Dave Edwards: Shrewsbury Town players deserve a strong finish this season

It’s been a really tough run of games, playing sides in the top half and promotion picture – it’s been daunting with Town’s thin squad.

I might sound like a broken record, but it’s a big ask. When you are playing against these better teams you have to be physically on it. Look at some of the great teams that cause upsets; Atletico Madrid and Inter Milan in Europe, other Jose Mourinho teams, they are more physically superior and work harder out of possession.

That’s what Shrewsbury have had, but when it’s a small squad and you can’t rotate, although the boys will still work so hard week in week out it’s impossible to keep up the levels of physicality needed to keep up the performances against the better teams.

You can do it once and get a result against a Plymouth, but then to face a Bolton, Barnsley, Sheffield Wednesday, whoever, it’s impossible unless you can really rotate and keep lads fresh and competitive in their positions.

It’s culminated into a perfect storm to finish the season, but you can’t take away what they have done previously.

I really hope now the players can finish the season strongly. If for whatever reason they can’t pick up wins in these two remaining games – Bristol Rovers tonight and Lincoln at the weekend – it would be a real disappointment for the manager if this team finish down in 15th or 16th.

The season has been far better than that, but the last couple of months have caught up. That makes these games really important.

Tenth is probably out of the question now – it would need some real luck. But there’s a big incentive to beat Rovers, just below them, and Lincoln who are just above.

If they did fall down a couple of places it turns into a far too familiar season in terms of position and points – and I feel this team has been better than that and deserve to finish higher.

Every manager takes stock at the end of every season and Steve Cotterill will be really proud of what his team have produced.

He will look at areas that can be improved and I don’t think that is just in terms of personnel, he’s got good players. Looking at the bigger picture, there have been stints of losing runs which has obviously cost them a position in the top half at the moment.

Shrewsbury are still punching above their weight but he’s a progressive enough manager to look at areas to improve. In the runs of defeats he may feel there was not a deep enough squad to compete.

So he will have to weigh up the good and the bad – do you take a smaller squad of better players or a squad with more depth and not quite have the same quality? It’s a real conundrum.

The manger has seen both sides of that now, with the squad he took over which was bloated, to this one with better characters, quality and personality, but there is not quite enough of it.

I’d imagine Steve will have a long hard think in the summer about which is the best way to go next season.

This season shows that when you do have everyone fit – there were a couple of spells players were coming back and there was more rotation and substitutions in some games– it looked really good. But injuries and niggles then come back and you become depleted and it becomes near-impossible.