Joey Barton: Why success is inevitable at Fleetwood Town

“Now, if you get a load of money, you can win trophies. You need money.

“Why are we better than we were before Christmas? Because we invested in players in January. We did it as smartly as we could on our budget.

“We lost Conor McAleny and Ash Eastham, and we got Callum Connolly, Lewis Gibson, Barry McKay and Glenn Whelan for that money.”

“It’s incredible business. You don’t have to be smart to realise that if you do that every window you’re going to be successful. It’s impossible not to be.”

Improvement is the key for Barton, who says progress is ongoing. “You need time. We’re halfway through this journey,” he said. “This team will be better in a month’s time and again in another month because that’s what we do – we make the team better.

“The coaching and the analytics staff graft incredibly hard but mainly the players are trying to improve. Everybody comes here now to try to improve.

“Agents and clubs want to send their players here because we improve them.”