Joey Barton: We need the whole of Fleetwood behind us now

Town may still be two points and two places outside the play-off zone but they are definitely right in the mix.

Fleetwood have at least one game in hand on five of the seven teams above them and a win this Saturday would see them leapfrog Pompey, who currently occupy the last play-off place.

Barton’s side have 51 points with 16 matches to play – the most successful Town team at this level finished fourth with 84 points under Uwe Rosler in 2016-17.

And Barton believes more history can be made if the town backs its team to the full. The head coach said: “We need every person we possibly can to get behind this team because they are an incredible bunch of lads.

“And I think with a little bit of time and development space they could become as exciting a team as has been witnessed by Fleetwood maybe since the Micky Mellon/Jamie Vardy era.

“And that’s what we want to give them – great football, winning football to be proud of on a national scale.

“But nothing is given out in February and we have to keep that one-game-at-a-time mindset.”

Barton has acknowledged that moulding the team to his liking requires patience and has stated that it can take several transfer windows for a manager to be able to call the squad their own.

But he now believes he has the right ingredients and Barton is grateful for the vocal backing of the Cod Army faithful.

“Sometimes the fans have been frustrated with us because we’ve let fans’ favourites go and people who had an affinity with the club, but we had to (do that) to get to this.

“We had to let those players go and play somewhere else, so we could get these personnel in and give the fans this sort of excitement.

“Saturday was the loudest I’ve heard this stand, and we’re so grateful to them for coming out to support us in these conditions.

“Without them what is football?”