Steve Cotterill spoke to the media this morning and discussed tomorrow's game away at Morecambe.
After a lot of hard work in pre-season and games against two Championship teams, Shrewbury Town get their season underway tomorrow afternoon when they face Morecambe at the Mazuma Stadium.
Last season, Salop suffered a 2-1 loss in Lancashire but stunned the Shrimps in the return fixture by smashing them 5-0 at Montgomery Waters Meadow.
Speaking ahead of tomorrow's game, Cotterill discussed the game, the three players who have recently had injury concerns, and the incredible effort from the fans that has seen them sell out the original allocation of tickets.
On Morecambe:
"[I want] to do better up there than we did last year, that would be my initial thought ahead of the fixture. It's obviously away from home and we wanted to be away from home for the first game of the season so I'm pleased about that. I think that last season - when we went up there - we started very well for 20-25 minutes but Nathanael Ogbeta gave away a penalty and then we dipped. We didn't play very well for the rest of the game but for 20-25 minutes, we were the better team. If we can go up there and start as well as we did last year, that'd be great.
"I prefer to be away from home for the season's first game. I think there's a lot of added pressure when you're the team at home because there's always more pressure on you to win home games than away games.
"I look forward to all of the games. I think the excitement and the build-up is all for the supporters really. They go into the season full of expectation and hope but I think the players look forward to it most and the manager will always say he needs two or three more players and two or three more weeks. You try and prepare and get yourself as ready as you can tactically and fitness-wise - which is always a balance in pre-season, especially when you have games - but we are where we're at and I think we're in a good place going into the game.
"There won't be too many players who played for Morecambe in that game [the 5-0 defeat at Montgomery Waters Meadow] who will start on Saturday in my opinion."
On Dan Udoh, Aiden O'Brien, and Elliott Bennett:
"Dan Udoh and Aiden O'Brien will be last minute decisions. Elliott [Bennett] won't be involved at the weekend and we've known that for a while now. He will be off crutches on Monday and then he can begin the rest of his rehab. He has another appointment with the specialist to see where we go from here when he comes off the crutches so that's not going to be a plain sailing one and there's going to be rehab so he will be unavailable for a period of time. He's the one that's a longer-term one at this moment in time. We need to see how the other two [Dan Udoh and Aiden O'Brien] will be and we'll know a bit more going into the following week then.
"Yes [everyone else is okay to play tomorrow.]"
On the number of away tickets sold:
"It's a great effort to start off the season. Normally we have a great atmosphere wherever we go so to sell 600 and maybe another 200 more, it'll be a great effort by the weekend."
