Shrewsbury Town manager Graham Turner believes the character his side show in responding to their first defeat in eight games will go a long way to testing their promotion mettle.

Luke Guttridge’s second half strike was enough to hand Aldershot a 1-0 win over what Turner labelled an ‘awful” Shrewsbury side on Saturday.

And the Town chief is now looking for a reaction as his team enter a busy festive festive schedule with five games in 22 days starting with Saturday’s home clash with Macclesfield.

“It’s a key week for us getting things right for Macclesfield,” said Turner.

“It’s a key period through the Christmas period and you can get so many distractions if you’re not careful. The players have got to stay focused on the job in hand. I’ve no doubts that we’ve got the ability in the side and we’ve just got to start again.

“There’s been some of the games where we’ve shown character to get the result. There’s been other times where we’ve passed it really well and played really well to get the result. We’ve got to combine the two together and if we can do that then we’re back on track again.”

Turner also admitted that he might have got his selection, and substitutions, wrong at the EBB Stadium.

“I probably should have changed the side,” he said. “But results have been such that it was justifiable to keep the same team.

“Subs wise you look at whether anyone made an impact, whether we brought the right ones on or off. I will examine all that but I think anyone of eight could have come off.

“I don’t think Chris Neal did very much wrong, the central defenders had their hands full and we didn’t really dominate but going forward we were very poor.

“We started, strangely enough, quite well in the first 10 minutes well. We got the ball out wide to the right hand side and you felt we were on top of things but we disintergrated.

“I can’t explain the reason why so many players who have been performing well recently have been below par. It was a peformance that surprised me I dont know where it came from. I can sum it up by saying we were awful.”

See also:

• Aldershot 1 Shrewsbury Town 0 – In pictures