CEO talks League One survival and hopes for the future
Shrewsbury Town’s CEO Brian Caldwell is looking for Town to ‘kick on’ next season after securing their League One status last weekend.In October, Town were bottom of the pack, but Paul Hurst’s arrival led to a brilliant turnaround in form and Shrewsbury ended up finishing 18th - two places higher than last season.
Town’s Chief Executive was quick to praise Hurst for his efforts and is now looking for Town to push up the league next season.
“From where we were in October, six points adrift, I think we would all have bitten off your hand to be in the situation we are in”, Brian told ShrewsWeb.
“Obviously we went into the game on Sunday confident that there wouldn’t be a 10-goal swing, but we couldn’t come out and say that.
“Sunday was obviously a disappointing game for everybody, particularly the first-half, but at the end of the day we had fantastic support there, with nearly 900 supporters.
“You look back on the season and at least we stayed in the league and we can regroup. You look at what Paul’s achieved, with his points average, and hopefully we can kick on into next season.
“I know Paul has got a lot of changes afoot with what he wants to do with the squad. We saw a lot of changes in January, I think it was eight new players over a month’s period, so heaven knows what it’s going to be like when you have May, June and July before the season starts again.”
Paul Hurst has already spoken about raising expectations and improving Town’s league position next season and Brian reiterated that point.
“I think you want to continue improving”, said Caldwell.
“I don’t think it’s helpful to anyone to put pressure on anybody, whether it’s the players or the manager. I think when you look at it we finished two places above last year, but when you look at last season’s league table, Fleetwood were one place and one point above us and you look what they’ve achieved this year in finishing 4th in the league.
“I think if you get the recruitment right and if Paul works hard over the summer, which I’m sure he will do – they’ve been looking at players and looking at games for a number of weeks now – then hopefully we can progress next year like we have this year.”
Town had some terrible luck when it came to big decisions last season and Brian is hopeful they will even themselves out in the next campaign.
“Unfortunately we seemed to be on the wrong end of quite a number of big decisions”, admitted Brian.
“I even look back at the week where we were away at Bolton and Rochdale (in December) and the goal that was kicked out of Jayson’s hands and then the offside and the penalty against Bolton and those potentially could be game changing moments.
“There’s been a number of issues that have happened over the course of the season. Do they balance out? I’m not quite convinced, but hopefully they will balance out over next season.”