Shrewsbury Town fitness first for Steve Cotterill
Shrewsbury Town manager Steve Cotterill has not ‘pulled any punches’ by pushing his team to their limit in training.
Salop have only enjoyed two pre-season friendlies so far this summer, but have found a winning streak.
First they toppled AFC Telford United 3-2 before beating Hereford 2-1.
Instead, Cotterill has changed tactic and put more emphasis on exhausting training sessions – even sending his players into the two friendlies fatigued to help them get up to speed ahead of the new League One season.
When asked for his assessment on pre-season so far, Cotterill said: “There’s lots of good to come out of it and there’s things not so good to come out of it.
“But the main thing in pre-season, really, is the fitness levels of the players. They worked extremely hard before we went into the games.
“We wanted to take them into games where they’ve been a bit fatigued by training, because the game gives them bigger fitness levels.
“We haven’t pulled any punches in the days before games, they’ve trained to the maximum, which isn’t something you’d normally do, you’d taper it down and be more tactical.
“They haven’t had the pleasure of taking a deep breath. I’m pleased with how pre-season’s gone so far and looking forward to our next game at Exeter.”
Town were due to play their final pre-season friendly today, away to Exeter, before starting their league campaign the following week at home to Burton.
Cotterill added: “We don’t have another game planned, the rest of the pre-season is how we’ve mapped it out.
“What we’ve probably done is upped training a little bit and trained a bit longer to supplement the miles they’d have put in the T amworth game, but that can’t be helped, it’s paramount for player safety in these times.”
