Fleetwood Town captain Craig Morgan spoke to the press on Thursday morning ahead of this weekend’s match against Shrewsbury Town.
Morgan – who has returned to the squad after picking up an injury at Sunderland last month – has featured in Town’s last two games, with two 45 minute appearances at Doncaster, and at home to Rochdale in the Checkatrade Trophy.
The 33-year-old talked about Shrewsbury and the challenge ahead for his side, as well as touching on the changes he has seen within the squad since his arrival in the summer, and much more.
Here are the key quotes from Craig’s press conference…
On this weekend’s opponents…
“It is going to be a tough game on Saturday against Shrewsbury, just like all the other games in this league. They have picked up results lately and have players in the team who were there last season, who reached the play-offs.
“They obviously aren’t bad players or a bad team, and might have just had an unfortunate start to the season that they weren’t expecting, but this game will just be as difficult as the ones coming up against Portsmouth and Peterborough.
“I am not surprised where they are, and that isn’t me being disrespectful. I was in the Rotherham team who played against Leyton Orient in the play-off final, and a year later they got relegated.
“It happens and you can assemble a squad and play in a certain way and a team can overachieve. We just need to be ready to go out on Saturday and perform the way we know we can.
On being back in the team…
“It is always nice to be back out on the pitch and as a player, you never want to be off it. For me it has been frustrating, but I am back earlier than expected and the minutes on Tuesday night we important to me as I have only tried once before the game on Saturday.
“I have worked really hard with the medical team and the fitness coaches, and through that I have managed to cut my time a couple of weeks off my time out.
“You are paid to play football and at the end of the day, you have to do your bit in and around the place. You are still with the lads, you have to be positive and make sure that
“I am really happy with how it went, and now we are preparing for Shrewsbury this Saturday.”
On the changes within the club...
“As you go through a new manager, you start to know what they want and how things work, and for some clubs and manager it can take years.
“We are all adapting to how he [Joey Barton] wants to do things, and I believe the lads have taken it on board really well. We are four points outside the play-offs and we as a group probably haven’t hit the height we know we can do at times.
“We have played well in games and have done well this season, but there is definitely more to come and that is a positive.”