The pre-match look ahead of the game with Leicester City
Listen to full match commentary of the match on ShrewsPlayer
Marcus Braddock previews the game
With the world looking toward the London Olympics, Shrewsbury Town will be taking on Leicester City in the second of their home pre-season friendly games....
Leicester City came 9th in the Championship last season just 3 places from the play-off zone and will be looking to push on next season. Since last October when Sven Goran Eriksson left by mutual consent, Leicester have been managed by Nigel Pearson and the Shrewsbury old boy has made just a few signings in the close season. Zach Whitbread who was released by Norwich after 2 ½ years in their defence joined on a 2 year contract and ex-Werder Bremmen striker Marko Futacs signed after leaving Portsmouth. The Foxes have also released a few players, the most noticeable for us being goalkeeper Chris Weale who joined us in the close season. Leicester come to us after a 4-1 pre-season win at Hinkley Town and may be without Jermaine Beckford who is recovering from illness and Kasper Schmeichel and Sean St. Ledger who took part in Euro 2012. Town will be without Reuben Hazell.
Ones to watch
Supplying last season’s goals were David Nugent and Jermaine Beckfield with fellow striker Paul Gallagher chipping in 8 goals, so plenty going on up front and with the introduction of Marko Futacs plenty to guard against.
The Boss
The Leicester manager is a Shrewsbury Town old boy, Nigel Pearson, who spent 5 years at the Gay Meadow playing as a defender before moving on to Sheffield Wednesday. He was part of one of our most successful periods after joining from Heanor Town in 198. He was signed by our very own Graham Turner and helped us to achieve our highest league finishes of 9th and 8th in what is now the Championship. After over 150 appearances, Pearson moved to Sheffield Wednesday and spent 7 years aiding them in their successful bid for top flight status and he also captained Wednesday in 1990/91 as they won the League cup at Wembley. During the 1992–93 season, he also helped Sheffield Wednesday reach both domestic cup finals, but unfortunately broke a leg in the League Cup semi-final, ruling him out of both finals.
In 1994 Pearson was bought for ¾ million by Bryan Robson at Middlesbrough after a successful 7 years with Wednesday. Boro were to be Pearson's last club as a player and during his four years there captained them to 2 promotions, 2 League cup final appearances and F.A. Cup final runners up spot. In 1998 Pearson retired from football and perused a coaching career, starting with Carlisle in 1998. His season in charge for the Cambrians was an eventful one with a winning battle against relegation from the league via a loan keeper’s final minute goal! Since then, Nigel has spent time as an assistant, caretaker and full time manager and has also worked with the England squad. Pearson is in his second spell with the Foxes after spending 2 seasons with them in 2008.
Prediction
I'm citing the usual pre-season blarney about the unimportance of the result again. The result is not important (unless we win) and it's more important for the players to get used to each other. It's true of course, and proves to a degree how difficult it is to predict football match results. Leicester are a similar quality team to Birmingham, in the top half of the division and looking to improve. Whether the game will be the same is more difficult to predict as in their friendly at Hinkley, Nigel Pearson opted to field 2 different teams in each half. No idea what the result, so I'll pick a 2-2 draw from the air!
COYB
Marcus
ShrewsWeb spoke to Graham Turner to get his thought's ahead of the game
On Birmingham City...
Birmingham played their strongest players at different times during the game and it turned out to be a very good work-out for us. I think they were quite pleased, the manager and coaching staff came in for a drink after the game and they were quite pleased at the work-out they had had. Certainly it's posed one or two questions for us, I thought attacking wise we created one or two good opportunities, should have scored more than the one but it was just the defending side of things that we have got to look at now. I think we showed a little too much respect to Birmingham, we gave them far too much room, particularly in our half of the field. So that will be something to look at during training, we hope that will improve for the Leicester match and be better still for the Wolves match next Tuesday.
On Nigel Pearson...
He had a super career and he was in the side here very early on, a very successful side here. Then to go and play at the top level and play for good managers, it was a very, very, very good playing career. It's now obviously his managerial career and he's had a fair experience of that, what with being involved with quite a number of clubs, can’t even begin to list the sort of clubs he has been associated with, I've seen him at Middlesbrough, I've seen him at Stoke, I've seen him at Southampton, Leicester, Hull, he's had some good clubs there so he's done very well from himself. It doesn't surprise me; he's an intelligent lad as well as being a good footballer.
Watch Graham Turner's prematch thoughts on ShrewsPlayer