Marcus Braddock previews the game

After a disappointing result at Grimsby, we fly to the other end of the table and welcome high-flying Rochdale to the Prostar Stadium. Rochdale are having one of the best seasons in their history and sit rather prettily at the top of the division with 6 points and a game in hand over second placed Bournemouth. Their goalscoring record (+39) is bettered by only Notts County (+41) in league 2 but interestingly, they have scored more than County but have also conceded more. Rochdale have lost 7 games this season, 4 at home and 3 away, with their most recent loss was at home to Bradford 3-1 last month.

Best home result: Rochdale 4-0 Shrewsbury 19-12-2009
Worst home result: Rochdale 1-3 Bradford 23-02-2010
Best away result: Bournemouth 0-4 Rochdale 31-10-2009
Worst away result: Burton 1-0 Rochdale 04-10-2009

Clean sheets: 12

Form
Rochdale away: WLWDDW
Shrewsbury home: WWWLWD

Goalscorers (in all competitions)
Chris O'Grady 19, Chris Dagnall 17, Craig Dawson 11, Joe Thompson 6

Assists (in all competitions)
Chris Dagnall 11, Chris O'Grady 10, Thomas Kennedy 7, William Buckley 3

Performer
Chris Dagnall is Rochdale's top man for assists and is also vying for the top scorer position with Chris O'Grady. The 23 year old started his career with home town club Tranmere and made 39 appearances in the first 3 seasons of his career. In 2006, part way through the season, he went on loan to Rochdale, and although he only got 3 goals that season he did enough to earn himself a contract. He suffered an injury to his foot the following season, but he came back strongly and ended up with 17 goals from just over 30 games. Since then he has scored another 31 goals, and been involved in the play-offs twice. He is a pacey player who can play a bit, can hit them from distance and is a predator in the box.

Referee
D'URSO, AP (Andy) - Essex. Games this season: 26. Yellow Cards: 72. Red Cards: 1.

Assistants
S J Cook and A R Hendley

Fourth Official
N Radford

Squad News
Rochdale: Rochdale defender Craig Dawson will wear a specially designed facial mask after suffering a facial injury last week.

Shrewsbury: Craig Disley is still out with ankle ligament damage. Shane Cansdell Sherriff is back from suspension, but Dean Holden sits out for one more game.

Prediction
Bearing in mind Rochdale's great form and our recent defeat, many would be forgiven for taking the easy option and predicting an away win or at least a draw. I am not one for taking the easy option, and I think we will come back strongly from the ignominy of defeat. So I shall go for a 3-2 win for the Town.

COYB
Marcus

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ShrewsWeb spoke to Paul Simpson to get his thought's on the weekend's game

Are there any positives to be taken from the Grimsby game...
No, and in all honesty we haven't looked back. We came in on Monday, and we had a chat with everybody and I gave my thoughts on it, they gave their thoughts on it and the big thing that we have decided is there aint any point looking back at it now. We're not going to change it and we all know that it was a disappointing result; we know where we let ourselves down with our lack of clinicalness in front of goal and silly little mistakes that we made. All we are doing now is looking forward; we have got 11 games to go, some great games to look forward to. Rochdale is the first of them, so for the first time this season, I am going to say it isn't a case of looking back to Grimsby. We'll forget about that, get it out of our system, learn from what we did wrong, and make sure that we start again on Saturday.

On the season so far...
What we have got to do is make sure that in these last 11 games, we get a good run of wins. It shows what we have been doing that in January and February, I have been nominated for manager of the month so the players must have been consistent and it's because of them that I get that nomination. So the players need to take heart from that, they deserve credit for what we have done, unfortunately we have had the one little game, in January it was Accrington, in February it was somebody else. We have got to make sure that we have a full month of consistent performances and consistent results, and hopefully I'll be nominated for March.

On the approach to Saturday's game...
It's up to the players selected to go out and really roll our sleeves up, give our supporters something to cheer about, because I am quite sure there will be a good crowd this weekend. I think there will be a good atmosphere, and if the players work their socks off and tackle and chase around like our supporters want them to do, then I am sure we will be in for a good afternoon.

Watch Paul Simpson's prematch thoughts on ShrewsPlayer