Steve Cotterill frustrated with match officials following Shrewsbury defeat

Town's first defeat in four came courtesy of a rocket from former favourite Joe Jacobson and a Ryan Tafazolli header, before Matt Pennington pulled one back for the hosts.

Cotterill claims Jacobson's opener should not have stood due to a 'blatant' handball in the build-up, missed by referee Ross Joyce and his team. He also felt the free-kick for Tafazolli's free header was 'soft' and that those kind of decisions went against his side all evening.

The manager was largely satisfied with his side's display. Town had more and better chances than their visitors, but he said the defending of the free-kick from which Tafazolli converted the winner has to improve.

"It's a frustrating night," Cotterill said. "We created enough chances, I have no issues with the boys tonight. If anything we've got to defend their second goal better.

"Other than that I don't have an issue with the boys tonight, I thought they were excellent.

"I thought we created enough chances to get something out of the game.

"As soon as they scored the first goal I thought the game was a total disruption for probably 15 minutes.

"Their first goal is handball. You can blatantly see it, I looked at it back. It doesn't hit his knee, the referee is stood looking at it. It's blatant, you can see, he has a bandage on that side.

"But there's nothing we can do about that. We can't do anything about anyone else's performance, only our own. I thought we were good value minimum for a point."

Town forced openings of their own through Daniel Udoh, Ethan Ebanks-Landell and Ryan Bowman, as well as defender Aaron Pierre who had two late chances to draw his side level.

But Salop were made to pay for slack defending as their wait for a first clean sheet of the campaign goes on.

"I don't have any problems with the performance, the only thing is we've got to make sure that delivery for their second goal," he said.

"It's a soft free-kick. There were things like that happening all night out there.

"If you look at that free-kick, I don't know how many other free-kicks there were like that tonight and we didn't get them.

"There's not a lot you can do about that though."

Cotterill added: "Yes, we are (creating more chances) - and on target."

Asked how his side can improve their chance conversion rate, he replied: "Doing what we're doing. (or) Signing Alan Shearer!

"We can't focus any more on it. We can't focus any more on defending, defending set-plays, putting the ball in the right areas, scoring goals, we've done it all. We can't do any more.

"We've got keep encouraging them to get in there and get their head on the ball."