Bernard McNally: Incomings show ambition by Shrewsbury Town
Well it’s been a summer of ‘cummings’ and goings and Town seemed to save the biggest until last – it was a big day for the club.
It was obvious we were lacking that killer instinct up front and Sam has acted on that. From personal experience there’s nothing worse than if you know your squad is lacking something.
And Jason Cummings and Callum Lang can hopefully lead us from the front.
Jason is only 24 and a marquee signing for us. Shrewsbury have had a great relationship with Scottish players over the years. They’ve brought a great tenacity to the side.
The board are backing Sam and it’s great to see.
He’s obviously said this is the department we need to strengthen and fair play to them, they’ve put their money where their mouth is.
They want to back him after bringing him in. It fizzled out with John Askey and now they’re backing Sam. It’s great and exciting for fans, me included, with these signings.
To me, Monday’s deadline day was a statement of intent. It’s exciting to see Town bring in that kind of firepower. The manager can really put his stamp on things now.
Sam has shown he is prepared to make moves.
If you’re not performing you will likely be out. There’s a lot of competition in this big squad. Keeping all the players happy is always going to be a challenge but you’d rather have that in a big group of players than the opposite where there aren’t enough options.
He can really start going about how he wants to play and improve on our start to the season.
We’ve not done too badly, Ipswich aside, but that was always going to be tough before you go 2-0 down with 10 men.
Town will be pleased to have no game this weekend. It’s a little bit of a respite at a good time.
Players can rest little injuries, it’ll be a good little time to get together while Jason and Callum bed in and others return from injuries.
I’m interested to see what Sam thinks his best side is. Will he stick with the back three? You wonder if the new-boys will bring more of an attack-minded style to our secure defence.
Sometimes it’s nice for players to have the weekend off. They might come in for a bit of training, but it doesn’t do any harm to have a rest, especially with one or two niggles around.
This spell of prolonged training just gets the players together with a little bit more time to gel. It could make all the difference in getting to know somebody and seeing how they work. It could be very beneficial.
