Simpson gives squad clean slate

New Shrewsbury Town boss Paul Simpson today pledged to give a fair crack of the whip to every player in his squad - including those on loan at other clubs.

Simpson, who took charge yesterday after signing a three-year contract to replace Gary Peters, this morning took his first training session with the squad he has inherited.

See also - 'Hoping Paul brings good times' by our Shrews blogger

The former Rochdale, Carlisle and Preston chief insists everyone will be given a clean slate and he will assess the quality he has at his disposal over the 10 remaining games of the League Two season.

But he also promised that Neil Ashton and Michael Symes, currently on season-long loans at Macclesfield, Darran Kempson, who is at Accrington for a month and scored in their 3-2 win over Morecambe last night, and Luke Jones, who is in a second month at Kidderminster, would not become forgotten men.

"We can recall Luke but I'm not going to do that if he is not going to get into our team," said Simpson.

"I will be getting hold of Kidderminster's fixtures and seeing when I can go over to watch him to see if he can do a job for us.

"I will be monitoring the others as well to work out if they have a future with us. I want to get a good look at them because my opinion on those players might be different to the opinion of the previous manager."

Simpson also insists his immediate priority is to pick up enough points to remove any possible fear of Town being sucked into a relegation battle.

Shrewsbury currently have 42 points and the new boss will not rest easy until they are mathematically safe.

"I don't want to be scaremongering but we haven't got enough points to guarantee safety and we need to make sure we get those on the board so we can start to move forward," he said.

"I'd like to go through getting wins and if we can get 10 out of 10 I'd be delighted.

"But it's fairly obvious there's been some problems here this season and I've got to hope they can be sorted out quickly and easily so we can start picking up points.

"I'm looking forward to working with the players on the training pitch and seeing what they're like.

"It will be a case of telling them what we're looking to do - but I'm not looking to change everything or carry out a major overhaul, I'm just looking to improve results."

Meanwhile, Simpson will also turn his attention to putting a new scouting network in place. Chief scout Alan Fogarty left last week and Simpson said: "There's nobody in to do the scouting.

"I've had people I've worked with in the past but they're all in jobs. As the weeks go by I will be talking to Rob (Bickerton, the managing director) to see what we can put in place."

By Chris Hudson