Exciting times ahead for Alexander

Fleetwood boss Graham Alexander believes Town’s pre-season plans will provide an exciting curtain-raiser for fans ahead of their second League One campaign.
Graham AlexanderGraham Alexander
Graham Alexander

Town are yet to reveal their friendly opponents, but The Gazette understands at least one glamorous match has been lined up at Highbury ahead of the 2015-16 campaign.

It’s a busy close-season so far for Alexander as he oversees a move to the club’s new training home at Poolfoot Farm in Thornton, the recruitment of as many as a dozen new first-team players and prepares a pre-season programme.

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The Town manager said: “We’ve obviously got a lot of plans to put in place for pre-season.

“There’s the training ground to be working on as well, so there’s a lot for us to go at this summer.

“It can be a difficult process trying to organise games because you don’t want to play anyone from your league.

“You have to wait until the end of the play-offs before you can see who is where.

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“We feel we’ve got a couple of teams lined up to come to Highbury that will get the fans excited.

“They will be a good couple of games for us to test ourselves in.”

Town’s only confirmedfriendly so far is against Borussia Dortmund’s second string on July 15, part of their week-long training camp in Germany.

It will be the first time Town have used Germany as a training base and Alexander knows it’s an important week for his squad.

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“We’re looking forward to going to Germany,” he said. “We’ve been to Austria for the last three years, so it’s a bit of a change.

“It was time to just change the scenery on the pre-season trip. It’s a very important trip for the staff and the squad.”

With the number of new faces Town will have to bed in, Alexander believes the social side of the trip is as important as the time spent on the training ground.

He added: “It’s about gelling the new squad together, getting that team spirit and ethic going.

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“It’s always vitally important you go to a place with the right working conditions, but also somewhere that’s good on the social side to keep the players together.

“Germany is a new direction for us but it will be one that’s very favourable.”

And he knows his new-look squad will be ready to stretch their legs against one of the big names of European football.

“Playing Burussia Dortmund in a friendly will be a fantastic challenge,” said Alexander.

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“We look forward to those games because we’ll all have had a good break over the summer.

“You tend to get itchy feet towards the end of that. You can’t wait to get back to work.

“We’ve got exciting games and a new season with new players to look forward to.”