Deflated Shrewsbury were today urged to “keep their heads” after their automatic promotion prospects suffered a setback.

Town’s five match unbeaten run was brought to an abrupt halt last night when they suffered a 3-0 home defeat at the hands of Bury.

While that moved the Shakers back into the top three in League Two, Shrewsbury slipped down to fifth position.

But boss Graham Turner has backed his side to issue a defiant response at Northampton on Saturday.

“We have to make sure this doesn’t affect us too much,” said the Town chief.

“There is a lot of football to be played, a lot of twists and turns to come and there is no point pressing any sort of panic button.

“It is about keeping our heads. It’s a fair test for everybody but we need to re-group, go to Northampton strong mentally and get the right result.

“My feeling is we have enough characters in the dressing room to do just that.”

While Turner accepted his side were second best in the closing stages of the Bury blow, he insisted there were positives on a night when Shrewsbury struck the woodwork twice.

“We were poor in the last 20 minutes but before that it looked okay,” he added.

“You couldn’t see the end scoreline coming after an hour but Bury are good going forward and we had a job coping with them when they had their tails up at 2-0.

“We played reasonably well with the ball but there were times where we didn’t do too well defensively and defining moments cost us.”

Town reserves were in action at Macclesfield this afternoon with Nathan Elder and David Raven expected to continue on the comeback trails after injury.

By JAMES GARRISON