Head Coach Joey Barton sat down and answered all the questions from the press on Thursday afternoon ahead of Saturday’s opening League One fixture against Burton Albion.
The Cod Army were last in action on Saturday where they secured their spot in the second round of the Carabao Cup after beating Wigan Athletic 3-2 at Highbury – with goals coming from Ched Evans and Josh Morris.
Joey Barton’s side are set to welcome the Brewers to Highbury on Saturday, and here is what he had to say ahead of the game:
On the opposition…
“[Jake] Buxton has gone in there and he’ll be looking to enforce his principles. I know what a good side they are - I saw that they drew 3-3 against Peterborough in the EFL Trophy. We know what they’re like, Powell, Quinn, Bostwick, real senior campaigners in the midfield.
“Lucas Akins is there as well, who I think is a fantastic player as he has always caused problems when we’ve played against him. They’ve got some experience in the backline in Brayford and they’ve obviously brought in Eardley from Lincoln City, so we know it’ll be a real tough encounter.
“We want to give a good account of ourselves and it’s important for us that we get the home runs going again. Our two previous campaigns have been built off the fact that we’ve been really solid at Highbury and this season, if we want to be successful, we need to pick up where we left off in the last campaign.”
On the team’s mentality…
“We showed enormous character [against Wigan]. The first game of the season against Carlisle obviously we go 1-0 down and then come back and win the game to go 2-0 down you don’t want to do that.
“The lads got themselves together, got themselves a goal just before half time and I thought in the second half we looked really, really fit.
“We physically dominated that second period with our running capacity and our desire to score and get ourselves back into the game and obviously go on to get the winner so really pleased with it although albeit the first 15 minutes weren’t really fantastic and we don’t want to be giving good teams leads in games. It’s tough to overturn that, we’ve done it in the last few games, but I don’t want to be doing that anymore this season.”
On Coleman’s injury…
“It’s a blow obviously, he came in in the summer and you want to see him kind of hit the ground running so it’s a big blow for Joel and a big blow for the group really.
“Luckily for us, we’ve got Alex Cairns who’s played a lot of games for us whose understanding of that position in that number one spot doesn’t give you the worry that maybe you would normally have if you’d suffered an injury to your senior goalkeeper.
“We had two good goalkeepers and that plays out now for the weekend and the lads go in confident because they know just how good Alex [Cairns] is because they’ve had him in the club for a long time and also they know when called upon he’s made some massive saves for us over certainly my time here and his whole career at Fleetwood Town.”