Fleetwood Town will reset ahead of Morecambe's visit on Saturday

Some good results and nine defeats by a single goal this season had led Town’s head coach to believe they weren’t far from turning the corner.

However, last Tuesday’s 4-1 home humbling by Accrington Stanley has convinced him the time is right to start afresh.

The Town boss said: “I was speaking with Ian Miller and he said that, when you are losing by the odd goal, you keep thinking you are not too far away.

“Then you get spanked like we were and you have to press the reset button and focus again on what you have to do better.

“We have a genuine bunch of lads. I like working with them and they have done reasonably well so far but now we have to knuckle down and show heart, desire and grit to get up the table.”

It’s the perfect opportunity to ‘reset’ as Fleetwood don’t return to action until Morecambe visit Highbury on Saturday.

Asked how the 10-day break between fixtures would be spent, Grayson said: “The players might not be getting as many days off as they first thought.

“We’ll get the balance right. We have a clear week to focus on what we need to be doing to get better individually and collectively as a team.

“We have played well this season and given some of the top teams a really good game, like Wigan and Wycombe, but Tuesday just wasn’t acceptable and we have to eradicate sloppy mistakes, sloppy play, and we’ll certainly be doing that.”

Last Tuesday’s match may have been between two clubs who had already qualified for the next round of the Papa John’s Trophy but Grayson insisted that was no excuse for Fleetwood’s lack of fighting spirit.

He added: “Football is played in the head and with that thing that’s inside your chest, your heart. You need to have hunger, desire and passion.

“It’s immaterial that it was a Papa John’s Trophy game. It was another football match that we needed to win and were desperate to win, but we didn’t show any of those qualities you need to in the second half.

“In the first half I thought we were all right and competed well but it was too easy for Accrington for their third goal. Once that goal went in, we just seemed to accept that it was the Papa John’s Trophy and we’d qualified already.”

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