how right matster is in predicting another defender. welcome juian bennett, a tackler, a long thrower and an occasional goal scorer and maker. totally off piste, when i lived in ludlow, my parents used to frequent a pub in the 50's in bennets end near knowbury clee hill and the people who kept the pub had a famous son, the first presenter of blue peter. valery singleton, john noakes and----- can anyone remember his name otherwise i will have to look it up under blue peter. answer tomorrow. any way on piste, come on you shrews, breath on 'em, floreat salopia!. those going please do not lean against the stand! or else
sorry it was christopher trace. he was the first presenter of blue peter with leila williams. john noakes and co followed them. come on you shrews. amwythig am byth!
Business as usual by the sounds of it. More possession and shots but poor defending, woeful finishing and a dodgy penalty combine to give a thoroughly predictable defeat. I can't see us getting anything from Bournemouth so we really need to hit some form soon.
i am desperately trying to avoid imagining who our new manager will be. common sense tells me we cannot go on like this. my heart tells me to stick with the status quo. my head is saying something else. my head tells me gt has 3 games to turn things round or else, toast. well played hereford by the way hope your win helps. good luck
on reflection, this was a great giant killing by the bulls and they are to be congratulated. in the meantime gt's loanees must be given the chance to play themselves in, but shrews season is over except for what now appears an hard fought relegation battle. can or will shrews survive. we have 11 games to eke out before the window opens. at least we can concentrate on the league!
I have just got back from the game. I must say that was the worst perfromance I have seen from a Salop side since GT returned (and eerily reminiscent of the debacles against Staines and Blyth Spartans). We again made a slow start - Hereford were up for it and we looked as if we thought we just had to turn up to win it. One of our centre-halves fell over for their first goal but we were uncomfortable against corners all game. Their second was a great strike but he only beat one of our men and then had a free shot. We got back in with a fine shot from Summerfield (by far our best player) and dominated the rest of the half. If we had continued like that we could well have got back in it but again we came out for the second half as if we were in a trance. Grandison and Taylor huffed and puffed but there were far too many players well below par (such as Jones, Purdie, Hall ,Parry and Morgan). To be far to Purdie he is clearly playing out of position and looked more comfortable out on the left when Proctor came on though Helan was unlucky to be taken off as he looked as likely to create chances as anyone. Their penalty was a truly awful decision - the ref did not give it at first but the linesman flagged and the stuffing was well and truly knocked out of us by that. We had plenty of possession at the end but looked very predictable and Hereford got some good blocks in at times. Well - where do we go from here. I have to say that as a team we are weaker than last season, especially up front and at centre back. Most of the new signings have been unconvincing and some (such as Purdie) have been very poor. It is also unfair on young loan players to expect them to pull us out of this mess. We need to look at the coaching and pre-match preparation very carefully to see why we are so consistently poor in the first twenty minutes of matches (think of the Walsall and Colchester games recently as well as the fact we could easily have been 4-0 down after twenty minutes to a non-league team today). If we play like that against Bournemoth or Orient we will get slaughtered and drop into the bottom four. I expected it would be tougher in League 1 but I never expected to see the lack of professionalism and lack of heart that I saw today and the alarm bells are beginning to ring very loudly.
Too many changes of players at the back, forced and unforced. Perfomance has been poor for a good while now due to a failure to find successes and only finding draws and losses when wins and draws should have occurred. It seems reminiscent of the season we came back up from the conference with Quinn as manager, especially losing in the FA cup!
I agree, Matster and I am sorry to say we have the look of a relegation side about us at the moment. After spending so long outside this division we face a real struggle to stay in it and , if we are struggling with GT in charge, then will his successor after he retires do any better? I am very worried about the quality of loan player we are signing. For example, neither Collins (and Bennett who we have not seen play yet) got a single game for their clubs (only one league above us) this season. Winnall did not look ready to make much of an impact and soon got injured and Proctor and Helan are also understandably quite raw. It is a big ask for these inexperienced forwards to make an immediate impact as it is not obvious to me that they are any better at this point in their careers than say Gornell who sat on the bench today.
It appears to me that too much sentiment was evident in the team selection today. Parry and Purdie were always going to play against their former club when neither really justified a start in the positions selected for. We were playing better at the start of the season with a team still available,possibly Purdie excepted, although he also started off well. Weale, Grandison, Jones, Hector, Purdie, Parry, Richards, Summerfield, Wright, Morgan, Gornell.
with our main stike force having several bad days/weeks at the office, just who can town rely on, on tuesday night or do we pack the defence and employ someone up front to take advantage of that elusive long ball, or heaven save us, a breakaway by town. these really are 7 weeks of testing times ahead. the shrews really are missing a vibrant wrighty or similar. would a course of bob martins or viagra gird up towns loins. god even i am getting marginally exited now. down boy and floreat salopia! when are jenny!'s, whatshrews and other missing shrews going to re appear and post some wise words of comfort!. i could even cope with vanner and diamond geezer to kickstart our diminishing boards. ok steady there. even an intervention by the gas and the wobblers may liven us up. i suspect the gas and wobblers are like the shrews and swindle, licking wounds
Atcham, I suspect from GT's comments after the game yesterday that he will go the route of packing the defence - he cannot really drop as many as four or five players (none of whom could really complain). Bournemouth's recent scoring record is ominous and , in the absence of a flooded pitch, I can only predict a heavy defeat for us on current form. Orient on Saturday looks a more promising chance but we still have not won a game on a Saturday this season!
AJ - re missing posters, there's a lot of people logging in but not posting. If you do an advanced search via the members section on the community tab and look for members with Shrewsbury as their club you will see how many members we have. Many have not logged on for ages but the likes of Vanner have costed recently. It would be nice if more contributed to the debate!!
i do agree, everyone is welcome who can add or expand the debate, even cgs from the derilect mem can liven things up. as for orient on saturday, might be worth analysing tomorrows games for clues.
