Kept waiting for 73 minutes to see his team make the breakthrough against a dogged Braintree Town side last night, Fleet boss Dennis Kutrieb insisted his players showed the belief and tenacity required to win different types of games in different circumstances.
Having seen out a 1-0 lead with 10 men at Eastbourne on Saturday, the visit of Braintree was an altogether different challenge on home soil and Kutrieb had told his players exactly what to expect ahead of the Kuflink Stadium clash. That was illustrated no better than in the post-match stats which saw Fleet’s pass rate numbering 449 compared to the visitors’ 71, a corner count of 11 to one, and a ratio of crosses at 31 for the home side to three for Braintree!
“That’s what you have to expect over the whole season,” the Fleet manager told BBC Radio Kent’s Charles Webster. “It’s not always the same, that’s why you need to be prepared for every opponent. We knew they will sit deep, we knew they are dangerous with counterattacks, we knew they are not the fittest team able to play for 90 minutes [at] high tempo.
“So we knew that we’d get enough chances in the second half and we need to be calm, we need to do what we do and do it with purpose, do it with pace. Everyone in the stadium was probably thinking I’m crazy but that’s exactly the situation where you need to go again, go again, even if you have 10, 12, 14, 15, whatever shots and corner kicks and chances. You need to go for the next one. It doesn’t matter, you have 90 minutes and even if you are one goal up, you can go for the second one.
“The boys are fit so they can do it, they don’t need game management, they don’t need to waste time. It was a terrible game for the fans because they slowed everything down, every five minutes there was an injury, every ball out was 30, 40, 50 seconds [until] it is back in. It’s not really enjoyable for me either but we get on with it and scored two goals and I think it’s well deserved.
“Both games [Eastbourne and Braintree], it was outstanding defensive work from the whole team, two clean sheets, you can’t ask for more. We’re always able to score goals, we know this as a team and it took some time to be honest. We had many chances they defended with everything they had and it was not easy.”
The goals came via the spot for Rakish Bingham before he turned provider for Dominic Poleon’s eighth of the season and that took the pair of strikers’ total to a combined 13 this campaign – something Kutrieb knew could unlock even the tightest of defences.
“That’s what we said [after the first goal],” said the Fleet boss. “Now they will open a little bit more up so we need to put the ball in behind and Dom can go and score his goal. For me as a manager, that’s always the thing where you need to talk because you can score a second one as well. I know I’m very demanding and sometimes I’m annoying as well, I know this, but you can score one or two more goals in the end and that’s what we have to do. I’m happy that we have the three points, so don’t get me wrong again – like Saturday – if someone told me before we’d win 2-0, three points at home, a clean sheet, I would take it all day long but now, after the game of course, we should have scored in the end one or two more goals.
“[For the penalty], to be honest I didn’t see it. I saw [Greg Cundle] go down as well but he’s injured so it must be a foul because he wanted to come off, it was an ankle injury so there must be a foul. I didn’t watch it back on video so I can’t say anything [more].”
And Kutrieb once again praised the home fans for sticking with their team even as frustration could have set in at 0-0.
“I had the feeling the boys on the pitch sometimes were a little bit more nervous than the fans,” he said. “My feeling was the fans have been very calm, they have the feeling like me that we will score our goal. Even if it’s a 0-0 in the end that’s football, sometimes you don’t score a goal because they defend brilliantly and you have to stick to your plan, you have to keep doing it.
“The fans during the whole season, they really push the boys, they help them a lot. And the boys are believing in themselves and it was much better in the second half. In the first half, sometimes it was like we want to do too much too early and it must happen now in this moment. In football you have 90 minutes time and you know you need to do things with pace when you have the ball but if it doesn’t happen then you have to go for the next one.”
