Manager puts Chelsea game behind him
Manager Micky Mellon believes Shrewsbury Town's return to Sky Bet League 2 action at Dagenham & Redbridge on Saturday will be difficult.Town travel to Victoria Road over the weekend (3pm kick-off) having won their last four games - the most recent being the 2-1 victory over Portsmouth.
Tuesday night's narrow Capital One Cup defeat to Chelsea offered Micky's side the chance to test themselves against the current best in the country, and the Town boss believes Dagenham are another London side who will be tough to beat.
“Going from Chelsea to Dagenham isn’t much of a contrast," said Micky.
"It’s still a massive game for us and it will be a difficult one.
"It’s a game where we have to go and be positive and try and get a result.
"It will be a tough place to go, Dagenham always is. We’ll go down there knowing that we’ll have to be around our best to try and get something from the game.
“Every game in this league is a test. I think it will be nice to get back on the pitch again and watch the lads performing.
"We know that the eyes of a lot of people will be on us to see how we respond so that will be the big message we keep giving the lads.
"We’ve got to carry our form on now. Standards have been set, levels that have been set and we have to meet them.”
Mellon allowed the players to recover from Tuesday’s slim defeat against Premier League giants Chelsea by giving them Wednesday off before bringing them back into training on Thursday ahead of the game against the Daggers.
“We’ve moved on from the Chelsea game," said Micky.
"They had the day off (on Wednesday) and they’ve been training (on Thursday) with the lads who need to do a bit more, doing a bit more training.
"They were down at the club shop in town meeting the fans again, which we were always going to do anyway, and then preparing for a tough game at the weekend.”
One player that missed Tuesday’s Capital One Cup game is James Wesolowski, with the Australian pulling out in the warm-up with a groin injury, but Micky is hopeful of having the midfielder available for Saturday.
“James Wesolowski has been having a niggling groin injury," said Micky.
"We spoke to him before the game and we put the scenarios to him about how we wanted him to end up being towards the end of the week and that was, if possible, to be fit for the Dagenham game rather than the Chelsea game.”
“He felt that he was okay and then in the warm up he came in and told me that he wasn’t right which was brilliant as it would have been a tough decision to pull out of the game, that’s the type of guy he is.”
“He felt a bit of improvement (on Thursday) so we’ll have a look at him for the weekend.”