Good pre-season games and training game with TNS and Liverpool
Galatasary's eagerly-awaited visit to the Greenhous Meadow next month has been warmly welcomed by Graham Turner.
The Turkish giants will play a showpiece friendly at the Meadow against Shrewsbury Town on Saturday, July 13 (3pm) with tickets now available.
"A lot of credit goes to Jayne Bebb, the club secretary, for getting the fixture," said the manager. "She was uppermost in the negotiations to bring them here but it's been fairly straight forward.
"It's preparation for them, as I understand it, for the Emirates Cup down at Arsenal.
"The contract is that they send their strongest possible squad over and I suppose that the first names people would look for would be Didier Drogba, Wesley Sneijder, and after that it's topping up to about £130 million worth of players.
"It's a challenge for us, obviously, it's a game we can go and enjoy.
"We're hoping there will be a big crowd and a lot of interest, but it's a terrific game to stage here."
GT added the friendly at home to Championship club Bolton Wanderers the following Saturday, July 20, would go ahead as scheduled despite the clubs being paired together in the first round of the Capital One Cup.
"From my point of view, I'm welcoming the game," he said. "I don't see any reason to change and I've heard nothing at all from Bolton.
"I would have thought if they wanted it changing they would have been on the phone by now.
"As far as I'm aware, the fixture takes place. We'll play a squad of players and I'm sure they'll play a big squad of players with many changes, so I don't think it will have a bearing on the League Cup tie. It's just a decent pre-season match."
Town, who will also host Birmingham City in a friendly on Tuesday, July 23, have pencilled in a couple of training ground matches for pre-season.
"We will entertain TNS somewhere, possibly on the training pitch or maybe at Lilleshall," said the manager. "And we've got a fixture against Liverpool's development squad at their training ground so that takes in a couple more fixtures so it's not looking bad."