Gaffer looks ahead to Dale trip
Shrewsbury Town boss Paul Hurst believes that the Easter Weekend could prove a pivotal time in the 2017/18 season.
Town start the weekend with a trip to Rochdale on Good Friday before returning to the Montgomery Waters Meadow on Easter Monday and Paul is hopeful of bringing home a good points total from the two games.
“It’s a busy period and one that generally signifies that you are getting close to the end of the season. After these two games we will be down to only six games, so we are edging ever closer and thankfully for us it’s going to an exciting stage of the season.
“It’s a case of trying to keep the pressure on from our point of view. That word, pressure, keeps coming up and I genuinely don’t think we are under it, we’ve just got to try and keep doing what we are doing and see where it takes us.
“These games won’t be easy, there’s no easy games now, and I think we’ve got two games that are difficult for different reasons, but we’ve just got to try and perform to the best of our ability and hope that that’s good enough on the day.”
Town face a Rochdale side that are scrapping it out in the relegation zone, but Hurst is wary of a side that beat Rotherham a couple of weeks ago.
“Last season they had quite a long period where it looked like they were going to be Play-Off contenders and it just caught up with them towards the end of the season”, Paul said.
This year, when we beat them in our second home game, it looked a good game and we had to play very well on the day. They like to commit a lot of people forward, very front foot and I think they’ve got players that want to go and make things happen, which makes them difficult opposition in that sense.
“They are obviously at the wrong end of the table but I certainly wouldn’t be writing them off just yet. I think it’s one defeat in their last six, a win away at Rotherham and at Walsall, and they are certainly giving themselves a fighting chance. I saw that Keith Hill had mentioned that they had closed the gap and he now felt they were in a position to try and make a further dent in that.”