Shrewsbury rue losing start
Shrewsbury Town chief executive Brian Caldwell believes the club’s poor start to the season impacted their recruitment as they missed out on some late targets.
Salop head into today’s clash with Accrington Stanley with only one League One win under their belt, as they sit third from bottom in the division.
They lost their opening four games of the season and only picked up their first win last week – before missing out on some last-minute transfers.
And Caldwell believes their difficult start – as well as the financial strength of their competitors – resulted in some lost deals this week.
He said: “League One this year, with the number of big clubs we have, the agents will call all the big clubs in the leagues first to see if they can move their players there, because they know the wage demands. They then work their way down the league based on wage structures.
“If it’s into August they’ll look at the league table as well, which obviously doesn’t help with recruitment either, if I’m honest, because we didn’t do so well in the first few games. The money in League One this year is unbelievable. I’ve never seen it like this before. Some of the clubs are throwing massive amounts of money at players.
“It’s always difficult to compete but it’s difficult for a lot of clubs to compete.
“The salary cap has gone and it’s opened it up to so many clubs to throw as much money as they can at it. It’s not just Sunderland and Ipswich, there’s quite a number of teams that have spent big.
“We have as well to be honest. The wages this year, we’ve pushed it as far as we can, to try and make sure we get players here. It’s becoming increasingly competitive to compete with the wage demands that everyone’s looking for.”
Despite that, Shrewsbury still made nine signings as they overhauled the squad.
Caldwell insists it is a strong group, but could not hide his regret at not adding to it further.
He added: “There’s been quite a turnaround in players and with the releases we did at the end of last season, it was always going to be a fraught and busy window.
“It was probably disappointing in the last week (of the window) because Steve Cotterill worked so hard, he was constantly on the phone trying to get targets in. There is some frustration in the last week that we didn’t get some of the targets in, in the end.
“We’ve done a lot of business this window and we’ve done well. We managed to get a few early which helped.
“The only thing that we’re a bit disappointed about is not getting some at the end, which would have enhanced the squad.”
