Shrewsbury Town boss Steve Cotterill spoke to the press after yesterday’s 0-0 draw away at Wycombe Wanderers.
Wycombe controlled the game and reduced Town to very few chances but they couldn’t find a way past the stubborn Salop defence.
Matthew Pennington, George Nurse and Marko Marosi all shone in the defence on the night but every player put in a great defensive performance to keep Wanderers at bay.
Cotterill said it was a tough game for his side but praised the team for their performance and provided an update on Tom Flanagan.
On the game:
“I think when you come to Wycombe, you know what you’re in for. Really difficult game for our boys, really difficult, and you know what you’re going to get but that’s one thing, the second thing is stopping it and I think we did that tonight. We started with the two kids up front to give [Ryan] Bowman and [Dan] Udoh a little bit of a break which I think was needed. We’re in the middle of a three-game week and seven games where another one is away on Saturday so we’ve had some long trips backwards and forwards on the bus and sometimes you need to give players a break. I thought the two young lads did really well for a good hour but I couldn’t see us keeping with them for the rest of the game so that was always going to happen, that the three midfielders, three centre-backs and two wing-backs were always going to be under a certain amount of pressure.
“I think what we’ve done tonight is show great commitment, great organisation, we got some great headers in, some great blocks and all those things are part of the game because if you don’t do those things you’ll get beaten. You can have all the possession you like but if you don’t score, they’re [Wycombe] going to put you on the back foot in a game; every free kick in their half, [David] Stockdale punts it into your box and he’s very accurate with his kicking, I had David at Birmingham – a great lad, does a great job for them. They’ve got Sam Vokes who’s just come out of the Premier League playing for them, they’ve got [Adebayo] Akinfenwa coming off the bench who’s a brilliant replacement and one of the most intelligent players on the pitch at the end of the game so it’s a tough old game.
“We had a couple [of chances]. Not enough but we had a couple during the game and we don’t always take our chances anyway.
“It’s easier to be a spoiler than it is to be a creator and I’d rather be a creator. Sometimes it happens where you lose your rhythm a little bit and we’ve had a lot of tough games lately and we haven’t missed a game over Christmas, haven’t missed a game because of COVID, and it hasn’t been mentioned by anyone yet but they’ve had ten days off. We just played another hard game on Saturday and then had to travel down here so I think our boys tonight were magnificent for their club.”
On Tom Flanagan:
“[He was] poorly overnight. He came here with us, travelled with us and would’ve played tonight. We did the work with him yesterday but in the night the physio had to go and see him and he was poorly in the night and quite sick, so this morning we had to change that around a little bit and send Tom off home. He’s back at home now but he certainly isn’t very well at the moment.”
