Michael Appleton explains Shrewsbury Town pitch size change
Shrewsbury boss Michael Appleton says changing the pitch dimensions is something he has had success with in the past.
Town played their first pre-season match of the summer on home turf at the Croud Meadow on Saturday as they beat Kidderminster Harriers 3-0.
One of the most notable differences was the change to the size of the pitch, with the touchline brought in considerably.
This time last year head coach Paul Hurst made the call to expand the turf at the Croud Meadow to help his side play more football.
And after signing a two-year contract before the end of last season, Appleton has now changed that, deciding to make the surface much smaller ahead of Shrews' League Two campaign, which gets under way in under two weeks.
"Well, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to recognise it and see it," he said. "But listen, at the end of the day, you've got to think of different ways of giving yourself the best chance to win games in football.
"It's something I've done with previous teams in the past, and we've been successful.
"All we're saying is that we back ourselves with the ball as much as anyone in the division. All I'm trying to do is make sure that when we're out of possession, again, we give ourselves the best chance to win.
"If we want to stop crosses, we want to stop balls into our box, that's what we're doing. We're giving ourselves the best chance to do it."
Goals from John Marquis, George Nurse and Max Mata guided Shrews to a fourth consecutive pre-season victory on Saturday.
But there were a number of personnel not involved - two of those were new additions Sam Stubbs and Tom Sang.
"Stubbsy, we just wanted to protect him a little bit," Appleton continued. "He needed a bit of offload for a couple of days. With a bit of luck, you'll probably see him on Tuesday at some point.
"Tom Sang has got a little bit of an issue with his calf again, where there's no point risking it at this moment. Sangy, especially, is one of the real fit ones in the group.
"Bags of energy, loads of running in him. So if he does miss five or six days of training or whatever, it's not going to impact him as much as some of the other players in the team.
"So just keeping the risks down to an absolute minimum at the minute."
