Sam Ricketts previews Town's EFL Trophy fixture with Newcastle United's under-21's.
Shrewsbury Town welcome Newcastle United to the Montgomery Waters Meadow for EFL Trophy action tomorrow evening in Town’s first game of the competition campaign.
Sam Ricketts’ men will be taking on the Magpies’ under-21 side as they look to progress further in the competition.
Town’s Manager is looking forward to the fixture and feels the competition allows him the opportunity to test his squad against strong opposition.
On the competition and fixture:
“It’s good competition. It’s an opportunity for certain players to play who hadn’t played at the weekend. We haven’t got a huge squad and we were down to little numbers on the weekend.
“It’s the first time this season that we are going from Saturday to Tuesday. The players will be ready for it and will be relishing to go again. We played Newcastle last year but players would have left and stepped up. It’s a little bit of the unknown for us.
“They have played one league game themselves this year so we haven’t got too much information on them. We will have to concentrate on ourselves and take the game from there.
“Nothing changes for us. We will approach the game as normal and try to impose ourselves on the game.”
Ethan Ebanks-Landell and squad news:
“Ethan isn’t great. His eye has completely closed up. We will look after him and first and foremost, make sure he’s ok. We will then take it from there.
“We have a few lads who will be out for several weeks which doesn’t help but at the same time, we might have one or two back in the next couple of days. We will have to see how we go.”