Gaffer Looking Forward To Season Opener
Shrewsbury Town boss Micky Mellon says he and his squad are looking forward to finally getting the season underway.After last year’s success, Town are back in League One, a division they found themselves relegated from two seasons ago, and face League One favourites Millwall at the Greenhous Meadow this Saturday.
And with a successful pre-season under their belts, Micky believes it’s time to get down to business and feels playing Millwall will set a benchmark for his players.
“It’s always nice to get the season underway,” said Micky. “The pre-season seems to be dragging on a little bit now and me, like the lads and probably like the fans, all want to get started now so it’s great that it’s come around and we’re looking forward to it.
“It’s a tough start for us. I believe their favourites (for the league) so right away it will be a benchmark for us.
“We’ll know very, very quickly, with the start that we have, where we are as a group. We’re pleased with that, we know that we’re going straight into it if you like and there’s no tougher a game than to play Millwall so we’re really looking forward to it.”
Despite the recent success of other promoted League Two sides such as Swindon, Chesterfield and Rotherham, Micky is refusing to get carried away or make any league standing prediction.
“It’s always a very, very competitive league with a lot of big clubs in there and a lot of big clubs that want to get into the Championship and are putting a lot of money into doing that,” said Micky.
“But there’s also a lot of established clubs like your Walsalls and Port Vales, they’ve been in it for many, many years so they have a lot of established League One players. It’s our first year in it and we’ve still got a lot of players who have got to establish themselves at that level.
“We want to be very competitive, that’s for sure. We don’t go daft and start setting long-term targets because this is football and we’re in a new level against a whole host of new teams with a lot of new players, but we certainly want to be competitive and do very well.
“We believe we’ve got a good team and we’ll obviously not allow ourselves to get carried away but come Saturday we’ll be well prepared for it and we want to do well.”
With an almost fully-fit squad to choose from, Micky was not giving any of his team selection away, insisting he still has one or two selections to ponder – a decision made harder with the possibility of two new additions.
“Like I’ve always said it’s a squad of first-team players,” added Micky. “We don’t have a first-team and in my mind I’ve got one or two decisions that I’m toiling with but I’ll take as much time as I can with them and try and make sure I get the right one.
“We’ve been able to make them (Jean-Louis Akpa Akpro and Jermaine Grandison) offers today so they’re now thinking about them and hopefully we can have some closure on that maybe either today or tomorrow.
“They’ve trained with us all of pre-season and we’ve always been clear with the two lads that we wanted to bring them in.
“I hope that they accept and hopefully we’ll have some news tomorrow and hopefully sign two very good players.
“The reason why we’ve been able to make them offers is because the Chairman has dug into his own pockets and tried to make the two deals happen so we’re very, very grateful for that.
“The Chairman has dug into his own bank account and made the funds available to bring in the two players because he, like us, thinks it’s very important to get those two players in the building because they make us better.”