Joey Barton has given his reaction to Saturday’s 1-0 victory over Burton Albion at The Pirelli Stadium.
Ashley Nadesan scored his first goal for the club, after great build up play by Wes Burns, and Paddy Madden – who linked up well prior to the ball finding the back of the net.
Town stood firm throughout the match to keep their fifth clean sheet of 2019 against a strong Burton side, which has seen the Cod Army go above local rivals Blackpool into 8th position.
Here are the best quotes from Barton’s post Burton interview...
On the game and the performance…
“For me if you are going to be a good side and have a good season you probably need 12-15 of those 1-0 wins over the course of the 46 game season. We’ve now put two of those together in the league back-to-back with one being Bradford and today we knew today they were five unbeaten before kick-off.
“This is never an easy place to come and in there they have some really good players with Harness and Akins, but credit to our lads who were disciplined throughout and maybe deserved more with Ash Hunter hitting the bar.
“At the break I thought we were flat and a little bit sluggish but I know if we reach the levels we can throw a blanket over many teams. We need to focus on ourselves and in the second half we lifted it and get the all-important goal.
“I am really pleased. It was a really good performance and now we need to keep building.”
On Harry Souttar’s performance…
“You could hear the fans after the game, he’s becoming a fans’ favourite here and he has even got his own song! I am really pleased with him as with young players you never really know how they are going to respond to the challenge that poses them.
“To say he hasn’t skipped a beat will be an understatement as he has been absolutely first class. Credit to him and the players around him as he had Ash Eastham next to him, Hubby [James Husband] to one side and Alex Cairns behind him.
“It was a great team effort and those players have allowed Harry to settle in and you can see he is really enjoying his football, whilst helping us keep clean sheets, which is always a bonus.”
On momentum and moving forward in the right direction…
“I have always said there’s no easy game in this division and you can’t just turn up to game and play 80%, only Manchester City can do that and win games. We always have to be in the 90%+ every week as you can’t always be at 100% all season.
“If you don’t have your discipline throughout the season, you will get beat and we found that out at the early stages of the campaign with a win, then a draw and a loss. It’s great to see we have learnt from those lessons and are now grinding out those 1-0 wins that myself and Clint Hill have been talking about!”
On Ashley Nadesan and his first goal for the club…
“It was a great ball from Paddy to Nadders [Nadesan] and I am absolutely delighted for him because he works tirelessly for the team. He now has his first league goal for the club and it’s a nice milestone for his hard work.
“We have everything to lose and nothing to gain so we waited for Burton to commit and when they did that a couple of times in the game, we had a chance that hit the bar and then one where Paddy passed it instead of shooting, one with Lewie missing with his left footed shot. If we got that second goal, it would have been game over.
“For me it is always about your application, your effort and your work rate and without being too dis-kind for the division below, he came back from Carlisle after doing well and it was a level up with him coming back here.
“Goalscorers thrive on goals and with Paddy and Ched in form, we wanted Nadders to get that goal and hopefully that will settle him down between now and the end of the season.”