This report comes complete with a health warning.

Because if the nerve ends of Shrewsbury Town’s supporters were frayed on Saturday, it’s only going to get worse over the next four games.

Ultimately, Town can today reflect on a weekend which could scarcely have panned out any better.

As if a routine – at least in terms of scoreline – victory over the Football League’s bottom club wasn’t enough, Town enjoyed the additional bonus of a hugely favourable set of results elsewhere.

Of their main promotion rivals, only Bury could match Graham Turner’s side in notching three points as sure signs of the rising pressure begins to tell.

Just one point now separates Shrewsbury from third place Wycombe who, for the second successive weekend, were forced to fight back from two goals down to rescue a point from the wreckage of a potentially damaging defeat.

Yes, automatic promotion is well and truly there for Town to reach out and grasp after a weekend which proved that points rather than performance are the only commodity that count at this stage of the campaign.

Two goals to the good inside 20 minutes, Shrewsbury were to make heavy weather of seeing off a Stockport side whose 111-year stay in the Football League now looks destined to end.

Whether it was the hosts feeling the pressure or Stockport finding a freedom which often accompanies a seemingly lost cause, the second period proved a nail-biting affair for all concerned at the Greenhous Meadow.

There were hair-raising moments along the way, Ben Smith making three inspired saves as County — whose coach driver felt the wrath of manager Ray Mathias for upsetting their preparations by mistakingly heading to the old Gay Meadow — belatedly found some direction.

The Town goalkeeper denied Anthony Elding twice — once brilliantly with a point blank save at the start of the second half — and the excellent Danny Rowe to enhance his own personal mission of reeling off five successive clean sheets during the run-in.

Those efforts came at a time when Shrewsbury struggled to maintain possession but after a first half in which Town were to open up a comfortable advantage.

Tom Bradshaw – a beneficiary of one of the three changes made by Turner – proved the thorn in Stockport’s side as Ian Sharps advertised his credentials as a ball playing centre-half.

It was a through ball from Sharps which allowed Bradshaw to cash in on a high and disorganised Stockport defensive line on 16 minutes, the Welsh forward displaying no shortage of class in strolling around Matt Glennon in the Stockport goal before rolling into an empty net.

And skipper and teenage prodigy combined once again four minutes later when an almost identical raking pass sent Bradshaw clear.

This time his pace forced Glennon to race from his line to make a rash challenge with Nicky Wroe making no mistake with Town’s first home penalty of the season.

Bradshaw, with a lob, and the recalled Lionel Ainsworth had the opportunity to put the game to bed in the second period but neither could convert.

So while Town’s display wasn’t overly convincing, it is substance over style which matter now.

And, on that front, it was very much job done.

Match analysis by JAMES GARRISON