'Two points dropped' - Chesterfield camp react to Fleetwood Town draw
Chesterfield’s 1-1 draw against Fleetwood Town was ‘two points dropped’, said first-team coach Gary Roberts.
Will Davies headed the visitors in front from a corner after just six minutes but Dilan Markanday equalised on 25 minutes after a lovely move down the left.
The Blues controlled large parts of the game after that but Fleetwood threatened on the counter-attack in the second-half and were denied by a big save from Zach Hemming in the latter stages.
Despite coming from behind to earn a draw, the Chesterfield camp were pretty happy with the performance but disappointed with the result.
When asked if it was a point gained or two dropped, Roberts told the DT: “Two dropped, it has to be. We can’t give the first goal away. From our perspective, it is a really poor goal for us to concede and then you give a team something to hold onto. It looks like it could be a little tug on the goalkeeper but I think we gave them too many corners, too many long throws, coming in our box early in the game. We didn’t start on the front-foot as much as we would like but we came back again and scored a fabulous goal.”
On the second-half, Roberts added: “We huffed and puffed, we had some decent moments without having a really big chance. Fleetwood worked hard but the overriding feeling is that it is two points dropped for us. We got into some good positions but probably our flair players weren’t fully on their game.
“I thought the game became a little bit chaotic. We were fine with that, we were suspect to breaks and Zach (Hemming) made a terrific save, but I thought we were the better team. It is a shame we did not go on and nick a winner.”
Devan Tanton started at right-back but was taken off at half-time after being booked in the first-half. Roberts confirmed his withdrawal was not down to injury and that it was purely because of his yellow card.
“I thought he played well in the game,” Roberts explained. “He was getting out that side a lot. With the yellow card, we just didn’t think we could take that chance. We could not go down to 10-men here.”
John Fleck was not involved in the squad and Roberts confirmed that was down to a small injury. “Just a tight calf,” he said. “I don’t think he will be out for too long, I don’t think it is a bad one.”
The result leaves Chesterfield sixth in the table ahead of next weekend’s trip to Tranmere Rovers.