Fleetwood Town provide perfect tonic for Joey Barton's hangover fears

The Town head coach needn't have worried as his side were impressive 2-1 home winners over Burton Albion on the opening weekend of the League One campaign.

Play-off winners Wycombe Wanderers defeated Barton's side over two legs in the July semi-finals, but Fleetwood have started 2020/21 with three straight wins in all competitions going into tomorrow's Carabao Cup second-round tie at home to Port Vale.

And Barton said: “At home you want to get off to a decent start, especially after the disappointment of missing out on promotion in the play-offs last year..

“You always worry how the first league game after that will go. You wonder if there’s pity or sorrow in the group, but to be fair to the lads the way they started the game was outstanding.

“We had that disappointment of Burton equalising but we showed the character to go up the other end after that and get the winning goal.

“We were probably a tad unfortunate not to have more, I don’t think I’ve ever seen my team hit the bar and post, and have so many cleared off the line. Thankfully we got maximum points, though.”

Barton gave last week's signing Sam Stubbs a debut following his move from Middlesbrough and was beaming at his fledgling partnership at the heart of the defence with James Hill.

“Considering Sam has only come in this week and not had 90 minutes for a season, he and James Hill both performed really well to forge a new partnership,” Barton added.

“Hilly made his second league start, the first being over two seasons ago, and I thought he was immense.”