MARK Cooper's selection at Preston has caused some significant mutterings over the past few days and not without good cause.

Like a man who forgets to invite some of his best friends to his party, Cooper has met with both condemnation - “You can’t not invite x and y, you have known them for ages” - and approval: “It’s his party, he can invite who he likes”.

When the party is over and everyone has had a rip-roaring time, who was and wasn’t there will be quickly forgotten.

But should the event be a dull, tedious affair, the choice of guests could be one of the reasons given for its lack of success.

The manager has taken the risk and the next few weeks will determine whether the damp squib of a party in Preston will be forgotten in a wave of promotion euphoria or will be referred to as one of the reasons for us remaining in this division.

Not that any conclusions could be drawn from the result at Deepdale, other than that we have been equally generous to all three top teams in the last month.

First team or second team, we have shipped three goals without reply against all of them.

The team we put out at Colchester on Tuesday was a return to the familiar drawing board for Cooper.

The Preston experiment (if that’s what it was) was forgotten and the fullest of first teams was fielded at what must be one of the dullest stadiums in the country.

I don’t know what the manager learnt from putting out the second string on Saturday, but clearly it wasn’t something he chose to repeat beside the A12.

My guess would be that we might see a mix of the two recent teams against Orient this weekend, but whatever the make-up of the XI, the only one that will count will be the that takes the field the following Thursday evening at either Brammall Lane or the Proact Stadium.

In other news, Fleetwood have signed a partnership deal with Lokomotiv Tashkent of Uzbekistan.

I bet no-one saw that coming.

I know it is not a twinning arrangement, but the contrast between the two towns couldn’t be greater - Fleetwood on the coast and Tashkent being in the middle of Asia and over 2,000 miles from the sea.

The No Cod Army perhaps?

A pre-season tour of Uzbekistan is lined-up for Fleetwood in the summer of 2016 where they will be able to savour the delights of what was the fourth largest city in the old Soviet Union.

I had the opportunity to visit Tashkent in the dog days of the USSR and found it be a grand city with a very impressive metro system and some of the most miserable hotel employees anywhere.

There was little to be had in the way of entertainment, but one of the officially encouraged and available cultural activities was opera.

Though not a lover of fat ladies singing, I duly went along one evening to the impressive opera house, paid the equivalent of 20 pence and enjoyed a night of central Asian arias.

But this was the mid-1980s and change was in the air along the Silk Road and elsewhere in the Soviet empire.

Gorbachev’s 'glasnost' was making the news worldwide and this was soon followed by the demise of the eastern bloc just a few years later.

I can’t imagine that anyone would have predicted then that non-league Fleetwood would rise through the divisions, nor that they would be linked with a central Asian republic.

Definitely a move from perestroika to a pair of strikers.

So where do the Town go to find their partner club?

I would suggest thinking ahead and getting in touch with Pyongyang City Sports Club now.

After all, you never know how the world’s going to change.