Dave Edwards: Money-spinning Shrewsbury FA Cup record is just miraculous

When you look at the stats it’s only once since 2015/16 they haven’t reached the third round, it’s miraculous when you look at the 15 years prior to that!

There was hardly anything, I know there was the huge stand-out Everton game in the early 2000s, but in my time we never did well in the Cup.

It’s amazing for the club financially, more than anything, you think of the finances built up over the last seven years through these runs – if you take that money out of it, imagine we got knocked out in the first round every year, it would be quite scary to see or think what it might be.

We’re such a well run club, Covid showed that, and looking at the stats a lot might be thanks to those Cup runs of late.

But on the pitch as well, Steve Cotterill’s players deserve to get a big team with the way they’ve performed in the last month to six weeks. There’s some big momentum building, you feel.

I don’t think the second round tie in Carlisle was that much of a spectacle, conditions looked really poor and I still think it looked like a League One team against a League Two team, I don’t think Shrewsbury ever looked in much trouble.

They got the first goal and you can understand the second half being a bit tentative, with not much football played, but they looked in charge.

Town have now lost just once in the last seven if you look at league and FA Cup games. If you’d have said that before the run then you’d say you wouldn’t have been able to see it coming.

The form wasn’t good, the performances weren’t good, but they really have turned it round. The management staff and players deserve huge credit, especially when you see how thin on the ground the squad is, players playing out of position.

It’s great to have young lads on the bench but realistically a lot of those won’t be in the manager’s thoughts to get on, so it does show how light we are.

If we can just keep this form going now, with a huge final five games of 2021 ahead of bringing in reinforcements in January, it’ll be a really good place to be.

After Wigan away tomorrow it’s games against teams all around us, where notoriously we haven’t been great, but it’s important we keep picking up these wins.

It’s hard to put your finger on where the upturn of form has come from. I think a lot of it is when things are going against you, you manage to rally together and then confidence grows when you win.

But looking at the squad, Luke Leahy and Dan Udoh have been front and centre of this turnaround with their performances. They’ve led down the spine.

Luke has played all these positions and I’m almost thinking now I prefer him to stay centre-back or central midfield. He influences the game in the middle of the pitch, he organises and his attributes come into play. He was probably the best player on the pitch again from what I’ve seen and speaking with fans who travelled.

He looks nailed on for player of the season at this stage, when you might have thought a few months ago it’d be Josh Vela.

Dan has really come to form, it was brilliant play for the second goal and an excellent finish from Ryan Bowman. Tom Bloxham’s opener was brilliant too, I’ve written about the relationship between Leahy, George Nurse and Nathanael Ogbeta on the left and the move was brilliant, Leahy’s pass made the goal and the timing of Natty’s run was spot on.

If Shrewsbury can have another good month they can really pull clear of the bottom four by some distance. That is what everyone wants, some comfort and then you chuck an FA Cup run into that as well, it feels like the club’s then moving forward.

But I just couldn’t see it happening the way things were going in September and October. It’s amazing they’ve got into this position, a real platform to push on, hopefully they don’t get dragged back into it.

It was great to see Josh Daniels back on the pitch. I feel sorry for JD, I don’t think he’s been given enough chances from what he deserves.

I was with him for a year and his attitude is fantastic, he’s a very talented footballer. His best position would be a winger or a number 10, that’s how he looked most dangerous in training.

But he’s been moulded into a right wing-back to get him into the team and I know he’s worked extremely hard on that. He’s been really unlucky this season in picking up these injuries every time he seems to get going.

My only concern now is all of a sudden with a game tomorrow and Saturday, and if JD’s the only available wing-back, if he’s played the best part of three games in a week then that’s what happened to Rekeil Pyke, coming in from the cold playing game after game you pick up niggles.

It’d be a huge ask now for Josh to play at Wigan and Doncaster. He will say he’s OK to play, it’s a footballer’s nature, but you can get found off if you’ve been out for so long.

It’ll be really interesting to see the manager’s team selection and what he has available on the next couple of weeks.

I put JD in the same boat as Dan Udoh, coming from non-league and over from Ireland, I feel like they can be the easy ones to leave out at times.

When you step up the perception is you should be grateful to be here at a League One club. But if it ever comes to picking yourself over another, an experienced league player, for whatever reason it’s the easier option to leave out a Dan Udoh or Josh Daniels.

Dan has shaken those shackles off now, he’s considered a League One player and will kick on, JD probably still has that because he hasn’t played enough football. It can be unfair at times, to go with a safer option that might not cause as much disharmony in the dressing room.

n We had some devastating news about Marvin Morgan yesterday. A man who was much loved here in Shropshire and made a huge impact on the community.

I was fortunate enough to be in Marvin’s presence on a few occasions and he was a wonderful, kind-hearted person who will be missed. My thoughts and prayers are with his loved ones right now.