It wasn’t hard to predict the smile on Dennis Kutrieb’s face after his side’s win bettered any previous Fleet team’s opening-day total – and the boss felt they might even have improved that after an opening half-hour blitz that produced four goals and a Dominic Poleon hat-trick.
And Kutrieb was pleased it wasn’t simply a case of converting the chances they had, but also creating even more in addition to those put away.
“I don’t know when the fourth goal happened, I think it was 30 minutes or something like this so when you get the lead with four goals after 30 minutes, then you know you did something in the right way,” the Fleet boss told BBC Radio Kent’s Charles Webster.
“And even [apart from] the four in the first half, we had some more chances so it was not like I can say we [converted] a great percentage. There must be a penalty from my point of view, there could be two more goals at least offside, I’m not sure so we won’t talk about that.
“If we had four chances and we scored four that would be nice as well but we had even more chances to score and that’s brilliant and that’s what I love. I’m really proud of the boys today and I’m happy because that’s what they deserve, they deserve to win games in this way because they are good enough and they work so hard. They worked hard during the pre-season across six weeks and now we have a good win. You can celebrate it for one or two days and then you need to prepare for Chippenham because it’s nothing that you win a great game when you don’t win at Chippenham or get the next win. It’s early days, it’s one win, nothing else, but I’m very happy for today.”
Of Poleon’s hat-trick, Kutrieb’s phrase was one to perhaps launch a new brand of supporters T-shirt as the Fleet boss described his striker in a unique set of words!
“It was a good performance, I like him, he can score goals, he has good pace – he’s horny to score goals and that’s good, that’s what we need! If we’re honest he could score in the first-half two more, but i’m happy with three. If someone told me before that he will score three today, I would take it straight away.”
“If we would have a clean sheet it would be a perfect start so as a manager you always find something to moan about but especially the first half, it was an impressive game from us. Everyone was sharp, everyone was happy to play again after such a long time. The second half, we can do better, we know this and we will do better but for the first game, 5-1 as a result, it’s a good start.”
Despite being in the job for 14 months, it was the first time the Fleet manager had a crowd behind him in a competitive match and the experience left him searching for the right words to express his gratitude to home fans.
“It was outstanding. I can’t explain, I don’t have the right words for it at the moment because you can see it’s such a big push for the boys when [the fans] are cheering for them. They’re so relieved and all of us are so relieved that they’re back in the ground and you can see that they helped us straight away during the game. That’s what we need. It doesn’t matter if it’s a player on the pitch, if it’s me outside or the fans in the ground, we need to stay very tight together because they can help us a lot during the season.”
And Kutrieb had a word for the players who didn’t make an appearance today, with competition for places in the Fleet squad sure to be keen as the season progresses.
“In these times where you never know with Covid, perhaps a few boys will need to self-isolate or whatever,” he said. “There are so many possibilities where you have to be prepared and that’s the reason we need a bit of a bigger squad so we can resolve problems if there are some.
“I can’t thank the boys enough who are not in the squad today because they deserve to play as well but I only can pick 11 and then three substitutions. You could see all the boys were happy today after the goals, there was no-one jealous that he didn’t play or was not in the squad. Of course we want to use the squad, we will see how they adapt if we make some changes or if we do other things.
“But i’m very positive and the feeling which I have right now, especially after such a win, is that they’re able to adapt to things how we want and that’s great because it opens a lot more opportunities for me as a manager.”
