Steve Cotterill: Shrewsbury must keep grinding out performances and results

Salop are crippled with injury problems at the moment missing five first-team squad members, but despite this, Cotterill’s side have put in some whole-hearted performances and not gotten what they deserved in league games recently.

The squad is depleted, but the boss says they must push on and continue to ‘grind’ out performances until January when perhaps they can begin to think about the transfer window.

He said: “At the moment, we have just got to grind this out and then see what happens in January.

“We have got to keep working extremely hard as everybody else does at the football club, and then put the team out each weekend fully prepared to get a result.

“And like I said roll on until January, when maybe when we can see what we can do to maybe help out in a couple of areas. By then who knows where Elliott Bennett, Julien Dacosta and Aiden O’Brien will be.”

Dan Udoh and George Nurse are likely to be out for the season with ACL injuries, whereas Dacosta and O’Brien are waiting to see the surgeon this week. Until Shrews’ senior players return or the January window allows Cotterill to bring one or two players through the door – Shrews have mainly youngsters on the bench.

Josh Bailey made his first-team debut against Barnsley a couple of weeks ago and another academy product Tom Bloxham has made a couple of appearances from as a substitute.

But when it comes to in-game substitutions, the boss is heavily reliant on Ryan Bowman and Rekeil Pyke for any impact from the bench.

He said: “We have a really crippling injury list that we are trying to deal with. “It is tough at the moment. “No disrespect to our bench, but we have a bench containing a lot of young players and a couple of more experienced pros that can come on.

“We would like a bit more variety in our substitutes, but we don’t have a choice with that with the injuries we have had.

“Not only have they been unfortunate they have been really bad injuries.

“We had a couple of bumps and bruises on Saturday that you expect to get from most games – but we will be as we are this week.”