Fleet boss Dennis Kutrieb refused to stand back and allow Dulwich Hamlet to dictate the game after his side were reduced to 10 men following the sending off of Jake Goodman.
He switched to a back three to maintain the impetus on forward movement in midfield and attack and Fleet might easily have triumphed in the final 20 minutes of the match.
“It’s only the mindset, of course,” Kutrieb said after the game. “They come in at half time and think we are only 10 men. But I said, we don’t change anything. We play our game because we are stronger and we will win this game when we are focused on the situation. At the end it’s a point, we didn’t lose, we didn’t win so, yeah, we work on.
“We talked to the boys at half-time and said be confident and wait for the right moment, wait for the chance, be clever, close the gaps and try to score when we have the chance. So that’s the only point we have to work on at the moment. In such a game, where you are with 10 men for 60 minutes and you get one or two big chances, you have to score. Otherwise you can’t win the game. We are not far enough [with that] at the moment but I think we will get it in a few weeks.”
It’s early in the season to be talking of points dropped or points won and the Fleet boss preferred to focus on his team’s hard work and attitude.
“We will see in the future, we don’t know at the moment… my feeling is it’s two points dropped,” Kutrieb said. “But big credit to the team because they played 60 minutes with 10 men and did really well. So much hard work. So I can’t say anything bad at the moment. But of course I wanted to win the game.
“I told the boys after the game that I’m really happy with their confidence on the pitch. I’m happy with the attitude. They fight as a team together so [even with] only 10 men they fight. And that’s what we want to see. That’s the basic from football that everybody wants to see. But it’s not always too easy to see it when you’ve only 10 men.
“When you haven’t the right attitude, you can lose this game 3, 4, 5-1. And everybody could say the excuses, [that] we were only 10 men. But I think everyone could feel today that the boys on the pitch wanted to win this game. And they tried their best so it’s always good for me to see when they try their best. I can’t moan, that’s fine.”
It’s another quick turnaround as the Emirates FA Cup is back in midweek, with Chippenham Town the visitors.
“You can play Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday. That’s what we want to do,” said the manager. “And that’s what we love to do. I’m really looking forward to it because it’s a completely new game. We can start with 11 boys!
“Of course we want to stay in this cup. It could be a complicated game because they have [made] five new signings yesterday, one of them scoring today. They will try their best to win here as well. We have a big squad so we can bring in fresh boys. We will see how we recover in the next two days and then we will try our best to get to the next round on Tuesday.”
