Shrewsbury Town boss Steve Cotterill demands angry response
Disappointed Shrewsbury boss Steve Cotterill has called on his troops to start games with more ‘anger’ and to not try to score the ‘perfect’ goal.
Town paid the price for five sloppy first-half minutes in Saturday’s 2-1 defeat at Bolton, where consecutive defeats saw the visitors drop to 23rd in League One.
Slack Town covering allowed the Whites to score twice from distance after Shrews had started brightly. Striker Ryan Bowman’s wasteful penalty 10 minutes into the second half spurned a chance to get back into the contest before Luke Leahy’s fine free-kick came too late for a comeback.
“I don’t sense any lapses in confidence with them,” Cotterill said. “If you look at it – we need to start almost more angry with ourselves a little bit.
“Because once the anger kicks in, we then end up being even better in the game.
“But we’ve got to make sure we understand why the anger kicks in. We’ve got to do some things better, we’ve spoken about in the dressing room about what has cost us the game.”
Bolton were unafraid to play the ball out of defence, including goalkeeper Joel Dixon, in a high-risk style. That handed the visitors a number of encouraging opportunities in the first half in particular.
One saw a loose Dixon header drop the way of Daniel Udoh, who opted to not shoot for the open goal but to work it to a team-mate in the penalty area, and the chance broke down.
The manager added: “I’m not going to speak too much about what gets said because I always thing what goes on in the dressing room stays there but you’re not too far away with that.
“My first thought when it dropped to him (Udoh) was ‘just hit the target’, because there’s nobody there to save it.
“But they got away with it because we had too many touches and tried to make everything a little bit too perfect, probably.”
The contest will be remembered from a Town persuasion for Bowman’s fluffed penalty shortly into the second period which would have handed Cotterill’s men a route back into the contest.
But the Town chief refused to blame experienced striker Bowman for missing the penalty, which was tame and central and easily saved by Dixon.
Salop were unable to call on influential midfielder Josh Vela for the meeting at his former club. Vela is missing with a knee injury and Cotterill admitted he is loathed to bring Vela back too early out of fear of a subsequently more serious injury.
Shrewsbury are back in action tomorrow evening with an EFL Trophy group stage tie against Wolves under-21s.
Cotterill will ring the changes to hand fringe players involvement alongside the squad’s promising young players, after Town lost their first Trophy group game.
