Stephen Crainey hails “outstanding” Fleetwood mentality after beating Gillingham

Caretaker boss Stephen Crainey hailed Fleetwood’s “massive result” after their 2-1 victory inflicted a sixth straight defeat on fellow strugglers Gillingham.

Fleetwood took all three points thanks to goals from Harrison Biggins and Tom Clarke.

Although Robbie McKenzie halved the deficit for Gillingham with 15 minutes left, the hosts held out for a crucial win.

Crainey – put in charge after Simon Grayson’s sacking – was quick to praise his players’ mental strength after they climbed out of the relegation zone.

He said: “It was a massive result for us.

“I thought on Tuesday against Bolton we did both sides of the game really well, on the ball and off the ball, but the mentality today was excellent, especially when we didn’t have the ball.

“When Gillingham were putting us under a bit of pressure, we coped really well, we put bodies on the line so every credit to the lads, I thought we deserved the win in the end.

“Credit to Gillingham too, they kept going for the full 90 minutes but the mentality our lads showed was outstanding and if they keep doing that it gives us a good base moving forward and with the quality we’ve got on the ball it bodes well for us.

“But we don’t drop our standards, we need to keep them very high and they have been doing that in training as well, we just need to maintain it.

“They’ve trained with me day in, day out, they’ve showed their mentality, they’ve shown they can do the ugly side of the game as well, they showed me what they’re about in abundance today.”

Gills boss Steve Evans left Highbury a far from happy man following the defeat which leaves his injury-ravaged side languishing third from bottom of the table.

He was shown a yellow card by referee Stephen Martin after an hour and after the final whistle he was still fuming about the official’s performance, not least for a perceived penalty shout his side were denied.

Evans said: “We didn’t track the runner (Biggins) for the first goal, we gave him a tap-in that put them on top.

“We would have had a tap-in too but there was a pull on the shirt. We’ve had that referee before though, so I don’t want to talk about him.

“We didn’t pick up the defender for the second goal either, that’s on us.

“We changed things to try to affect the game and Robbie McKenzie’s strike got us back in it and I thought we then had a wonderful chance to equalise but it bounced off someone and away.

“We just have to endure it at the minute, we have to fight tooth and nail next week at Crewe and try to get through to January.

“The last 25 minutes we were very good, Fleetwood were hanging on at the end, wasting time and so on, I’m not knocking that though, I’ve done it myself, so I hope Stephen (Crainey) gets the job, he’s a good guy.

“What is evident is that our squad players are not regular starters and when that’s the case and you have seven or eight on the pitch you can’t win games consistently at League One level.”