Gaffer's thoughts after the 1-0 win over Oldham
Paul Hurst hailed the performance of Freddie Ladapo after the striker scored against his old club to fire Shrewsbury Town to back-to-back wins.The on-loan Crystal Palace man struck his second goal in as many games to fire Town to victory against the side where he spent the first half of this season.
Hurst says he’s pleased for the forward to have proved his doubters wrong with his goalscoring start at Shrewsbury.
“I’m pleased for him because in some quarters he took a lot of stick at Oldham.
“For me, in terms of his work rate, he’ll always get my support, but I’ve also seen a different side to him on the training ground.”
Hurst continued: “He can finish and he’s got decent quality at times, probably more so than people have given him credit for.
“He’s settled in well and the goals will obviously help.
Ladapo’s earlier disallowed strike meant that we saw his trademark celebration twice at the Greenhous Meadow this afternoon.
Hurst said: “He had a bit of a false start, a bit of a rehearsal, it didn’t get any better the second time!”
Despite the controversial nature of the decision during the game, Hurst admitted that he had no complaints having seen a replay.
“It took a while. The flag wasn’t raised, I don’t think the linesman was sure who put the ball into the net, and then I don’t know if they were questioning whether the ball hit Freddie’s hand.
“When the flag didn’t go up, I thought we’d got away with one, and let’s be honest I wasn’t about to start crying about it, but having seen it back, he looked offside.”
Town fully deserved their win having dominated for large periods, but despite the performance Hurst insisted that there’s no room for complacency in the coming weeks.
“In the end we certainly edged the game and we didn’t really look in too much trouble.
“It was a good win, in front of another good crowd, another good atmosphere, we just don’t want anyone to start taking things for granted.
“We need the fans behind us all the time and hopefully we can keep delivering for them.”
Town have only conceded one goal during Hurst’s six home league games in charge, and the manager expressed his delight at how the team has been performing as a unit.
“We changed twice towards the end of the game to help us to see it out, sometimes it doesn’t work and you get accused of being defensive, but it’s a masterstroke when someone like Mourinho does it.
“It’s got to be a team performance to get us results and they’ve gone and done that again today.
“At the moment it’s going well, but we’ve got to keep that fight, hunger and desire to get results.”