EFL Trophy: Shrewsbury v Birmingham: Bumper crowd to attend cup clash

There is set to be a bumper crowd too with Blues being given the entire West Stand for the game and they have sold out their allocation of 3,100 for the clash.

Town will be without Aaron Pierre and Luca Hoole – they have had international call-ups, so they will be unavailable for the game against Crawley Town on Saturday too. Blues will also be missing several key personnel. Jay Stansfield has been called up to England Under-21s while Willum Willumsson and Alfons Sampsted will represent Iceland, and that is enough to see their League One clash against Cambridge has been called off.

Despite Blues hitting the criteria to call off a league match – the international call-ups do not count towards the EFL Trophy.

Paul Hurst’s side got a positive result on Saturday and they will be hoping to build on that ahead of the visit of Chris Davies’ team.

It will be a good test for Salop who will play against them again in league action at the end of November. There are a few Town players who might get a run out in this game having not featured at Bolton on Saturday.

They switched to a back three for that clash and Hurst says the formation switch may impact certain players.

He said: “There are certain players it will impact. At the weekend for instance, with Charles Sagoe Jr, I did not think it was the game for him as it panned out.

“Can he play wing-back? He can but you have got to have more of the ball, to allow him to do that, I don’t want to nail my colours to the mast of playing one way. It is certainly something we will have to consider. If we would have lost that game 5-2, which we could have done, would we be saying the system worked?

“This is what I talk about moments, but that is far too simplistic for me, it is about what is happening out on the pitch. What you are up against, there is a lot more to it.”

Shrews (3-4-3): Savin, J Feeney, Nsiala, M Feeney, Benning, Gilliead, Perry, Rossiter, O’Reilly, Sagoe Jr, Marquis.