Joey Barton: Fleetwood need to handle tense finishes but had enough quality to get result

The head coach has spoken repeatedly about Town’s need to strengthen their squad in the remaining 12 days of this transfer window, though he believes his side had enough quality to win at Rochdale.

The first 45 minutes at the Crown Oil Arena can’t have been easy watching for Barton, whose team were distinctly second-best.

Alex Cairns made good saves to restrict Dale to a Matty Lund goal in the first half and things didn’t improve too much after the restart.

However, substitute Harvey Saunders pounced for what looked like a possible point-rescuer, when he converted Barrie McKay’s low, deflected cross.

It wasn’t enough, though, thanks to Fabio Tavares’ 90th-minute winner and Barton said: “We still had enough quality on the pitch to get a result and a performance.

“If you’re conceding goals in stoppage time, though, like we have at Peterborough and we did here, then you won’t take points out of away fixtures.

“You’ve got to have players on the ball who can handle the ball.

“We were 1-0 down and chasing the game but we got ourselves back in it.

“We were hoping to create more clear-cut opportunities of course, but you need that little bit of luck sometimes, especially when maybe you’re not as strong as you possibly could be. But we’ll be back.

“We lost this game and we lost last week (at home to Wimbledon) on the back of not the worst performance at Peterborough, so it’s frustrating.”