Barry Nicholson wants Fleetwood Town to kick off this year’s away games with victory at Burton Albion

Fleetwood travel to the Pirelli Stadium in the hope of putting their torrid away record so far this season behind them as they enter 2020.

Compared to their home form, Town have been sub-par on their travels in winning just three of their 10 away fixtures so far.

For Nicholson, the other deficiency in Town’s game holds the key to their success away from home.

With Joey Barton’s men only keeping four clean sheets this season, but scoring in 16 of their 22 games, Nicholson has faith in the forward areas should the backline hold up.

He said: “It’d be a perfect one to start, we feel that if we can start picking points up away – obviously our home form is good – it’ll be good for us.

“Over Christmas we got the win over Rochdale, I thought the performance was good but again we conceded the two goals.

“If we can cut out the silly mistakes and stop conceding goals, with the firepower we’ve got, we can pick points up on the road.”

The Scot sees similarities to Fleetwood and Burton at the moment, with both sides struggling to find consistent form.

Like Town, the Brewers were also knocked out of the FA Cup at the weekend.

Nicholson believes they will have to be prepared for the inevitable reaction from Nigel Clough’s men.

He said: “Over the last few weeks, they’re also a bit inconsistent, they went out of the cup last week to Northampton (Town).

“They’ll be disappointed with that, at home, so they’ll be looking to bounce back.

“We’ve got to be ready for them because there will be a response.

“They’ve got good players going forward, (Liam) Boyce, (Lucas) Akins, (David) Templeton in the frontline.

“We’ve got to be really solid and play from our shape and feel we can hurt them with our ability.

“The last time we played them, we actually felt that we didn’t play too well on the day, although we won.

“We were pretty ruthless, Paddy (Madden) scored a hat-trick and we ended up winning 4-1.

“We know what Burton are all about; they’re a really aggressive team, they press without the ball. If we’re not right it’ll be a difficult afternoon for us.

“We’ll concentrate over the next few days on what we do well, going into the game with the right mindset and confidence to get the three points.”