It's been a couple of weeks since my last update, a family holiday got in the way of the football and seemingly at the right time as I missed a couple of difficult defeats. The first I managed to watch via ifollow as I was abroad and I thought we'd done enough for an away draw but fate had other plans and a second clean sheet was narrowly missed. I listened to the Rotherham game, again on ifollow but I've yet to find the motivation to watch the highlights for some reason.
I was back on Thursday and saw that both Luke Waterfall and Abo Eisa had left for Grimsby and Scunthorpe respectively. Good luck to both of them and thanks for your contributions. On the Friday Sean Goss signed from QPR, the 23-year-old midfielder was once in the same Manchester United youth academy as Ro-Shaun Williams and Donald Love so hopefully, he'll settle in quicker with friends in the camp. He's also a friend of Greg Docherty from spending a little time on loan with Rangers. Speaking post-match, Sean said that he'd called Docherty to ask what it was like here before he signed and it seems that Mr Docherty said all the right things.
We also signed Louis Thompson on loan for a season from Norwich on Friday He's a player that Sam Ricketts has been aware of since his playing days and the 24-year old midfielder is raring to go. He's played quite a bit of football in his short career, mainly for Swindon Town where he started his career and played until Norwich made an offer to sign him. The offer included a loan offer back to Swindon for the remainder of the 14/15 season, which Swindon obviously took. He made over 106 appearances for the Robins, all but one at League One level, over a four-season period. He also played for Norwich whilst they were in the championship, making 16 appearances. So we're not getting a youngster who doesn't know the level, he's more than aware of the challenges and looks like another good signing.
Both new players were in the squad for Saturday's home game with Rochdale, Goss in the starting line up and Thompson entering play after just under an hour. Both looked able to cope with the pace and physicality of the Rochdale game after signing just a day before which is a good sign.
The Rochdale game was another mixed result, on the positive side we held a team that's been scoring heavily since the season started. We also recorded our second clean sheet of the season and have conceded just 1 goal, and that was from a mistake rather than opposition pressure. The other side of the coin is that we've scored as few as we've conceded in Skybet League One and that's a bit of a worry. But as Sam Ricketts suggested in his press conference after the game, we're still waiting for this team to gel. I'd be far more concerned if the situation was different and we were scoring plenty but conceding as many, a strong defence is something to build upon.
Going forward we were a little frustrating to watch with nice passages of play snuffed out as quickly as they started as players looked for team-mates. With a little more time playing together they should be able to play more intuitively and moves will be forced further forward as a result. With moves breaking down, the supply to the forwards is a little diminished which makes it harder for us to score. After the game Sam Ricketts was asked if another striker is a possibility but he was holding his cards close to his chest, saying that we're always in the market for good players.
The youth team started their season in my absence, losing 4-2 on the opening day of the season but on Saturday morning they won 3-0 at home to Accrington. If you fancy watching them this weekend you're in luck as they play Tranmere Rovers at their Sundorne Sports Village base, kicking off at 11 a.m.
Looking forward I notice that the club has just launched another retro Shrewsbury Town shirt, as modelled by Dave Edwards on another page of this website. It's the old Wem Ales shirt with the old Shrew badge. It's funny how time can change your view, at the time I thought the shrew badge was dreadful but I really don't mind the little chap so much any more. Details are again, somewhere in the pages of this website, I find the news archive section really handy when checking if I've missed anything. If you hover over the news tab, it's the second option down.
The coming weekend brings us another home game but first, we have a Tuesday night journey to Accrington to make. Stanley haven't started the season as well as they would have liked with just the one point but they've played one less game and had to face Sunderland in their only home game which was in the Carabao League Cup. In the league, they faced Lincoln on the opening day of the season, losing 2-0 but they managed a point away at AFC Wimbledon on Saturday.
Speaking of Saturday, we welcome Burton Albion to Montgomery Waters Meadow at the weekend. So far, Burton's form is a little odd in that they've lost twice at home but have won twice away. They lost both home games 0-1 to Ipswich and Rotherham and won both their away games 2-1 at Gillingham and Port Vale in the Cup. Can we break their winning sequence or will we deny another team at the Meadow? Will we sign a striker before then? Can we get maximum points from this week's games? Keep an eye on shrewsburytown.com to find out, and if you miss anything, there's always next Monday's article.
COYB!!!
Marcus