Matthew Pennington: Shrewsbury can shock top boys

Steve Cotterill's men saw a positive run of results come to an end at third-placed MK Dons on Saturday as the hosts ran out 2-0 winners.

All but one of Town's final five games this term are against sides above 16th-placed Shrews in the standings, with Wigan pushing for the title and Ipswich and Sunderland fighting for the play-offs.

Defender Pennington, a regular for Salop this season, says Town intended to cause Dons the same trouble they did to leaders Rotherham recently, but with big-hitters to come the stopper is still eyeing more upsets before the end of the campaign.

"That was our mentality, we felt we could come and get a result and upset them," said Pennington of the Stadium MK reverse.

"We've got quite a few of those teams in and around the top seven or eight in the last few games.

"We feel like we can upset them with our performances and probably shock them, they might look at us and where we are in the table – we're a better team now than at the start of the season when they (Ipswich) played us last.

"Unfortunately we didn't get it right on Saturday and we have to go again."

Former Ipswich loan defender Pennington, 27, added on Town's run-in: "We want to build some momentum for next year and finish strongly as well, I think I read it'd be the second-best (League One) finish if we finish above 15th, so we've got a chance to do that.

"MK Dons was disappointing because we could've climbed a few places if we won the game. The carrot there to get a good finish and finish well.

"We've had a good run the last few weeks, we got beat by the better team on Saturday."

No Town outfield player has appeared more than Pennington's 40 starts from 41 league games this season.

The defender said boss Cotterill has his side fired up for a possible landmark finish.

"He definitely does, we had a tough start to the season and to come back and have a decent run to hopefully finish strongly, that's really important," Pennington added.

"It's all about getting the motivation for each game and to have a decent record, if we can finish 12th to 14th that's great."