Fleetwood boss Joey Barton marvels at maturity of Harry Souttar

The 23-year-old is now helping fellow centre-half Lewis Gibson to find his feet in League One and head coach Barton said: “Soutts was top-class at Sunderland last week. We’ve known that for a while.

“He has had his season disrupted a little by his Australia international duty.

“He was in the limbo between Stoke’s first team and under-23s, so that didn’t make for the best pre-season for him.

“He came in a little behind our group but has just gone from strength to strength.

He’s shown enormous maturity. He has changed a couple of things in terms of his personal regime and lifestyle, and it’s really paying dividends.

“It’s always nice to see a young player come in and start to show the quality Soutts does and he’s turning into an outstanding defender. We have some really good players, all desperate to improve.”

Town found themselves without a weekend fixture after Tranmere Rovers’ pitch had been declared waterlogged on Friday.

It was perhaps a welcome break for Fleetwood as their run of three successive Tuesday night fixtures continues tomorrow at Ipswich Town, whose own promotion challenge is fading.

Town’s inactive weekend saw them slip a spot to eighth as Oxford United moved into the final play-off berth. But Fleetwood would replace them in sixth with victory in tomorrow’s only League One’s only fixture.

Town have one or two matches in hand on all the teams above them. Coventry City climbed to the top with yesterday’s 1-0 win over Sunderland.