Fleetwood Town

Development coach gives an update on his squad

Fleetwood Town development coach Barry Nicholson has spoken of his pride in his young side after playing in some challenging matches.

The Scot, speaking to the Club’s website, remained upbeat and believes the squad will learn a lot from playing the likes of Seamus Coleman as well as World Cup stars Christian Atsu and Kevin Mirallas in a recent match against Everton:

“The games have been really good for all of the squad in the last few weeks. We’ve been able to get matches against Blackburn, Liverpool and Everton which have been great tests.

“The Everton game was a really tough fixture as we played against some of the first team lads, a game that Roberto Martinez took over before taking care of the game against Arsenal on Saturday. The result was obviously disappointing but we were playing against top players who have been to the World Cup so it was a great experience.

He added: “We’ve looked back at the DVD of the game and there’s loads of stuff we can pick up from the game and learn from.”

In recent weeks the Cod Army have faced the likes of Everton and Preston North End, games that Nicholson believes will give the team valuable playing time: “Obviously the squad not being in a league means it’s important we arrange as many friendlies as we can.

“You can only do so much work on the training ground, it’s only really with playing the matches that you can pick on certain things we need to work on and improve on. We played Preston today and drew 2-2 and we have got Liverpool coming up later this week, so it is more tough fixtures for the lads against decent teams so we can see exactly where we are at.”

The 36-year-old has also confirmed that he will continue to search for new players and hopes eventually some of his squad can fight for a first team place: “This year we want the lads to be fit and strong and be ready to go onto the first team.

“We are still looking at plenty on trial as we are a little bit short on numbers which doesn’t help when you are setting up teams for a match when we’ve not done much on teamwork. It would be good to get a few more bodies in to work on the tactical side of the game but that’ll come.”