Gaffer looks ahead to the trip to Bury
Shrewsbury Town boss Paul Hurst doesn’t want his players to put in an ‘after the Lord Mayor’s show’ performance against Bury on Tuesday night.
10-man Town produced an incredible 93rd minute winner on Saturday against Rotherham to go four points clear at the top of League One, but Hurst doesn’t want his players getting carried away.
“They know that they will be asked by myself and Doigy to back that performance up. I don’t take too much notice of where Bury are in the league, but for me they’ve still got some very good players.
“Something’s not quite working for them, that’s obvious, but at the same time if they click on any given day they’ve got some players that would get into most teams in our league.
“You’ve got to be on your guard and we’ve got to try and make sure it’s not a performance that’s on the back of the Lord Mayor’s show and that we flatter to deceive on the day."
With Abu Ogogo’s sending off, Town ended up playing for over 50 minutes with 10-men on Saturday and Paul admits he will need to assess whether the players will be capable of being 100% again tomorrow evening.
“I’ve got to consider that, but also I’ve got to look at how many options I realistically have got”, Hurst said.
“The game was tough in some regards. Stats wise, one stat is really high and the others really low, but when you go to 10-men it does distort figures slightly.
“There’s times where we weren’t particularly moving up and down the pitch as much, but the work was to try and stop crosses into the box or long range shots, so you work in slightly different ways.
“We’ve had them in today and there’s a few that look a little bit stiff, but they’ve still got more than 24-hours before they really need to be ready to go, so it was more just a case of getting them going today.
“They certainly haven’t come in thinking they’ve cracked it, so we look forward to the next game and trying to get another three points on the road.”
Bury currently sit bottom of League One having won just three times in 18 games, but Hurst believes Caretaker Boss Ryan Lowe has some good players at his disposal.
“They were one of the teams that I looked at and 100% they would have felt they had improved on the squad from last season”, admitted Paul.
“Expectation levels would have been raised dramatically because of the type of players they have managed to bring to the club, but it hasn’t quite worked out.
“Whoever does take charge, whether it’s Ryan Lowe permanently or another manager, they’ve certainly got a squad that are capable but sometimes it’s not as simple as that.”