Martin Wid speaks to the Town skipper after Saturday's defeat by Chesterfield

Shrewsbury skipper Stewart Drummond accepted that conceding three goals in a game was unlikely to bring a halt to the recent run of poor results, and so it proved again yesterday with a 2-3 home defeat to high-flying Chesterfield.

"Once you're onto a bit of a bad run things don't go for you," said the midfielder. "I've had two chances to score, one with the header and the shot from the edge of the box but they don't go in when you're on a run of bad results. They've had 2 or 3 shots or chances and they've all gone in.

"We've defended poorly again today with one or two individual errors. We're letting teams score too easily against us which is something we weren't doing before when we were picking up points.

"It's amazing really, when you're at the top of the league your efforts are going inside the post and now we're on a bad run they go wide of the post. But we've got to stay together and get through this. I thought the fans were great again today especially for the first 60 minutes. They've been a bit quiet lately with the results we've been getting and they're going to be disappointed but we have to put it right."

I asked Drummond if the object of the exercise was simply to keep a clean sheet to arrest the slide the club had fallen into since the Rochdale game, and maybe put at least a point on the board.

"Yeah, you kind of think well let's take a 0-0 even before you go onto the pitch really. If you look back to last season we conceded more goals by Christmas than we did in the whole of last season. The back four hasn't had many changes to it so you wonder why it's happening. We have to address that on the training ground and do a bit of work. Defending doesn't just involve the back four and keeper; it starts at the top of the pitch and it's costing us at the moment."

With three home wins behind them followed immediately by three defeats I asked Stewart how it was affecting dressing room morale.

"It's a young squad and a young team we've got and stick from the crowd might start to affect one or two of the younger ones. The fans might not turn up expecting us to play like Arsenal every week but the least they expect is a decent result and we're not getting them, so you expect criticism from certain sections of the crowd that's part and parcel of the game. We've got to start grinding results out which we were famous for at the end of last season. I think we were 16th after Boxing Day and went on a decent run so there's no reason why we can't turn the corner."

One of the turning points in the game was Rooney's equaliser on the stroke of half time, and the Town starlet recognised that this was a significant moment in the game with the half time team talk completely different going in level instead of ahead.

"It was a big factor conceding before half time," he said. "We conceded four in the second half against Rochdale, three at Chester and another two second half today.

"Something's obviously going wrong, whether it's concentration 5 minutes either side of half time or the opponents coming out more charged up I'm not too sure - maybe it's a bit of both.

"We've got to become a lot more solid second half so that we don't end up chasing it (the game). I don't mean by that that we should sit back and try and defend a one goal lead, I mean we don't go gung-ho looking for a two, three or even four-nil win. Clean sheets are the starting point for us now."

Town managed to claw their way back after Jack Lester's nonchalant penalty had put the visitors 3-1 up with 25 minutes left. Then came a lengthy hold-up in play shortly after Colin Murdock had halved the deficit, with Jamie Winter lying prostrate on the Meadow pitch for close on ten minutes.

"The delay slowed us down a little bit. I think he (Winter) was down for nine, ten minutes and the ref gave us six minutes and like you said we'd just got ourselves back into it, we were on a roll and I thought we could get another one cos we had the game by the scruff of the neck before the injury.

"Like I said I should have scored with my header and there were a few other half chances kicking around but we didn't convert them unfortunately."

Looking ahead to next week's trip to Gigg Lane, Drummond underlined the importance of making sure Town emerged with something from that game and the ones to follow.

"You look at the fixture list at the start of the season and it's well documented that our opening 6 or 7 fixtures looked really difficult. We did well there and I don't know whether we've taken our foot off the gas a little bit, but starting next week at Bury and maybe the next 4 or 5 games we've got to pick up a decent amount of points to push us back in the right direction."

For that to happen, Shrewsbury Town need to get back to basics and make their priority shutting out the opposition for the first time since mid-September.