get himself a number of goals this season.
His contributions on the pitch both physically and technically have been first class and we just need him to be himself, and if he does that, the goals and assists will come.”