Shrewsbury Town are pleased to announce Andy Johnson as the club's new fitness coach.
Town are pleased to confirm that experienced Fitness Coach Andy Johnson has joined the club as part of Sam Rickett's backroom staff.
Johnson has over 10 years experience in the football world and has worked for the likes of Blackburn, Norwich (Academy), Birmingham City and Stoke City.
Sam spoke to Shrewsweb and explained why he felt Andy would be a great addition to the club.
“Andy Johnson has got a really good pedigree,” said Sam. “He’s worked under a few managers I know and a few staff I know very, very well.
“He’s recently left Stoke under Gary Rowett, previously to that he was at Birmingham. He’s someone we’re delighted to have.
“For me fitness is a real necessity in football, it’s something I really strive for and I like to be the fittest team we can be and we need fit players to do that. With that, we need to make sure what we’re doing in training every day is making the players as fit as they can be. Andy will be a really big part of that.
“He’s got really good knowledge within the game, he’s been doing what he does for a number of years, he knows what the players need to get up to peak fitness.
“We have the live data so we can see how far and hard players are training. If they’ve not hit the targets that are required then they can top the running up at the end of the training. Little things like that will hopefully make a massive difference to our performance levels this season. “
Andy will join up with the squad on Monday for the first full day of training.
“Yeah, unfortunately, he hasn’t been able to come in beforehand but he’s liaising hugely over phone calls and emails over the last few weeks. We’re looking forward to getting him in on Monday, I’m sure the players won’t be as pleased to see him as I will be.
“He’ll certainly be pushing them to reach new heights physically. We need to be able to press and run on a Saturday but also on a busy Saturday, Tuesday schedule.”