Andy Crosby felt his Tranmere side deserved at least a point as they extended their unbeaten run in Sky Bet League Two to five matches with a goalless draw at Fleetwood.
The home side started brightly and almost took the lead after just five minutes, with Mark Helm firing narrowly wide from the edge of the area.
Fleetwood continued to apply pressure early on, but Tranmere grew into the game as the half wore on.
Sam Finley had a chance for the visitors, and Jordan Turnbull saw his close-range effort from a corner disallowed for offside.
In the second half, the match remained tight, with Tranmere’s Harvey Saunders and Kieron Morris both coming close to breaking the deadlock.
At the other end, Helm blasted narrowly wide from range while Phoenix Patterson’s late free-kick sailed just over as the points were shared.
Tranmere interim manager Crosby, who saw his side keep consecutive clean sheets for the first time since August, said: “Our desire to run, to fight and to scrap is a credit to all the players.
“We’ve now got four points from two really tough away games and got nine points from the last five. But you then have to follow that up when we play at home next Friday.
“I think we did deserve to shade it just, but we’ll take the point and move onto the next game.
“I don’t think we did enough when we had the ball in the final third and didn’t create enough when we had one-on-ones and overloads, and these are the things we need to be better at and improve on.
“We had enough opportunities in and around the final third to be better and more effective, but from where we were to have nine points from five games, we have to keep building and keep improving to back that up.”
Fleetwood manager Pete Wild said: “I think it was a hard-fought battle and both teams battled really well.
“We knew they would be fighting for their lives, so the message all week has been to try and match their aggression and fight and I thought we did that in abundance.
“I actually thought we more than matched them and imposed ourselves on them for much of the game and I was really pleased with that.
“Sadly for both teams there wasn’t a lot of quality in the final third and I thought we did well to nullify Tranmere’s threats really well and at the other end we had a couple of good chances.
“But we are where we are, and the fight and desire and effort that was probably lacking for the final half an hour last week was 100 per cent there.
“We are in a position where we are trying to develop and remain competitive and we were super competitive today, we just didn’t have that little bit of quality to score a goal.”
