Marcus Braddock looks ahead to this evenings trip to Accrington Stanley
Tonight, Shrewsbury Town travel to Lancashire to take on Accrington Stanley in Sky Bet League One. So far this season, Stanley have only played twice in the league so far this season, losing 2-0 at home to Lincoln on the opening day of the season and drawing at Wimbledon 1-1 last Saturday.
Their entry into the Carabao League Cup lasted as long as ours did which gives us both one less competition to worry about. They've scored the same amount of goals as we have in League One and it was scored by striker Colby Bishop, who arrived from Leamington where he's been quite a prolific goalscorer. Bishop also scored last Tuesday in the 3-1 home defeat in the League Cup against Sunderland.
Our last meeting was last season when we were beaten 2-1 at Accrington after beating Stanley 1-0 at the Meadow earlier in the season. Our best result against Accrington was a 5-0 win in 1959 and the highest-scoring game between us was a 3-3 away draw in December 2006 with Michael Symes, Derek Asamoah and Leo Fortune-West scoring for Town and Robbie Williams, Phil Edwards and Andy Todd getting the Stanley goals.
Tonight's referee is Scott Oldham from Lancashire who has so far officiated the games between Portsmouth and Tranmere (2-0) and also Coventry versus Exeter (4-1). So far this season he's handed out five yellow cards and 0 red ones. Last season he was in charge when we beat Barnsley 3-1 at home and when they beat us 2-1 at Oakwell. He was also in charge when we were beaten at Bradford City.
Squad News
Accrington seem to have no injury problems, Town have a similar squad to pick from as on Saturday.
Pre Match Press
Sam Ricketts says he's anticipating a hard-working performance whilst also expecting to make as many changes as last Tuesday because this is a league game.
New Stanley forward Colby Bishop has said he wants to score more goals for Accrington after opening his account for the club.
Summary
As has already been mentioned, John Coleman usually produces hard-working teams with a little guile and finesse thrown in so we're going to have a hard game in Lancashire tonight. It’s the first League game of the season at home for Accrington so they're going to be more focussed than ever on getting a result. The homework will have been done and they'll know what to expect but the same could be said for us. We have an excellent defensive record to defend and a third clean sheet should be an important objective tonight, as is scoring. I think we have enough about us to get a good result tonight, we've held two good teams so far and hopefully, we can hold another tonight whilst doing the business at the other end of the pitch.
COYB!!!