Scott Brown admits his Fleetwood side 'didn't fancy the battle' as he pinpointed one key area that will be worked on after defeat to Portsmouth.
The Cod Army went down 2-0 in front of their home support to ten-man Pompey, who had Joe Morrell dismissed with the score line at 1-0. Colby Bishop opened the scoring for the visitors just two minutes before the interval before Joe Pigott wrapped up the three points with less than ten minutes to play. The result leaves the legendary Celtic skipper and his troops 17th in the English League One standings.
Next up is the romance of the cup as they travel to league rivals and high-flyers Sheffield Wednesday in the fourth round of the FA Cup. They two sides played it out at the same ground last weekend with the hosts coming out winners by a single goal. He told Fleetwood's official website: “Portsmouth deserved it to be perfectly honest, the lads didn’t turn up tonight. I’m disappointed in the way they started the game, their intensity was miles better than ours, they had men all over the park and we didn’t fancy the battle.
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"We’ve got a couple of lads that will stick up for themselves and want the battle but it’s League One and you’ve got to be physical, got to be strong and we had to make subs today because that was nowhere near good enough today.
“I’m disappointed because, over the last four or five games, we’ve been very good, I’ve praised the lads even though we’ve been beaten in some of the games, but you can’t praise that. It’s another corner kick that we’ve conceded from - we’ll be working on that over the next couple of days.”
On his former Celtic team-mate and new recruit Scott Robertson, he added: “Robbo [Scott Robertson]’s quality shows as you can see, he wants to play the ball forwards and in behind the lines as he’s got a lovely left foot. It’s going to be a hard one for Phoenix [Patterson] as him and Hayesy [Cian Hayes] are fighting for the same position and Cian’s got that understanding.
“Phoenix also has the quality to show so it will be a good competition for that position, it’s just about us going and getting goals now. He’s got great quality, and so has Callum Dolan. That’s the reason we ended up bringing Callum on as he’s got good delivery and wants to score goals.
“He wants to drive into the box and fair play to him; it’s been a hard four weeks for him, not being able to play since coming in, but he’s worked hard and knows it’s a big step up from non-league, so he already working on getting that understanding.”
On facing Sheffield Wednesday, he continued: “We played great against Sheff Wed, but we had the same outcome as today as we couldn’t score a goal. For us, that’s why we’ve got to invest in a striker, which the club is trying to do, so we’ve got to try and look forwards and look to the midfielder and defenders to score goals as well.
“It’s all good playing nice and attractive football, but if you can’t get the ball into the back of the net, we will have to find a different way to try and win the game. It’s a huge opportunity for 11 bodies, but nobody merits a starting position after today’s performance.”
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