Joey Barton has given his reaction to Saturday’s 1-0 victory at Bradford City, where his side returned to Lancashire with all three points.
An early cross from James Wallace found Paddy Madden at the back post, who fired the ball past Richard O’Donnell in the ninth minute to seal the win. This is the second time in the league this season that Fleetwood have won back to back games.
Joey spoke to the media after today’s game, here are his quotes…
On the victory…
“We spoke in the week about backing up a really good performance against Charlton, one of the good sides in the division, with an away performance on the road. I think, certainly the last five or six games we are seeing real emerging signs of a really good side coming through with the structure and the togetherness.
“I’m really pleased for the boys, the focus this week was making sure that we went back to back (wins), knowing how competitive League One is. We’ve put a couple of wins together and that’s taken us up to 45 points now and the key for us is maintaining those levels of performance between now and the end of the season.
“I’m delighted with the clean sheet but also elements of the game that went unnoticed, defending your box when you have to and being on the front font ready to apply pressure when you have to, I thought it was excellent.”
On another 1-0 win…
“1-0 for me is a fantastic score line, to get two back-to-back is really nice. It’s nice for the team and nice for Alex Cairns in goal because he is deserving of that. That’s his 12th clean sheet of the season and we need to work more and get more of those.
“I’m delighted for the whole team because our culture is starting to emerge, and we’ve had a couple of transfer windows where we have moved a couple of people on and I think the smaller numbers has given us that real togetherness.
“You can really feel that culture of Fleetwood Town starting to change and performances like that go a long way to help that accelerate.”
On Paddy Madden’s goal and the injury to James Wallace…
“That’s the only disappointing thing. It looks like James has picked up a bit of a knock, but I think he’s been outstanding in the last few weeks.
“We speak about service in the box, if you’ve got the players in the box with goal scoring ability of Ched Evans, Paddy Madden, Ashley Nadesan and Ashley Hunter in and around it you will score goals.
“For me Paddy is the best one touch finisher I think I’ve seen in a long time, most strikers who have a real appetite for scoring goals, just have that instinct in there. You almost get disappointed when he doesn’t put it in the net, he had a chance against Charlton last week and we were surprised that he hadn’t hit the target and didn’t work the keeper, due to his level of finishing and he works on it every day in training.
“It’s something he works hard on and it’s great to see him get the rewards from it. I think he’s our top goal-scorer on 17. For me he’s been absolutely outstanding since the day I walked into the club.”
On the fans…
“It’s important, certainly in the last five or ten minutes, I know Bradford certainly outnumbered us. They probably had 10,000 plus than us, but it was our fans that you could hear in the last five or ten minutes galvanising the group to get us on. That’s a very pleasing aspect for me and we’ve got to create those atmospheres.
“I think they appreciate what the team is doing and we’ve just got to keep fostering that and grow stronger as a club."