Simon Grayson praised his Fleetwood players’ character after they stunned Cheltenham with a 90th-minute winner to earn a 3-2 victory.

Fleetwood fell behind early on to Callum Wright’s well-taken goal but levelled through Tom Clarke’s header on the half-hour mark.

Darnell Johnson put the hosts 2-1 up 10 minutes from time, but Alfie May looked to have rescued a point for the Robins with his 87th-minute goal.

But Shayden Morris pounced in the 90th minute as Fleetwood got their League One season up and running at the fourth time of asking.

“It was a thrilling game, but probably not that enjoyable from my perspective in terms of the overall game,” said Grayson. “I thought we started a little bit sloppy and we were too slow out of possession and when we were in possession we didn’t move it well.

“When you concede early in the game it can make it very difficult. We showed good character and, although our performance probably hasn’t warranted the three points, the previous games when we’ve played really well we haven’t got the results we deserved. That’s how football can be.

“I’ll take the result today rather than the performance. Sometimes you just need something to happen to end the run you’re on.

“We’ve got an honest bunch of players that stick together through thick and thin. When you’ve lost the first four and you go behind early it can be easy to put your head down and go, ‘Oh, here we go again’, but we showed great character – even more so when we went to 2-2 with a few minutes to go. We showed great character to go on and win the game. That’s been a massive part of the result.”

Cheltenham manager Michael Duff was left fuming at his players’ inability to defend set-pieces.

Fleetwood’s first two goals came from corners.

“I’m disappointed, set plays have cost us the game,” Duff said.

“Teams aren’t opening us up, but we’re just giving silly goals away. That’s three corners now we’ve conceded from and they hit the bar from a corner too. And it was a poor goal we gave away at the end. We shouldn’t have been in that position, it was a game we should have won.

“We’re not marking our men, there were enough bodies in there, no one just went to head it. We’ve gone up a level and the delivery’s better. Normally the players are slighter bigger, better and stronger too, they see things a little bit quicker. We can’t afford to go up the league and give away goals from dead balls.

“The first two goals today came from corners, we can’t allow that to happen. I’ve been telling the players they need to take responsibility and just go and head it. We can’t give up easy chances, ultimately that’s cost us the game. We were 2-1 down because of two corners, it’s giving the opposition momentum when we don’t need to.

“Set plays are important and we haven’t been good enough with ours either.”