Head Coach Simon Grayson spoke to the media ahead of Fleetwood Town’s Sky Bet League One fixture against Lincoln City at Sincil Bank on Saturday afternoon.
Town have had a hard start to the season, having already played against a play-off contender in Portsmouth from League One and a tough tie against Championship side Stoke City in the Carabao Cup, with the side being just on the wrong side of the results in both games, but will take positives into their next game against The Imps.
Here’s what Simon had to say:
On Saturday’s clash against The Imps…
“It will be a tough game for us. They did ever-so-well last year and got to the play-off final, just missing out on promotion. Michael [Appleton] has done well at the club, even with a change of personnel as some of their star loan players have now left, and [Jorge] Grant has left as well, but they have replaced them with good players.
“I think the play-offs from last season are a thing from the past now as they have quite a few new players in the group now – I’m sure they will be using the motivation of losing a play-off final for the whole of the season, not just the first few games.
"They've got some good attacking players, and like to move the ball from the back. I don't think the style of play will have altered too much from what Michael has done throughout his career, and recently at Lincoln because it's been successful so why would you change it?
“You are heading to their place and it’s the club’s first home game of the season so it will be quite a vocal crowd. We’ve got to withstand any pressure we get from them early on and have to make sure we implement what we want to do in the game so we can try to replicate the result and performance we got when we went down there last campaign."
On the season so far…
“We’ve played Portsmouth, who are one of the favourites for our division, and then Stoke who I’ll be surprised if they aren’t around the top six come the end of the season with the players they’ve got. They just signed a defender from Brighton, who mixed in with [Harry] Souttar and [James] Chester in a back three, with a £5 million striker further up the pitch.
“Both games so far have produced two different performances. In the Portsmouth game, we were dominant and created a lot of chances and when you speak to the people who were at the game, they have said that we thoroughly deserved to win the game. In football, and in life sometimes, you don’t always get things going your way and that was the case on Saturday.
“It was always going to be a tough test for us. I thought we played well, but we just needed to be a bit braver in possession at the top end of the pitch, but you’ve got to remember the standard of players that you’re playing against. We have to remain positive and take the lessons learned into our game against Lincoln at the weekend.”