Fleetwood Town coach Barry Nicholson looks forward to hard work on the training ground

With the festive fixtures behind them and Town now out of all cup competitions following defeats to Portsmouth and Accrington Stanley in the FA Cup and Leasing.com Trophy respectively, the league is the main focus now.

With that in mind, Nicholson is looking forward to the squad having their energy levels restored and time between games to work on specific areas.

He said: “We want to get back on the training pitch because we’ve not been able to do it.

“That’s the difficult thing. There have been times on the training pitch where we’ve had the boys out and we’ve just been walking through things, just to try and get things across.

“It’s been tough to get the tactical side going but now with Saturday-Saturday, we can get the boys back on the training pitch.

“We want to work really hard on the units, the defensive unit, the midfield unit and then working that top end of the pitch that we’re so good at as well.

“That’s what the coaches are looking for, for a free week to get back to proper training again.

“That Christmas period is difficult and a bit of a grind but now it’s become Saturday-Saturday, we can enjoy ourselves on the training ground and work really hard; hopefully the boys go into the games fresh.”

Fleetwood are right in the mix for the automatic promotion spots despite currently sitting outside the League One play-off places.

Town have two games in hand on three of the six teams above them, and should they win both, they can climb above a Rotherham United side currently in second.

“Once you’ve played everyone you get a gauge of where you’re going to be,” Nicholson said.

“We are where we are in the division and we’ve almost played everybody.

“We do our homework on every game we play. We go into the game with a mindset of trying to stop the opposition but we know we’ve got good players.

“We’re going to impose our good stuff on the opposition in the second half of the season.

“Hopefully the boys can enjoy themselves towards a big push to the end of the season.

“Now that we’re out of the cup competitions, it is a case of getting everybody back on the training pitch and working hard towards a big push to the end of the season.”