Shropshire Star

Dave Edwards: Perfect tactical call in "dream" Gareth Ainsworth start

What an absolute dream start it was for Gareth Ainsworth.

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Gareth Ainsworth the head coach of Shrewsbury Town

While his arrival has brought a lot of optimism - everyone is really excited and his first few interviews are exactly what you want - I don't think any Town fans would have expected to beat Blues in their wildest dreams.

I'm much more optimistic now. It's still a daunting task of climbing out of the bottom four and a real upturn in form is needed, but there are 30 games to go and Gareth Ainsworth has made me much more confident than I was.

That was an incredible start and every credit has to go to the manager because what I saw out there was completely different to the last three or four games in particular.

I saw a team that was all-in, running hard, covering distance, getting into tackles and disrupting the game - every single player going right to the end. The amount of times we've seen Shrewsbury fall away late in games, this wasn't the case at all.

When the team news came I was trying to work out where he'd play players, but I was really happy with the logic that went into his selection.