Shrewsbury scholars to find out who’ll make the grade

Town have a host of talented youngsters on their books who will be eager to push for a first-team spot next year.

And Cotterill revealed he and academy manager David Longwell are close to finalising which youngsters will be kept on – with an announcement imminent.

“I think the process is nearly done,” Cotterill said when asked about pro deals for Shrewsbury’s scholars.

“Dave (David Longwell) will be the one who drives that.

“He’ll ask my opinions on a few things and I trust Dave with that because he’s worked with youth team players throughout his whole career – that’s more his speciality.

“We have quite a few of the young players up training with us because I always think young players in the group are always fresh and enthusiastic, they keep the tempo of the session high and they always run.

“They don’t always run in the right places, but the one thing they do do is run, so the session flows very well when they’re up with us.

“I think there are a couple of decisions that need to be made or have been made in the last 24 hours.

“I don’t know when the club will put that out but it will be out very soon I imagine.”

Shrewsbury travel to take on Charlton today for what is their final away game of the season.

But instead of preparing for the game at Sundorne Castle, they have trained at Montgomery Waters Meadow this week while improvements are made to the training ground.

“There are lots of things that have been going on at the training ground for probably around 12 months now,” Cotterill continued.

“The training ground is on phase two of the upgrade.

“You won’t necessarily see too much difference in a couple of months, but the pitches we’re playing on have been better down the bottom half of the ground.

“Now we’re working on the main pitch but there’s a lot more drainage to be done so we don’t have those bad days where we get torrential rain and we can’t train, so there are lots of good things that are going on down there. We won’t be back there this season, we’ll be training on the pitch for now.”

Meanwhile, Cotterill said he is looking forward to today’s game at Charlton.

“We’re going to a really good place and a very good football clubm” he added. “Historically, Charlton has done fantastically over the years.

“I remember when Alan Curbishley was in charge, I voted for him as my Manager of the Year for four or five years because I thought he did a brilliant job at a great club.”