Dejected defender Shane Cansdell-Sherriff has admitted Shrewsbury Town’s players have failed this season.

Saturday’s 2-0 defeat at Northampton ended any realistic chance of a third play-off campaign in four seasons.

And Cansdell-Sherriff believes the squad have badly under-achieved over the campaign.

Asked if the players feel they have failed, the Australian said: “Yes we do.

“The ability is there. We have got the players here and on our day, we have turned some of the top teams over.

“But you look at losing twice to Darlington and once to Grimsby – you can’t do that.

“There’s nine points there and there have been other silly results and that’s what cost us.

“You can’t lose six games on the bounce (like Town did in March).

“We have gone a lot of games where we haven’t scored enough goals and we have let in a lot of sloppy goals. We can’t expect to be in the play-offs doing things like that.

“We know we are good enough to be there but we didn’t do it consistently enough.”

Cansdell-Sherriff, however, is determined to end the season on a high as Shrewsbury prepare for their final two games against Morecambe and Port Vale.

Town’s players were back in training for those games this morning after a day off yesterday, with manager Paul Simpson – whose position is not understood to be under threat at this stage – eager to finish strongly.

“We have still got to prove to ourselves what we can do and that we are good enough and show other teams where we should have been,” added the out-of-contract stopper.

“We don’t want to make it easy for Morecambe and Port Vale to get to the play-offs because nobody has made it easy for us.”