Dave Edwards: Start of pre-season a clean slate for Shrewsbury Town

Off the back of what happened last year, I think everyone will want to get up and running as quickly as possible. You've had a lot of time to dwell on the events and the relegation, the performances.

I've experienced it, I've been relegated before, but as soon as you walk in the door on that first day of pre-season, it's a clean slate. There's a new air of optimism and you want to start the season extremely well. 

In my career, the only time it hasn't worked like that is when you've still got players under contract who are looking to move out. I've had that at Wolves before when we got relegated from the Premier League to the Championship, and then from the Championship to League One and it wasn't a settled squad.

For Shrewsbury, the amount of players who were out of contract, the changes which have already happened, pretty much everyone coming back has got a fair chance of playing.

They will want to be there as well, want to be competing to try and get Shrewsbury back into League One and having a good, solid season.

There will be optimism as a player and you really want to impress. You want to show the manager that you've been working hard in the off-season, you want to show your fitness and you're already competing. Pre-season is all about competing with your own team-mates.

As a central midfielder, I'd be up against all the other centre midfielders in pre-season, and I wanted to show that I was fitter than them, stronger than them, and when the games come around, I was performing better than them.