Shrewsbury Town head into their rearranged Johnstone’s Paint Trophy tie at Accrington Stanley tonight with a threadbare squad devastated by injuries to 10 first-team players.

Steve Phillips, Dean Holden and Paul Murray were today ruled out of the trip to the Crown Ground with niggles.

Phillips has a damaged shoulder while Holden and Murray are suffering with minor groin and knee problems respectively.

It is hoped the trio will all be fit for this weekend’s League Two clash with Aldershot.

But it still leaves manager Paul Simpson with a plethora of selection problems for this evening’s northern area first round tie, which was postponed due to a waterlogged pitch a fortnight ago.

The other absentees are Glyn Garner, Mike Jackson, Craig Disley, Terry Dunfield, Omer Riza, Jake Robinson and Dave Hibbert.

“The ridiculous part about is that they are all impact injuries and are not through over-working or anything like that,” said Simpson.

It means Shrewsbury will travel north with a 16-man squad which will include four first year professionals – Jake Simpson, Harry Hooman, Andre Gray and Andreas Arestidou – and two YTS players in Danny Taylor and Will Richards.

Chris Neal will return to replace Phillips in goal.

And Simpson is determined his side recover from back-to-back defeats and set up a northern area home quarter-final with Bury.

“The fortunate thing about having the game postponed is that we know what we have in front of us and if we can beat Accrington and Bury then we are not far away from Wembley which is a great incentive,” he added.

“It will be a different team to the one I was going to pick a fortnight ago because the injuries we have got makes it hard to give people a rest.

“But we have also lost two games on the trot. I don’t like doing that and I know the players don’t so we want to get back to winning ways tonight.”

Meanwhile, Town’s first choice strikeforce are set to miss Saturday’s game against Aldershot.

Top scorer Hibbert visited a specialist in London yesterday over his Achilles tendon problem and is likely to be out for a week to 10 days.

And Robinson’s ankle remains swollen as he faces up to an absence of up to three weeks.

By JAMES GARRISON