Head coach Joey Barton spoke to the media ahead of his side’s clash against Shrewsbury Town at Poolfoot Farm on Monday afternoon.
Barton saw his side get back to winning ways against Gillingham on Saturday, with both Paddy Madden and Ched Evans both getting on the score sheet in their 2-0 victory against The Gills at Priestfield Stadium.
Ahead of Town’s clash against Salop, here’s what Joey had to say ahead of the game:
On the opposition…
“We know Shrewsbury are going to be good. They’ve gone away from that back three that they were playing the majority of last season and have some good players in Ollie Norburn, Josh Vela, and obviously Leon Clarke going in there.
“I’ve seen that Charlie Daniels has a really good delivery, which will make them a threat from set plays so we should be well versed in that after playing against Steve Evans and Gillingham who test you at every dead ball opportunity.
“We’ll see what they turn up like and see what they have on offer. We have enough quality in our team to take away from most teams and what they want to do. Once you take away plan A, you see what plans they have in store.”
On the depth in the Fleetwood squad…
“We had to wait quite late for our recruitment in the window to replace key components of the team last year. We felt that the only way to find things out about the younger players is to just put them in and use it as an acid test to see where they are at.
“We’re finding it hard to pick a bench at the minute. It’s a tough proposition as you have Morgan Boyes and Josh Morris who travelled down to Gillingham but were left out of the squad. You have some good young players behind that as well.
“Picking the first eleven is hard enough but we’ve not actually been able to select the bench because everybody is fit and ready to go. It’s not nice because you don’t like leaving fit players out of the squad but good because it shows that there is competition for places.”
On the Gillingham win on the weekend…
“It was a tough game where we had to defend well against the physicality of Gillingham. You can’t go down there and expect a positive result unless you’ve got your basic principles in order and I thought that the longer the game went on, the more we grew into the performance.
“We made a few changes, and I don’t think we dropped off, in terms of intensity and quality, even after making a few substitutions late in the game.
“I thought it was a committed team performance and it’s always a bonus to keep a clean sheet, especially on the road. We felt a little bit hard done by in terms of our precious away results but, all in all, it was a good day out to the South Coast.”