Steve Cotterill delighted at Shrewsbury Town response after first week in charge

Town secured a richly-deserved point against high-flying Charlton Athletic thanks to captain Ollie Norburn’s dramatic 95th-minute penalty – though Cotterill felt his side had done enough to merit all three points.

It capped a hectic first week at Montgomery Waters Meadow for the new boss, who oversaw three home games inside seven days in which he is unbeaten with an FA Cup victory and two league draws.

Cotterill said: “It’s starting to come. We’re doing lots of patterns and play and phases, whether it’s defensive third, middle or final, there’s a lot for them to absorb.

“It takes 12 months before you get anything into a football club, that’s without personnel changing.

“I think what they have done has been incredible, absolutely incredible, the amount of information crammed into them.

“But I think it’s better off giving them 10 options than one option, because they will remember one of those 10.

“There were a couple of things we did today, yet we didn’t work on it on Friday, we worked on it before Accrington.

“There was something we did that we worked on before Oxford City, but we didn’t see it against Accrington but it’s come out today. They’ve had a deluge of information and it’s great. It’s drip feeding through.”

Town fans, who returned to the Meadow for the second time in four days since the tiered system was put into place, were left encouraged by what felt like another step forward under Cotterill.

The boss added: “We played well and fans are seeing that. I don’t know that, but you’re reading something on social media (and telling me) – I don’t do social media.

“It was a good performance by us. You can’t go from a team bottom of the league to being a play-off team, all silky and playing football.

“It’s a gradual process that we have to get our way out of this. Once you’re down there, I’ve been in enough jobs at enough clubs to know it’s incredibly difficult to get out of it.”

Shrewsbury remain 23rd in League One having now gone 10 league games without a win, although Norburn’s late spot-kick prevented them from dropping to the foot of the table.

Town’s relentless schedule continues with no free midweek this week as they prepare for tomorrow’s visit of third tier high-flyers Lincoln City in the Papa John’s Trophy first knockout round.

Saturday’s clash against Charlton kick-started a run of league games until Christmas where Cotterill’s men face five of the current top nine.

Cotterill said: “If we’d have got beat it would’ve been a real kick in the teeth for them. We haven’t deserved to have been beaten in any of the three games.

“In fact, we’ve deserved to win three games. We deserved to beat Accrington the other night and to win today, make no bones about that. We’ve done that against two teams really doing well in our league. We’ve got an incredibly tough month, incredibly tough.”