Sam Ricketts gives his reaction to the 2019/20 Sky Bet League One Fixtures.
Shrewsbury Town's Fixtures for the 2019/20 Sky Bet League One season were announced at 9am this morning. Town have been given a home fixture against last season's play-off semi-finalists Portsmouth on the opening day of the season. Town's first away trip of the season will be down south as the Shrews take on MK Dons.
Sam Ricketts spoke to Shrewsweb early Thursday morning to give his initial reaction to the fixtures as they were announced.
“It (Pompey) will be a good game,” said Sam. “Pompey were unlucky not to go up last year. They’re going to reinforce in the summer so it will be a good game to start. We’ll see James Bolton come back so quickly, we didn’t think we’d see him again so soon.”
Sam explained how he and his side approach the season’s fixture list.
“We look at games in 10 game blocks. Obviously, the most important one is the next game you’re going to play. Then you try and evaluate because it’s such a long season every 10 games and try to assess what’s working and what’s not working and progress from there.
"There are some good games and big clubs in the league with the likes of Sunderland, Ipswich, Bolton and Portsmouth, there are some really big clubs with big fan bases.
“Like every year it’s going to be a tough season. Clubs are spending a lot of money this summer. There’s an awful lot of sides that are trying to be successful.”
Sam looked ahead to the highly anticipated Christmas period where Town will face Oxford, Coventry, Blackpool, Rotherham and Bolton.
“Christmas is always the same, there’s a few games that come around very quickly one after the other. We’re away quite a lot with Blackpool just before Christmas and then home Boxing Day which will be nice then away to Bolton and then Bury on New Years Day followed by Tranmere.
“It’s a really busy time but hopefully there will be a bit of FA Cup action thrown in there as well.
“The Cups can really clog up the season. It’s up to us what we want to try and do, it’s like last season with the FA Cup which was a great run, everyone thoroughly enjoyed it so we’ll be trying to do the same again.”