A gritty and hard-working performance saw Town pick up three valuable points over one of their main promotion rivals, writes Shrewsbury blogger James Pugh.

It wasn’t pretty and for much of the second half there were a few nail-biting moments, but overall I thought Town were worthy of the three points after their 1-0 win over Darlington.

With other results going our way the win puts us right back in the promotion hunt and even closed the gap to seven points over the leaders, Wycombe.

Darlington were one of the best teams to visit the Prostar this season and even though we weren’t at our best and they had their chances, something returned to the team’s performance on Saturday that has been missing in recent weeks.

The goals might not be flying in at the moment, but with the defence remaining very solid, we might have to rely on similar hard-fought victories from now until the end of the season.

The star performers on the day were Daniels, the two centre halves and Humphreys.

It was also good to see Walker grab his second goal in two games and he needs to continue to score even when Holt returns.

The worry for me is the lack of form for our captain, Davies, who continues to struggle since his return from injury. I am sure he will not be pleased if he continues to get subbed or is left on the bench, but at the end of the day that is Simpson’s prerogative.

On the transfer front, Simpson has continued to be frustrated in pursuit of reinforcements.

We had agreed a fee with Macclesfield midfielder, Terry Dunfield, but were unable to agree personal terms putting the deal in doubt.

At 26 he’s a good age and I know Macclesfield fans like him, but from what I gather he is a similar player to Kevin McIntyre and in my opinion not what we need at the moment. I know Simpson likes McIntyre and he does work hard, but lacks that bit of flair and creativity which is what we need at the moment.

I think the problem seems to be a lack of funds at the moment, even for loan signings, and I think this could be down to our big spending in the summer.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Simpson tries to buy youngsters from higher division teams. There have also been rumours he’s trying to re-sign Thornton, but unfortunately he seems to be back in favour at Leyton Orient at the moment.

The next two games see us go away to Barnet on Tuesday night followed by a home game against promotion rivals Brentford on Saturday.

As I have said all season we cannot afford to rely on our home form and it is not good enough winning against Darlington to then go to Barnet playing for a draw.

An all-out win is the order of the day helped by the return of top scorer Grant Holt.

A further win against Brentford would do a lot for our hopes of automatic promotion and distance ourselves from the chasing pack.

I don’t ask for a lot, do I!