Marcus Braddock looks ahead to Tuesday nights game with Southend United
Following on from the weekend's draw at Wimbledon, Town welcome Southend United for our first home game in nearly a month. Southend haven't had the start to the season that they would have wanted and were without a point up until last weekend. This prompted the exit of manager Kevin Bond, leaving Gary Waddock as caretaker manager. With the Shrimpers drawing 3-3 at home on Saturday, Waddock should be pleased with his first result, it might only be a point but the slide has been arrested and there's now an opportunity to quickly consolidate. Standing between Southend and that consolidation is a Shrewsbury Town team that is the only team yet to concede at home in the entire Football League. Admittedly that only amounts to three clean sheets in a row but to be the only team in 72 to achieve it, still feels a decent achievement.
Town will be the favourite to win tonight but a result for the Shrimpers is far from impossible and three points could propel them from 22nd place to 21st. A win for Town and we could find ourselves in the top ten going into Saturday's game at Rotherham United.
Last season we beat Southend 2-0 at home and away, our third and fourth wins in a row against the Shrimpers who last beat us in 2016 at Montgomery Waters Meadow. In all, we've played each other 65 times in the League with Southend winning 27 and town winning 23 times.
Referee
James Adcock from Nottinghamshire. Adcock is an experienced football league referee and has been since 2010. Qualified in 2000 aged 16, James followed in his father's footsteps, who also officiated in the EFL. This is James' 6th game this season and so far he's handed out 26 yellow and 2 red cards.
Squad News
Dave Edwards has joined Fejiri Okenabirhie in the treatment room after his recent ankle injury became aggravated.
Southend will be without midfielder Mark Milligan and defender Nathan Ralph.
Pre-match Press
Gary Waddock has stressed the importance of winning games and has talked about rotating the squad to keep players fresh.
Sam Ricketts paid compliments to Southend after their first point of the season, saying that they played with newfound freedom.
Summary
We need to be winning our home games but this one is a bit of a banana skin for Town to sidestep. After a difficult start to the season, Southend are feeling the benefits of change and will be trying to build upon that. Obviously, We need to stop them from and after such a long time without a home game, it would be nice to see us get an early goal to pour cold water on them. That may not come from new signing Jason Cummings because he's likely to start on the bench again but he's a hell of an impact sub if his debut is anything to go by!
COYB!!!
Marcus