Joey Barton: Unfair to ask too much of young Fleetwood players

The head coach has a youthful defence, which is finding League One tough after three straight defeats.

The Cod Army boss takes nothing away from their efforts but says: “It’s a tough league without a recognised strongest back four. It gets even tougher when it feels like you don’t have the correct components to win the types of games that I feel, if you’re going to get promoted, you should win easily.

“We will get them. I keep saying it week by week but until I get them it’s difficult to win games with an 18-year-old and two 19-year-olds starting.

“You can’t afford that many young lads to be learning on the job. You’ve got to know your trade at this level and this is a tough league.

“You could have maybe one or two in an in-form side. It’s tough to ask an 18 and a 19-year-old to be a centre-half pairing.

“Rochdale had two one-on-ones almost instantly and that’s what you’re going to get with young players.

“They will be better for it in a year, two years’ time, but if you’re not careful as a manager you develop players for somebody else. I’m here to develop me and become a top manager, and I need the correct players to do that.

“I can’t keep polishing young players up from the academy who are not quite ready. It’s not fair on them.

“It’s not fair to take Jay Matete off after 45 minutes because that could hurt his confidence. But I had to do it because we don’t have the requisite bodies to win.”

Matete made his full league debut in the 2-1 defeat at Rochdale but the fledgling midfielder did not return for the second half.

“I felt sorry for Jay. I could have taken any of them off at half-time,” Barton said. “I just felt we were getting a lot of the football without any real penetration. I thought Jay was lost a little bit as were a lot of other players.

“It was his league debut and I’m disappointed I had to take him off the pitch. I needed to do it tactically.

“As it was, we got back into the game but couldn’t see it through for him. He’s disappointed but he’ll come again.You want him to play 90 minutes on your league debut but it didn’t pan out that way. When Paul Coutts went on we got more of a platform.”