Paul Hurst reflects on the opening half of the season and looks ahead at the festive period
Shrewsbury Town boss Paul Hurst has taken time to look back on his side’s record breaking season.
Town started the season with a 15 game unbeaten run and although results have dipped slightly of late, they still sit second in League One having been tipped for relegation by the bookies before the season got underway.
“I think I’m right in saying that there’s only really been the Bury game that’s been a real disappointment”, Hurst told ShrewsWeb.
“The other two games that we have lost, we should have certainly got something against Bradford and I think realistically Peterborough shouldn’t have had too many arguments if we had got a point from that game.
“A couple of wins that we’ve had could have been draws and a couple of draws that we had could have been wins, so I think overall we’ve got what we’ve deserved and that’s credit to the players.”
With 25 games still to play, there is sure to be many more twists and turns before the season ends and Hurst is hoping that his side aren’t the team that falter.
“There’s still a hell of a long way to go”, said Paul.
“There’s nearly always a couple of teams that come with a run and likewise a couple which perhaps falter. We are trying to do everything we can to not have that tag but I think when I look at the table last season at a similar stage there were a couple of teams that dropped out of those play-off positions and some came with a run.
“If you look at the top 10, we are the team that stands out because you wouldn’t expect us to be there. There’s even a couple outside of that top 10 that would hope to be there and would still hope that they could put a good run of results together to get back in play-off contention.”
However, Paul did admit that a win on Saturday would set the team up nicely going into the second-half of the campaign.
“It would be fantastic and would leave us three points away from that first target (50 points)”, Hurst said.
“I know people will smirk about it and I said a while back that we should reach it now, but it’s still the first target to reach and the second one will be to beat last season’s total, which again could happen very quickly because it’s only a point more.
“That’s a sign of progress straight away and then after that we will re-assess and look at the league table to see what we can achieve or what a realistic aim is for us as a group and as a club, but we are quite a few games into the season now and we still find ourselves in an excellent position.”