Grayson claims Fleetwood ‘totally dominant’
FLEETWOOD Town manager Simon Grayson claimed his side had been “totally dominant” in the second half of Tuesday night’s game against Burton Albion – but for the fact that the Brewers kept scoring goals.
Fleetwood trailed 2-0 at halftime but pulled a goal back after 62 minutes and gave the Brewers some problems for a spell.
Goals from Tom Hamer and Kane Hemmings then made it 4-1 and the Cod Army’s second goal came in stoppage time, although they also hit the bar after that, before Hemmings grabbed Burton’s fifth goal with the last kick of the game.
“You have to give Burton credit – they were very ruthless and they scored some very good goals,” said Grayson.
“We started on the front foot and made quite a decent start but Burton are very direct and you’ve got to match their energy with the second balls. They’ve been on a great run.
“I don’t think we did a great deal wrong in the first half, then, in the second half, we changed the shape to a 3-4-1-2 to, hopefully, ask a few more questions and I thought we played really well after that.
“At half-time I asked the players not to bury their heads in the sand and feel sorry for themselves and we got ourselves a really good goal to make it 2-1.
“From then on we were totally dominant but you do have to make sure you keep the back door shut in those situations.
“Even when you’re on top, you need to make sure you are focused because if you aren’t then, at every level, teams will punish you,
“We then went 3-1 down and that knocks the wind out of your sails.
“We needed to manage the game better at that point. We were on top and then they hit us with another decent goal and we ended up chasing it.
“It looks like we’ve been on the wrong end of a doing but that certainly wasn’t the case. That just wasn’t what the team deserved.”