Town boss hoping to overcome Championship side on Tuesday
Manager Micky Mellon is excited by the test Shrewsbury Town face on Tuesday night when they host Championship side Blackpool in the Capital One Cup First Round.Micky, like a number of the other staff working at Town, has close connections with the Seasiders having played at Bloomfield Road for three seasons in the 1990s.
And he is looking forward to locking horns with the Lancashire side at the Greenhous Meadow, insisting Town will show their higher-division opponents respect.
"It's a massive game like they all are," said Micky.
"We want to treat them all like that. We're excited about playing against a team from a higher level.
"It's another opportunity for us to test ourselves. They're a group of Championship players who have Championship quality right throughout the group.
"We have to respect that and know that we'll have to be somewhere near our best to get something from the game.
"But we look forward to it. We're at home for our first home game of the season."
Despite the links between Town and Blackpool, Micky is fully focused on making sure his side reach the next round of the competition.
"There's a lot of connections to Blackpool here, so it's one of those strange ones that gets flung up every now and again, but that won't affect us," he said.
"The important thing is that Shrewsbury Town make a good account of themselves.
"I was there for a few years and had a really enjoyable time there, but it was a long time ago and you'd have to have a very good memory to remember back to then!"
Micky sees the Capital One Cup as a good opportunity to put a cup run together, admitting it is something which the fans always dream about.
"It's romantic and you always look to get cup runs, so we'll be going all out to try and do that and try to win as many games in cup competitions as possible," said Micky.
"We will approach it with that mindset that we want to go through.
"It's always exciting for the fans to face these big clubs. People keep talking about the Arsenal game which is fantastic so we'll go into that with our responsibility knowing that the fans deserve a day out.
"We'll give it everything we've got and if that's good enough on the night then we go into the next round."
And Micky has confirmed there are no fresh injury concerns for Town ahead of the match, but says David McAllister may not yet be ready.
"We're ok and good to go, so we're pleased about that," said Micky.
"McAllister's started to do a little bit more running now, but it might be a bit too early for Akpa Akpro after the knock he got on Saturday.
"One or two others we'll run the rule over in the next 24 hours, but there won't be any excuses because we've got a good squad here."