Shrewsbury's Daniel Udoh looking to improve 'football IQ' in search for more goals
Leading Shrewsbury Town goalscorer Daniel Udoh is focused on improving his ‘football IQ’ to sniff out more poacher’s efforts.
Udoh clocked up his 12th and 13th goals of the term with a well-taken double in Tuesday’s brilliant 5-0 home win over strugglers Morecambe.
The striker, who leads the scoring charts by two from partner Ryan Bowman who was also on target, notched his first goals since late January in the 1-1 draw at AFC Wimbledon.
Udoh’s timely opener against the Shrimps one minute before half-time was a real poacher’s effort from close range. His second was a typical Udoh strike full of power and strength. The striker admits he is working hard on the former to further boost his tallies.
“The second goal, I back myself to score goals like that – goals where you are not expected to score, defenders are meant to do something,” said popular Town frontman Udoh.
“But the poacher’s ones, those are the ones I need to keep working on.
“A lot of the strikers at this level are really good at that reading of the game, that’s where my football brain and football mentality, the IQ of my football has to go higher. That’s what I’m learning from Alby (assistant Aaron Wilbraham) and the manager. A perfect example is Ryan Bowman, to learn from him.”
Udoh, 25, added: “I came from Telford where I scored 26 goals in a season. I didn’t expect to come to Shrewsbury and score 26.
“As a goalscorer you want to come and get flying, get 10 each season, but obviously it’s a different level, I found really hard in the last two years.
“But the manager’s shown his faith in me, like the day we spoke about my contract, he said I just need to score goals and I’m happy I can score the goals now and hopefully long may it continue.”
Fellow striker Bowman revealed earlier this week that two games ago while both he and Udoh were amid goal droughts the duo had a secret target between now and the summer.
Udoh said: “My aim for the season was 10 league goals, I got them and if I can get another five I’ll go from there.
“I’m buzzing to get 10 league goals, it’s been really hard the last two seasons, I’ve only got four in the league, so I enjoyed that.”
“Two games ago and we’d been struggling (for goals), I said with 10 games left let’s see if we can both get five each and go from there.
“The sooner we can scrap five then we can push on. He’s a player that sets his standards high, I set mine high, we want to do the best we can for the club.”
He said of his colleague: “He’s a goalscorer, Ryan Bowman, whether he’s had a drought or I have, you can’t take it away from players like Bowman, he’s done it at the level below.
“You see him every day in training, he’s a goalscorer, he knows where to be at the right time, it’s not luck, it’s a skill to be at the right place at the right time.
“That header was powerful, I was celebrating on the bench.
“You have (Luke) Leahy as well, he was left-back or wing-back last year and got 10 goals but a lot were penalties.
“This year he’s scoring goals, assisting goals, it just helps the team in general.”
