Chesterfield’s draw with Fleetwood feels like two points dropped – Gary Roberts

Chesterfield coach Gary Roberts felt the Spireites dropped two points in their 1-1 draw against Fleetwood.

Will Davies put the visitors ahead in the seventh minute before Dilan Markanday struck a 25th-minute equaliser.

Chesterfield had the majority of the play in the second half but the visitors could have snatched all three points as Davies had a couple of excellent chances, with Spireites goalkeeper Zach Hemming making an important save.

However, Roberts – conducting media duties while manager Paul Cook serves a touchline ban – said: “Two (points) dropped. It has to be.

“These games are tough. When teams come out who are going to work as hard as that and being as stubborn as that, you can’t give the first goal away.

“From our perspective, it’s a really poor goal from us. You give a team something to hold on to, something to fight, run and work so hard for the points that they get. I thought we were the better team.

“Once you give that first goal away it’s going to be tough and they worked hard but I think the overriding feeling was probably two dropped for us.

“We probably never started on the front foot as much as we’d like, as we have done the last week or two.

“Unbeaten again at home, so there’s some positives to take, but going home today you’d feel like two points dropped.”

Fleetwood boss Pete Wild praised the character of his players, saying they delivered the type of away performance he wants to see.

Wild said: “Really pleased. That’s the away from home performance, out of possession sort of character that I’ve been looking for all season, since I came here really.

“Defend your own box well. Anything that comes in, defend. Get out, make tackles, make blocks, try and hit teams on the counter.

“And I thought certainly second half we did that. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to live on the edge of my own box for full halves of games. That’s the mentality I’ve been crying out for.

“I’m really pleased to come to a top team with top people, with ‘Cookie’ (Paul Cook) and ‘Gaz’ (Gary Roberts) and all his staff who are brilliant here, who I have no doubt will be right up there. They’ve threatened, they’ve caused us lots of problems, they’ve put us on the back foot a lot.

“They’ve got obviously top players that can cause us problems, but more importantly, we stood up to that challenge today. I think that’s the pleasing bit, and I think you see with the fans at the end, I think the fans appreciate that the lads have gone to war today and they’ve got a deserved point in my eyes.”