Fleetwood Town boss Simon Grayson rues errors at crucial time in Carabao Cup defeat at Stoke but remains confident

Goals from striker Sam Surridge and former Fleetwood favourite Harry Souttar condemned the Cod Army to a second defeat in four days.

Defender James Chester scored a bizarre own-goal with virtually the last-kick of a scrappy contest but a shock was never on the cards.

But despite losses to Portsmouth in the league and now the Potters in the Carabao Cup, head coach Grayson remains confident that his young side will find their feet and start to prosper.

“Stoke are a good team, a strong football club, and they’ve just spent £5million on a striker (Surridge) who played tonight,” he said.

“But in the first half there wasn’t a great deal in it. Alex Cairns didn’t have too many saves to make, their keeper didn’t and I thought our shape was good. We limited them to few opportunities.

“But then just on half-time when, we wanted to get in at 0-0, we make three consecutive mistakes.

“Two lads dive in and then Surridge, who is a good striker, gets a good opportunity in the box and before you know it you’re 1-0 down. And if affects the players a little bit.

“However, I thought we passed the ball well enough in the first half, even though you’re still very wary of what they can do to you.

“We tried to stay in the game but we should have been a little bit more positive when we got into the final third and tried to create a little bit more.

“It was crucial conceding at half-time. You could sense the dressing room was affected by it. We’d done really well up to then as their opportunities were few and far between.

“But we had to make sure we still kept our shape because they’ve got good players who can really hurt you if you’re too open.”

Australia international Souttar, a Fleetwood loan star of the past two seasons, secured victory with a bullet header with 13 minutes remaining.

And Grayson admitted his charges just couldn’t find enough creativity after the break to trouble their hosts.

“We just didn’t pass the ball as well as we probably did in the first half, but then they get a goal midway through the second half from a player like Harry Souttar, who is hard to deal with,” added Grayson.

“Fleetwood fans know all about him and that goal rocked us. But we showed good character, we hung in there and we tried to get something out of the game.

“The big thing for us is that some players got 90 minutes, especially because we’ve had four players out with Covid the last few weeks.

“It was a positive for us that players like (Callum) Camps and (Dan) Batty got some game-time tonight.”

Grayson made six changes to his side which lost 1-0 at home to Pompey on the opening day.

“The changes that we made from the weekend gave us a different type of team I wanted us to play with,” stressed Grayson.

“I also wanted to rest players like Shayden Morris and Callum Morton, who are vulnerable sometimes to being exposed to too much game time too quickly.

“So we made a conscious decision to freshen it and I think the players did well enough.”

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