Shrewsbury Town have been urged to grasp their chance of reaching a Wembley final – as they face up to life without inspirational captain Ben Davies for up to a month.
Town continued their barnstorming progress through the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy with a 5-0 thrashing of Dagenham & Redbridge at the Prostar Stadium last night.
That took Shrewsbury through to the southern area semi-final, the draw for which will be held on Sky Sports’ Soccer AM on Saturday morning.
Manager Paul Simpson was delighted with last night’s performance and – with his team now just two stages and three matches from the final – is eyeing further progress.
“We have done very well in this competition in three really tough games,” he said. “They are probably as tough as we could have expected with Exeter and Wycombe away and then Dagenham at home, a big strong side who had fantastic quality at set pieces.
“In your career, you don’t get a lot of opportunities to get to Wembley and you have got to take it and so far we are.
“I thought it was a really, really emphatic victory last night and we did a lot of things right. I’m pleased with the way we defended and attacked as a team. We kept the ball better and put great quality into the box and we can go away satisfied.”
A little of the gloss was knocked off the victory with news of a groin operation for Davies yesterday afternoon which is expected to keep the midfielder sidelined for much of November.
“We have been nursing Ben through for weeks now and he has had to go and have an operation to solve his groin problem,” added Simpson.
“We are missing him for anything between probably three and four weeks.
“It wasn’t going to go away and having looked at all the fixtures we have got coming up, I felt that this was the right time.
“It was only fair on him to get it sorted out because if you keep going with things like that and nursing it, you end up getting a more serious injury and I wasn’t prepared to take that chance with Ben Davies.”
By JAMES GARRISON
Share this article:
What are these?