Gaffer looks ahead to Tuesday night game
Shrewsbury Town boss Paul Hurst is looking for a reaction from his players when they face Gillingham tomorrow night.
Town went down to consecutive home defeats for the first time this season when they were beaten 1-0 by Rotherham United on Saturday.
“It’s always the aim (to bounce back) when you have a result that you don’t want”, Paul said.
“We had a similar scenario last week and the lads put on a good performance at Fleetwood to get the three points, so obviously we’d be delighted if we could show the same reaction and get a victory.
“When you’ve lost a game you naturally want to put that right as soon as possible and with it being a midweek game we don’t have to wait too long for the opportunity. Whether we can take that we will see, but that will certainly be the aim.”
However, it won't be an easy task as they take on a Gillingham side that have only lost to Wigan Athletic since early December. Paul has been impressed by the job Steve Lovell has done there.
“I don’t think it would be too unkind to say that at the start of the season they would have been one of the teams, like ourselves, that a lot of people would be looking at and perhaps wouldn’t be sure how many teams they would finish above, so it’s credit to them and ourselves that we are not talking about the wrong end of the table”, said Hurst.
“They have been on a fantastic run, look a threat, look as if they’ve got lots of energy about them and I think had been scoring goals up until their nil-nil at the weekend, where I think they would have felt they could have won the game with a few chances that they did have.”
Illness has been effecting the camp over the last few days and Hurst confirmed that the squad isn’t in the best shape.
“I’m not going to divulge who has trained and who hasn’t, but we’ve had four people that have missed training because of illness”, said Paul.
“We’ve also then got a bunch of other players training with illness. I think near enough all the staff have got some kind of symptoms, but we’re alright because we don’t have to run around.
“It’s not ideal preparation, far from it, but we’ve got a choice of either moaning about it and feeling sorry for ourselves, or you get on with it and try and get the best performance out of the group that you can, so that’s what the message will be and what we will try to achieve.”