Simpson agrees to extended contract

Simpson signed a three-year deal when he succeeded Gary Peters in March 2008 and the extended terms now take him to the end of the 2011/12 campagin.

He said: "I have agreed it with the chairman and am absolutely delighted.

"We have made progress but I know there is still a hell of a lot of work to be done and this gives us a bit more stability."

Meanwhile tough-tackling midfielder Kevin McIntyre has urged Shrewsbury Town not to dwell on their derby disappointment and mount another unbeaten run.

Town suffered their first defeat in six outings when they went down to a 1-0 home defeat to Port Vale in front of a 7,000-plus crowd at the Prostar Stadium on Saturday.

McIntyre conceded Shrewsbury had fallen below their best, but is now eyeing a swift response.

"We didn't turn up on Saturday and we have let ourselves down a bit," said the 31-year-old.

"It's disappointing because we have been doing really well and I felt we were building on something.

"So to put in a performance like that is disappointing and it wasn't good enough.

"We know it's up to us. If we do the right things, we have got every chance of winning games but we just didn't do that on Saturday.

"We didn't really get our foot on the ball and play to our potential. But we have got to pick ourselves up and do the same as we did after the Dagenham game.

"Collectively we have to get Saturday out of our system and go and build another four, five or six game unbeaten run. "

Simpson admitted his team had only threatened sporadically.

"We didn't play anything like we are capable of," he added. "I couldn't fault the way we worked and stuck at it, but we have got better quality than we showed on Saturday.

"I'm disappointed we didn't create enough chances and we probably only had about five minutes in the first half where we had a decent spell of passing."

A forgettable day for Shrewsbury was completed with the sending off of defender Graham Coughlan.

By JAMES GARRISON