Ash gets Sheridan off to a solid start

JOHN Sheridan praised the fighting spirit of his Fleetwood players after they battled to earn a point with relegation rivals MK Dons.

The former Oldham boss was appointed on Thursday to rescue Fleetwood from stormy waters and saw Ashley Hunter end a run of eight straight league defeats with a secondhalf leveller, cancelling out Robbie Muirhead’s first-half opener for the Dons.

Sheridan said: “The pleasing thing for me when you’re a team at the bottom after going a goal down, is how the players respond. It could have gone one way or the other, and I thought we responded really well and ended up getting back into the game.

“We’ve stopped the bad run of results. It is a good point and we have to make sure we stay out the bottom four. I was really pleased with how we played and the chances we created.”

Having had a penalty claim on Ike Ugbo, who was brought down by goalkeeper Alex Cairns, waved away by referee Eddie Ilderton, the visitors took the lead on 20 minutes when striker Muirhead profited from a neat Chuks Aneke lay-off to bend his leftfooted effort into the bottom-left corner from 25-yards.

Fleetwood had their opportunities to level. Conor McAleny crashed a shot off the bar, Kyle Dempsey forced keeper Lee Nicholls into a smart stop, while Hunter skimmed a low drive wide.

Following the restart, Town’s endeavour saw them equalise after 53 minutes when play dropped to Hunter on the left-hand side of the penalty area, he then curled his right-footed shot into the top-right corner past the dive of Nicholls.

From that point, the game opened up in the closing stages of a tight bottom-of-the-table clash. Ousseynou Cisse and Callum Brittain spurned efforts at goal for Dan Micciche’s Buckinghamshire outfit, before Nicholls superbly thwarted McAleny twice from closerange as the Dons held out for a point.

Micciche said: “I thought we deserved to win the game actually, we should have had a penalty in the first half, which was a clear penalty at a key moment of the game.

“We missed a fantastic chance at 1-0, 60 seconds later they go and score. I thought that was a really defining moment.

“We reacted really well to their goal, people have questioned the mentality and the character of this group and we didn’t collapse after they scored.”