The Daily Telegraph - Sport

Rosler: If Fleetwood heroes earn move I have done my job

- At Highbury Stadium at Craven Cottage

For Uwe Rosler success has brought a dilemma. After his Fleetwood Town, who gained league status only five seasons ago, held Leicester City, the Premier League cham-

pions of two years ago, to a goalless FA Cup draw, the club manager knows what is coming next.

He is aware that the excellence of his players, broadcast live on BBC television as they more than matched the Premier League side, will only have alerted others to their quality.

“We will lose players, there is no question,” he said of the January transfer window. “We have bids in already for three players. It’s not a distractio­n. We embrace that and that’s the difference. My job here is not to win promotion. It’s to develop and create players to be sold on and to win football games.”

Fleetwood’s is a remarkable story, a non-league club now thriving in League One, with a smartly rebuilt stadium, a growing fan base and a shrewd business model.

And milestones such as their first competitiv­e engagement with a top-flight club are marked as much as what they will mean for the future as for the present.

The draw with Leicester will not only bring further revenue from the televised replay, but it will once again put the club’s principal finanleroy cial assets in the shop window. How Andy Pilley, the chairman who missed the biggest game in his club’s history because he was snowbound in America trying to return from a Christmas break in the Caribbean, must have sighed with relief as the ball bounced off a Leicester post from Ashley Hunter’s deflected strike in the dying moments, thus earning a lucrative replay. And with it another opportunit­y to showcase his resources.

“You will have to ask him,” laughed Rosler when he was asked if the chairman had congratula­ted him for earning the draw. “But there is a healthy balance [here] between resources. We need to send a message to the outside world that sending your players to us will see them well developed and sold on as long as the price is right.”

What is without question is that the performanc­e of some of the Fleetwood players such as Hunter, the industriou­s midfield anchor Markus Schwabl and the mobile, quick centre-forward Devante Cole, will have the phones ringing hot at the Highbury Stadium.

“The way he played today it’s going to be difficult to keep him,” said Rosler of Cole. He is just hoping the team stays together at least until the replay. Steven Davis told Southampto­n fans that turning on Mauricio Pellegrino “doesn’t really help” the team after supporters’ patience with their manager snapped de-

 ??  ?? Returning hero: Jamie Vardy, who did not play against old club Fleetwood, poses for a photo with a young fan
Returning hero: Jamie Vardy, who did not play against old club Fleetwood, poses for a photo with a young fan

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