Shrewsbury Town urged to repeat Sunderland display against Charlton
Steve Cotterill has enforced the message for his players ‘to not bask’ in one good performance and to back it up with another.
Town put in one of their best displays yet this season as 10 men fought back to earn a creditable 1-1 draw against Sunderland on Tuesday.
But Cotterill’s men face another stern test at Montgomery Waters Meadow with improving Charlton the visitors, who sit second in the League One form table over six games. Town remain 21st and in the division’s relegation places.
“We always need to follow it up,” Cotterill said of Tuesday’s display after his side impressed following David Davis’ sending off. “It’s always history. It was history the minute the game finished and we got into our beds on Tuesday night.
“I won’t look back and bask in a 1-1 draw at home just because we’ve done well with 10 men.
“There will be nothing like that, the only time we can bring our heads up is in May, wherever we are in the league.”
Cotterill added: “I’ve enforced that a little bit yesterday, in our first meeting about Charlton, we’ll have another meeting this morning and another session, and then I will probably enforce it even more that we can’t live off what happened the other night.
“I said to the boys the reason everybody waited and clapped them off is because they’d seen they gave it absolutely their all.
“There wasn’t one person in the team who left anything on the pitch – only Digga (Davis), he left the second half on the pitch!”
Meanwhile, Town have appealed Davis’s three-match suspension that came as a result of his first-half stoppage-time red card against Sunderland.
The defensive midfielder was shown a straight red by referee Peter Wright for a foul on visiting striker Nathan Broadhead.
But Cotterill revealed that, after closely inspecting footage of the incident near the halfway line and receiving opinion from contacts in the game, he is confident in the appeal the club have submitted to the FA.
Cotterill said: “For me it’s not a red card, it’s a yellow card at most.
“It’s a robust challenge, definitely not serious foul play, you might turn it into a reckless challenge, but even that’s a yellow card. He clearly gets the ball.
“I definitely don’t see that as a red card. We spent a long time putting the appeal together, sometimes it goes for you and sometimes it doesn’t, we definitely feel we have a good case.”
